How to MIX with BUSSES - The ONE THING you need to know (advanced)

it was going on my friend - Chris Salim here from mixdown online a week ago I had a conversation live on this YouTube channel with Daniel Wyatt we had an amazing time Daniel share with us five top mixing mistakes that you need to know if you want to watch that video I'm gonna leave the link on top and down below now I have a question from Michelle do say that is related to this live session and it goes like this first I gotta say that this video was freaking cool please Chris do an in-depth video on routing I always send my effects to the main bus but you don't why why not so I'm going to explain that to you right after the intro now Before we jump in if you're new here on the channel subscribe to the channel click notification bell so you don't miss anything and for all of you you guys know the drill share and like if you enjoy this video now I'm just gonna have you watch a small clip out of that conversation I had with Daniel Wyatt Daniel pointed out something that you need to know when working with instrument buses Chris or Daniel would you use a bus for instrumental tracks yes I would say this and this this might be a little hard to explain verbally without showing you but a lot of people like to make a drum bus for example where they'll take all the drum tracks and then directly output them to a bus and then process the bus to give it an overall yes you can do it but and this is a little heady but what happens is when you let's say you want to put reverb on your snare and you also want to have a drum bus when you directly output all of your elements to that bus and you change your snare fader level your post-fader reverb send relationship becomes broken okay now let's jump in Cubase and look this up and can explain to you and strip that down for you to understand what Daniel is talking about because it is very important I'm so I have like if four or five drum tracks it's just a drum groove out of groove agent that I converted into into audio okay so let's have a quick listen very straight forward what I have here are the five audio the channels then I have the drum buss which is the drum group that I routed all of those drum audio channels in okay so this is a stereo drum group then I have a plate verb for the snare now if we look at the snare Channel I added some reverb on that snare that is the the plate reverb that I have right here on my effects channel track if I look at the routing all the like I was saying earlier all of those audio channels are routed into this group drum drum bus this one is going straight to the output of the session stereo out and same for the effects channel track that has the the reverb as an insert also goes to the stereo outs so that is my basic stripped-down example to show you what Daniel was talking about on this on our last conversation okay now if I play the part and I bring down the snare my signal right here is sent to the reverb post fader so that means that the relationship between the level of my channel and the level of the reverb is gonna work out you know they're gonna be in the same it's gonna have the same relationship okay everything is gonna stay in balance if I turn down that channel that's because the single is sent to that effects channel track post fader if I bring that pre fader instead it's gonna be the opposite if I bring down my my snare channel I'm still gonna hear the reverb okay so I'm gonna bring that back to post fader now if we talk about the drum instrument bus that we have right here listen to what's going to happen if I bring that one down now we're losing the post-fader reverb send relationship and this is something that you need to be aware of so if you want to tone down the entire drum take and keep that relationship going you're gonna need to bring those two channels down okay so one thing you can do in this case I can just click on quick link select the the drums the drums annals and the effects a channel track and bring them down all together so this is one way you can do it you know if you just want to bring that you know a couple of DB down that's a very quick way to do it or you can just route the outputs of that effects channel track directly into the same drum group as the individual tracks and that also is going to keep that effects and relationship okay so let's just have a quick listen okay now everything is going into the same bus but if you don't want to do that and you want to keep that the effects channels separated from the main drum buss there's no problem with that and nothing wrong about that either just be aware that you'll need to to bring those two channels down in this case if you want to bring the drums lower or higher okay so something you can do is to use the VCA fader which in this case is going to be very useful so I'm going to select those two channels and right click and click on add VCF fader two selected channels and there you go now this way I'm gonna keep the post faders effect send relationship now let's jump on a more complex and more advanced mixing session okay now let's have a quick listen of what we have here [Music] okay let's mute a few things here and just keep the drums for now I have all of my instrument buses here I love to work with instrument buses this is how my mixing template is set up if you want to know more about my mixing template you can click on the link on top or down below I have a free mini course I'm telling you everything you need to know about building mix template and also a free ebook that comes with it and you also have access to my template my routing template that I use in Cubase ok now what I have okay is a bunch of instrument buses that goes into my stereo output okay so all of those buses are going into this stereo out which is my main mix bus basically that then we'll go to the stereo out the main output of Cubase then I have if we look only at the drums I have all of my channels okay my my audio channels you know kick snares hi-hats toms and stuff you know which a lot of those are going to be routed into a specific group like the kick drums and the snares I work with several snares samples the bottom snare top snares same for the kick where I have like an inside mic and outside microphone and maybe some samples those are all going to be routed into that same group where I'm gonna add some processing and stuff most of the time anyways it's gonna happen that I'm gonna do otherwise but in the most part this is how I'm gonna work and same for the overheads when I'm using two microphones to mic the overheads I'm definitely going to route those into a stereo group and this is from those group channels that in the most part I'm gonna add parallel processing reverb you know compression saturation and stuff like that if I want everything that has to do with parallel processing I'm gonna send using those groups in the most parts so one for the kick one for the snare toms overheads and room and then I have all of my effects which are my parallel processing like I have one snare reverb for this and I have like a bunch of parallel compression channels that has some saturation and stuff so I'm not gonna go into this today but just to show you the layout that I have on my template and I also have a drum kit bus which is going to take care of only the drums without the effects I only have one this one that is a parallel compressor for that drum group only now this drum group is gonna stay at Unity point you know the entire mix this is what I usually do I don't touch the level of the fader of that group it's always gonna stay at the same level this one is going straight to the mix drum buss okay all of those effects all those parallel channels also are routed directly into this mix bus so that drum mix bus is kind of my stereo output for drums only or all percussive related instruments everything is going into this bus included the effects the reverbs the parallel processing and so on so let's say I want to automate the level of the drums what I do on my side I'm not gonna touch the drum kit drum buss instead I'm just gonna bring down that main level so if I need to bring down the drums for the first and/or bring it up for a chorus what I'm gonna do is just to work on this one because this one is gonna include everything all of my effects like reverb and stuff so this way I'm gonna keep that post-fader effect send relationship okay and this is something that I'm I always did on my end without even paying attention too much about that issue that could happen so this is how I do so I do this for all instruments everything related to bass is going into this one same for guitars and stuff and that also includes the reverbs and delays for that I that I mix with my guitars also are routed into the guitar mix buss the final mix buss so that gives me two options I can automate this channel and bring it with everything down but I can also and this something that I do a lot like you can see here I will automate the snare and the kick and that also is gonna work because those two channels are the channels where I am sending the signal to those parallel channels parallel processing channels okay so this way if I automate the kick and distantly so if I want to bring the kick and the snare down for reversed and so on and same for overheads and stuff I'm gonna do it from those channels so this way I keep my post fader effects and relationship now if I bring that main drumkit channel down I'm losing that post fader effects and relationship so this is something that you need to be aware of when routing and working with instrument buses I'm a big fan of instrument buses I know that Danny doesn't work with them a lot but he uses a lot of VCA faders which is gonna work great also and that can be actually useful so let's say you know let's say I have like a bunch of other percussion tracks or loops and stuff that I don't want to mess around with that I love the level the way they are and I want to bring only the acoustic drums lower in my mix without touching the level of those tracks that are also going into that main mix bus channel in this case what I would do is to select my main drum kit because this is the channel that I want to lower in this case I would select this one and also all of my parallel channels right click and create a VCF fader that is going to be my option and then I'm can I can automate that channel which is going to lower the level of the full drum mix also [Music] in case oh this is gonna work the same and in this case everything else that is routed into the main mix bus percussions or extra drummer loops are not gonna be touched okay so I would definitely work with a PC a fader in that case so if you want to keep all of your effects routed to the stereo bus there's nothing wrong with that just be aware of this post fader effects and relationship okay that you need that that is going to be affected if you bring down the drum buss I hope that helps and I hope it was not too confusing if you have any comments or questions leave everything down below don't forget to share to like if you enjoyed this video and to subscribe to the channel if you are new here alright my friends until next time take care and see you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 28,859

Keywords: How to MIX with BUSSES, Cubase, Mix with busses, Advanced mixing, Routing, mixdown online, chris selim, Cubase 10, Cubase 10.5, busses

Id: 9dTjWZhJb5Q

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020