Live Q&A with Michael Brauer

foreign [Music] welcome to another pure mix live stream today we're here with the amazing Michael Brower to answer any remaining questions about the brow Rising video and of course everything else about his incredible career so hello Michael and of course Fernando my right hand man hello um yeah you know this was a very complicated method and uh the fact that we spent a lot of time to present this video to you and I think we covered so much of it in different ways as I started seeing some comments or questions to my email on well the first thing was we hadn't actually ever calibrated ABCD so we came back went back in and did that and of course since most of you now have been using it for a while now you're really getting to understand how this tool works it's an engine and so I thought it was important to come back and and just really finalize what some of the questions have been because again it's a complicated system but it really is just a tool it's just an engine and some of these questions that that we've been reading you're you're getting a little bit more focused on the technical than it's supposed to be just you gotta ride certain things and and so you it's a starting point but it's not if you put this exact number in this tone or something you're supposed to get that it's it's supposed to be done with music and again it's just a a process of of allowing you to get more emotional with your mixing so that's how you have to keep it in mind it's just that it's a tool and you use what you like from it and sometimes you may you know want to adapt and change but again it's just a tool so with that in mind uh there's a few things that I I think we can maybe refine or modify or actually you know somewhat maybe we didn't really bring up something that we you know Fernando and I just assumed was actually the the process so first thing is very very important to understand is that as you know this is all about mixing into compression so it's post compression mixing and that starts right from the very beginning The Sound Source going into the folders which back then would have been um as far as back when I started it was the tape machine tape machine going to the desk um and then the you know the fader is going to my ABCD so if you aren't getting the first part of this correct the gain staging into the folders you're going to have issues you're either going to be over compressing or under compressing because again once you get the folders in and then you're you want the faders coming back in a nice sweet spot you don't want to be mixing where the faders all the way at the top or all the way at the bottom you want to be you know nice place right around zero on the fader then you're now feeding into the ABCD and admittedly yes this all seems really complicated but once you set it up right it's just an engine under the hood you don't have to do anything at that point now you're just driving and that's the you have to get passed through that get familiar with with how this engine works and then forget about it or as we say New York forget about it you don't you know just mix right so today we're going to go through a lot of the questions um I'll answer some anything that goes technical I will hand over to Fernando who certainly understands this approach better than anyone on I mean he's you know he's my protege and and he's been mixing this way and he hears he hears certain things and I think sometimes Maybe if I'm saying something he might want to interject and say you know throw his two cents in into all this because it's important that today we try to you know help tweak some of what is going on and on this will probably be the final episode but um I want to spend the next couple hours you know addressing very good questions and and rightly so because again it is it's a different way of mixing it's a different way of hearing but for those who've had the patience and the commitment to do it this way I think you're all seeing really cool benefits that are more emotional that you can express yourself a little bit better and that's what this is about it's just a tool for your creativity and it's one where there's hardly any any limitation to to the options is just a hundred options and it depends on what kind of music you're mixing how you're going to apply certain things right so with that in mind let's get it going awesome all right so here's how we're going to do this today we sent out an email to everybody letting you guys know about the live stream along with the link where you could pre-submit a question so from the pre-submissions we got a whole lot of questions and we paired it down to about 45-ish uh which is a lot of questions um we still want to get to some questions in the live chat as well so everybody in the chat room we see you we're going to get to your questions too but we're going to start the day off with just going through uh sort of Rapid Fire style I think to try and get to as many as we can um with the pre-submitted so our first question comes from Georgios in Athens Greece and he says now that you've moved to a smaller room you find do you find yourself having more fun mixing or do you prefer the sound of a full treated room here well the room that I'm in is probably one of the best mixing rooms I've ever been in um it's small it's probably is against the normal acoustic rules it's a fairly low ceiling it's like seven feet and on but it was my kid's den and I have my big wrecker collection is there there's a cork floor that was there so that they jump they could jump off the couch and not break the head you know so the core floor is there there's a lot of wood and then I put my Awards my my ego part of the room you know which happens to do a lot of nice reflection for the mid-range so it turned into this really great room and I have the freedom of um of being able to do so many things in the mix which we'll get to this other questions regarding that but I love it you know it was never a compromise to me when I went from strictly analog to hybrid and I started learning hybrid um I didn't like it at all and it and Fernando could tell you the frustration I was like a five-year-old sometimes because I just I didn't know I didn't know how to express myself in this new format but I knew it had to be done you know because I mean friends of mine had told me you got to do this Nico bolos Tony Maserati those guys that really helped me so it it all slowly came together and when it did at that moment I was like oh my goodness this is not only as good but actually even bigger even more more depth more width easier to get to that place you know it just takes time it's like anything you know you're learning a new instrument but the philosophy and the method it doesn't change and so it's just a learning a new toy a new way to express yourself if you don't know how to express yourself it hardly matters right um so yeah I love my new room and and I it's in my house I mean I never thought it'd be the day that you know right I mix I go upstairs I can have some lunch you know I can train on my bike I can do whatever I want and go back and mix it's a it's really ideal now no now I'm in the land of everybody else where you're alone you've got a tiny little Studio you know the luxury of of electric lady um is long gone and and even my own Studio after that it's just not necessary for really any of us we can we're you know with with the plugins that are out there now and the acoustical kind of uh material you can get and you've got you've got teams viewer and you've got audio movers right I mean Fernando has been in Fort Lee since beginning of covid he he hasn't been in the same room as me for you know two or three years and there's no problem because we have we're able to communicate constantly he's looking at my screen he can make changes he can do whatever he wants so yeah I love where I am awesome okay um well along for things that are necessary Carrie from Charlotte North Carolina asks is there a need for analog summing that's up to you um I'm not doing any analog summing um while summing we're talking about the final stereo right I mean that's that's the impression and if you do if you do analog summing then it's going to if if I think about recalls or if I think about doing stems right how does that complicate the issue well you either have to recall it um print stems or if you just say don't forget it as long as nothing happens to the unit you can just open the session and technically technically should go back the same way every time and you know the answer to that because you're asking something that's technical when I know that look I you know I probably am in the nerd category but I never think about it that way because it's all it's always about how do I make this an extension of my thinking and my thoughts so for you if you say analog summing uh works for you because there isn't a plug-in that simulates that same feel and that same energy then go for it I'm I'm searching I've been searching and I'm very happy with being able to use software instead of Hardware um at at the last end of the stage but to quickly add to that I still have some analog gear that I love and um what I'll do there is if um it let's see there might be a ear 660 that I love on a vocal so I'll put it across the vocal because I've got a hardware plug-in right I've got some gear I've got minimal although yesterday I pulled out three or four more pieces I was like oh I really miss this piece of gear and I was like I think I'll take this home you know and I'm calling Fernando Hey listen I think I've got like five more things I want to patch in but you know it's now that I've been away from it for two or three years it's kind of like oh this is going to be really cool so um what I'll do there is once I like that sound on the vocal I print it immediately I committed boom done if I use a mxr phaser flanger anything that's a hardware once I like it also a lot of times I'm using my modified la3as on the piano um once I like that what that piano is doing immediately I printed I'll take a picture of it and I'll send it to you know email it to my guys and then they have a record of the setting but um it's very temporary once I like it print it forget it so that we don't have to worry about five songs down well what what was the setting on it or we can't really print it because you know it's it's still in the system so everything is is taken care of in that respect awesome okay next question is from Mike ornsby in Toronto Canada and he says what are your thoughts on immersive music as the possible future in music production uh not merely in remixing Old recordings but as a platform for name music especially with the larger palette that immersive music technology provides well I guess I'll let kind of Fernando jump in on this one too I mean right now I'm going back to old records that I've done whether it was well time out of mind I didn't I didn't do the original it did some of it but some of the records on I'm doing a cold play record right now one of the original ones that I mixed and on it's fun but I have to remix I have to remember how I originally mixed it so it's way more work than you could imagine because I have to remember what I did 25 years ago and um I still have the notes but still I don't have all the gear and all the analog and everything but you know I think immersive is fun I don't I if you're implying you know should it be the source at like the way stereo is look you know what's going on in 2023 I can't imagine what it'll be like 10 years 20 years 30 40 50 years from now so I'm going to say it'll probably be amazing at some point I just don't see any real need for it right now except that it's fun you know it's interactive at times it's very immersive um I like that because when I was mixing in Stereo I was always trying to imagine that I had the sound around me so all those years as I was developing my sound you you can hear the sound going from in front of me to slowly getting into the peripheral of my ears and my my vision so I've always kind of wanted that so by doing immersive it's really cool on headphones as you all know you know the difference between mixing with speakers on the ceiling on the floor on the sides I don't know who's going to be listening to that system there's like .0001 is going to actually be listening to it the rest of us right are listening to it on on special headphones you know or ear pods or whatever to basically you're looking at a stereo that feels just a little bit more immersive you're not hearing something walking up and above behind you unless you have some kind of binaural ears you know IMAX kind of thing going on so who knows who knows what it'll be great for me I don't really um I'm still very big on stereo as the the classic way to be listening but immersive is fun so and and it's still very very early stage 15 10 well I say you know technology moves so fast five years from now they'll come up with something and then suddenly Atmos mixing is insanely cool right but right now it's it's still it's in earliest stages so we're working with what we have but it feels right I mean you're very very limited by by the the things there's a lot of things that you would love and I'm sure that they'll introduce within years a couple years and then the more fun and easier it gets to be and the more the ability to actually have it feel like you've got speakers around you why wouldn't they you know when once that starts happening yeah that'll be even more fun and maybe forget stereo forget stereo's too flat and boring and immersive is going to be great why not I mean look what happened in the last 20 years 10 years five years so look at look down the road it's going to be crazy what you can do you know hopefully I'm still around to be doing some of that because that that's just right up my alley when I'm mixing and I just always hear those things around my head even when there's no music so weird but anyway um well next question yeah the next one um this one I saw it Go by online but I'm just gonna ask it since we're on the atmos topic um he was asking how the Brower has approach uh affects when you're mixing in Atmos what changes or are you using this when you're doing an MS mix we're um that's an interesting question because we're not really doing brow Rising that most because we're again the atmos isn't sophisticated enough yet to be able to do what we're doing um but so what I do is I'll mix first in Stereo or Fernando's obviously mixes you know through the brow rise method and once he's done he'll do all the stems and then he spreads it around there's no the the feeling and the emotion has already been established right so now you're just taking that and you're spreading it around yeah I think I think also this kind of ties to the earlier question where because stereo is still King Atmos is sort of like an afterthought even though you can do some really cool stuff and expand on the emotion you don't really start a mix right now from scratching Atmos I mean maybe somebody does but like it's not really that rule so like you're mixing in Stereo your crafting your building in Stereo and then instead of trying to incorporate something as complex as this into Atmos which it's not quite there yet we print the stems and then we have the big sounds that we've already done and then we can have fun just spray it out in Stereo and to piggyback to the earlier question I think because stereo is still the main thing music production or producers are still thinking in Stereo right there are still crafting songs for stereo because Atmos is just like this deliverable thingy but like Fast Forward 5-10 years if Atmos gets much better and much more immersive in headphones and stuff which I think it will maybe it will shift and then maybe we will be mixing straight into Atmos and then maybe a breakdown of the stereo will just be a random delivery and if we are consuming music in immersive from the get-go and that's like the main then it opens possibilities for music production creation to create in immersive from the get-go so then you are not trying to grab something that was done in Stereo and make it more immersive it's creative in immersive from the beginning from the conception and then that's just gonna like make it so much more like impactful and then I would assume at that point um you can then adapt brow rise to that new system you know you're going to have somebody's going to come up with it maybe it'll be me um of how to now do brow rise be you know instead of just a b c d we're looking at a 0.1.2.3 3.1.1.3 right because again what's the point of this this system this system is just makes things more Dynamic and more emotional right that's why I started to begin with so why wouldn't you want to continue that it's just you have to learn technically how to adapt to a new format well I've been doing that since analog right I did it you know with the help of Fernando you know we went from uh just strictly analog to a hybrid and then from hybrid to strictly in the in the Box so it it's it's there to you know to be modifying and to mold into something new um because it's about the the feel about how you're going to express yourself and as the formats change then you just evolve it's a it's a system that is open to being evolved and modified awesome all right uh next question this is from Stephen Kettner in Houston Texas and he says do you keep a b c d e faders at zero or do you automate them as well and does most of your automation happen at the VCA level or do you write your automation more at the fader levels we keep ABCD at zero there's no writing happening on ABCD with the vcas the writing happens at the top level on the folders and those faders and with the VCA is really more like a global trim like if if in a mixed revision they want all the drums to come down in the bridge instead of doing it individually I'll just go to a drum BCA and trim the whole thing down but like the actual writing it happens at the folder level and probably some of you are going to go yeah but if you bring down the VCA there's less compression going on that's true but it's very slight and generally if anything it's going to make it feel even better as you bring the level down not to say that you should always bring the level down and begin with but but it's not an issue it's it's not it it's not going to have a Sonic uh negative you know to it yeah you know it's it's going to sound good but globally it's the easiest thing to do and it's quick and we haven't found anything that that didn't work by just simply Bringing Down the uh the global levels of the vcas and sometimes if it's a vocal you know you want more vocal you just bring globally you can just bring the vcas up a little bit on yeah basically don't overthink it if you've mixed it and it feels good and there's a mixed revision and you got to bring down a couple of DBS don't go crazy thinking I always gonna happen to a compression yeah just bring just do a mix now bring down two days I mean it's again do not overthink this whole process is about using your energy and and your emotion do not think when you're mixing and that continues all the way to the end where you're just feeling things so you bring down the the drums and you go ah it feels good okay don't don't over analyze yeah but but this and but that but what who cares does it sound good yes okay you're done move on right right it's easy to um sort of mistake the the whole template that you've set up it's it's easy to get lost in the weeds of all of that because it seems like something that's very heady and very you know based around all of that but at the root of it it's still following you know what you're wanting to hear come out of the speakers and and not getting lost and all of that stuff yeah it's it's a tool to help you express yourself [Music] um and it's it's a tool that is literally like under the hood right you're not driving with you're not driving underneath the hood you're not driving the engine you're driving the car yeah yeah it's like a counter-intuitive thing to say like don't think about it too much when there's so much going on in the routing and all of that but the point is though yeah well set up right learn the new tool until you don't have to think about it it's no different than learning any instrument you know you're learning the instrument you're figuring it out you can't quite express yourself because you don't know how to execute your ideas but once you learn that then you don't have to think about it anymore and you just perform that's what this tool does it allows you to perform to your utmost creativity awesome okay so next question is from Simon and seal and he says uh do you ever choose to send base di or base amtraks to the low or high base buses separately if so why or do you always get a blend you like and just send that to both I mean I can answer that but Fernando says it better than me um or not I didn't catch uh we just do a blend um most of the time we just get a Bass track maybe a producer have already like made a blend on the recording that he likes we love to keep that if we do get like a d like a Di and an amp or something I'll usually just comp them together uh one sound and that one sound will get split into uh the the high and the low base and you know and when he when he says cop I mean it might just stay in the folder right and it'll be direct and if I wanted more amp and Less Direct I can easily do that because it's right there in the folder but I don't want to separate that too much I don't want an isolation I want to blend that bass the bass and the kick needs to be one sound now is there going to be an exception yes and when that exception happens go for it do what you want to do to make it sound right for the song but the starting point is generally just to keep the blend together okay next questions from Greg kozik and Calgary uh Canada and he says hi Michael would you be able to describe or share a simplified or stripped down version of a template using only the most essential brow Rising thanks in advance so Fernando and I thought about this and I think the absolute basic let's start with ABCD yep a b c d you know you see a lot of slate stuff going on First and that's because now that I'm in the Box I found the joy I know what an SSL sounds like a Neve sounds like a trident sounds like a Helios sounds like and I was like wow I can do that right that's what I did so um you can eliminate all of that you still have to have your basic EQ and compressor on a and then your compressor on B and and oh compressor on EQ on B and then your compressor on C and then your stuff on D but um if you just want to illuminate all that you can and maybe just put an SSL strip on there so it still sounds like the console right yep you can remove all of that with all the the sends I mean I have different reverbs don't you want to have options to to use short reverbs long reverbs I mean that's what you do anyway right in whatever setup you have so pick pick the three reverbs you love the most the the 1176 is a must that is very important part so you must have the two 1176s that are on the on the Panner you know left and right Panner uh that's that um that's I mean that's the basic now for vocal return well the vocal return again you're making a vocal you're compiling a vocal sound so if you can do it in three or four Do It um but they're all they're all digital plugins I mean what's another two or three um but again I think that would be as simple as we can get and then as far as a stereo bus um again I I love I love my germaniums I mean that's been part of my sound for many years on so and I'm mixing into that as I'm hearing it that way right from the get-go it's not like I pop it in later um and I'm emulating my my SSL console so the first thing that is in the chain is the SSL compressor and the new one is really really good right the the actual SSL compressor yeah it's the new version Don't Buy SSL bias is really good the only thing it doesn't have in there is a is it a wet dry I think it does have I would try but does it have a a side chain link uh yes okay so there's something that the plug-in Alliance that's the one I usually use right uh uad oh uad they're really really close and sometimes I just go between the two and I go oh I said cell sounds better on this song oh uad that's been my default that sounds better try it you know but I but it says still it's got an SSL thing going on it followed by the germaniums and then leave it at that you know or try without the germaniums I mean that's up to you and your style and what what kind of music are you doing right maybe the germaniums isn't quite appropriate um that answers it right yeah yeah that's right next one and I have a question about the germaniums uh this is from Mikel in Copenhagen and um I kind of want to read this one with like the angry commenter voice all right hey Michael I played around with your template I've mixed Everything You Shook I'm mixing the box for years and I've always routed the audio tracks to auxes and inserted some kind of SSL Channel strip so I got the console feeling now I use routing folders like your template therefore it was kind of easy for me to incorporate your thing so I could try it out I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out how your use of the Chandler germanium on stereo bus Works uh I think it compresses a bit much I use your mid bottom settings the SSL before is barely moving uh but when I'm around -9 the Chandler is usually compressing around 10 DB uh even with the dry net wet knob set around zero I think it chokes the transient a bit too much I've tweaked it um there's there's a little bit more but basically you feel yeah too much so we're both going to jump in on this one I what I've discovered over the years the sweet spot for the germaniums with a setup that I have right with the I think it's at two o'clock or something one o'clock with a wet dry right blend at 12 when that meter's looking at 12 o'clock straight up that feels great that just feels great you know a lot you go up to the right it starts doing more it doesn't sound so good to the left doesn't sound as good right up the Middle with the settings that I have now I have three different um settings for the germaniums there's the regular bottom which has way too much bottom um and then the mid bottom which matches much closer what I had in the analog world and then less bottom where and again it's a matter of playing with the feed and the feedback and the output and the feedback and the output and sometimes so if you got like a heavy bottom the less bottom uh setting works even you know works better it just makes it it just feels right um but when you're saying that if there's over compression he and I were thinking about that I was like we don't we don't notice that um so what's going on and you're saying there's hardly anything going on the SSL we usually have the ssls working around two or three DB so it's taming it down a little bit before it gets the germanium yep um and there's no sound of like oh it's over compressed so maybe what's going on is that you haven't been playing with sub Master 8 right that's the one that where you want to see how everything is is hitting a b c d because maybe what you're thinking is the germanium is the one that is at fault when really it's the combination of of ABCD that is just pushing a little too hard and it's it's doing this and it's not playing it's not giving right the whole thing about ABCD it's a playful thing when you're mixing it it goes in then it comes out and you know we've spent a lot of time on the video portion to just to explain how that feels should be so maybe I mean there isn't a time when I don't go to eight at some point in the mix drop it down a little bit to the point where it's it goes flat on me and then maybe go up a little higher and I just kind of Zone in and Zone in on your oh this feels great and then I look over and see is that where I started or is that where I am now and because again every stage that you're mixing into compression right every stage so so right from the beginning of how you're feeding the folders to how you're you're riding everything in a b c d which then goes into the stereo bus um all has a bit of an effect and yes it's going to take a little time but once once you hear that you hear it you feel it immediately and so you know exactly where to go yeah and it's going to take time you have to have patience it's not like it's the traditional approach and like anything else you just got to give it time and learn what would you say about that as far as the yeah just to clarify a couple of points um when he's saying VCA 8 just know that it's the VCA Master it's basically the one fader that we have assigned that controls all the the folders at the top so when he's moving that VCA master all the volumes of the tracks up top are shifting together and those are before the ABCD so with that one fader he can really go in detail and find like write The Sweet Spot of a b c d right um another thing when he's saying the meter on the germaniums The Sweet Spot is around 12 o'clock that is 10 which is where the question is is going that is where we find sounds the best so if you have our settings if you have the wet and dry so it's not choking up being at 10 at least we don't find or we don't agree that it's choking any transients or anything so that's what lets us to say if that's what you're thinking maybe the root of the problem is at further down yes um it might be all the way down to what's feeding the folders exactly and if you have everything fed correctly and everything's happy and you still feel like it's a germanium then I it's it's just objective you're entitled to your opinion yeah yeah awesome cool thanks for that question uh next one is from uh Jesse gay in Portland and he asks how if at all with the Brower brow Rising workflow be adjusted for electronic music can you point to specific tracks or mixers who incorporate these techniques in these genres thanks well the whole method was designed to work with any approach so um it's not just electronic music it's anything and everything um and so you know you want an example or technically well what does that you know what would you change for electronic music hey you got to play with it I mean generally um I mean maybe it's it's changing what's going on across B you know I have usually the distressor um and then the eqs and a couple other things and but Fernando came up when he was doing more of kind of urbany stuff he came up with a different patch which I think that's included isn't it in the template your your approaching my Approach and so there might be even a third approach where if you use a different type of compressor and a different type of EQ with a different curve it'll work perfectly for for electronic music you experiment that's why that's why it's there that's why it's not in one box where you only have choice of one button you can you could dig in or leave it alone so play with it C start off with B right because B has got the drums and the bass and the percussion so in that respect I think that's going to have the biggest impact on your bottom end and if you find something that's absolutely killer then you will write us and you will send us the settings and then you know Fernando will go thank you you know I mean look at all I'm giving you give me some of your stuff right yeah I mean I I've done it it works great because at the end of the day the tool is is to create that emotion and that movement and that works on on any type of music so if you just experiment with changing some of the uh of the plugins like Michael's saying uh maybe uh trying like a Shadow Hills on b or or maybe instead of the pool Techni you go with a more modern EQ maybe like a like a Mac EQ with that top end or you add some like ozone imager to open those sins um it works really great uh it's not genre genre dependent and that would be across a yeah because that's where you have the sense right right so you know remember what's going on if it's all about this since then play with a right see what you can add maybe instead of replacing maybe what you can add just like Fernando said maybe add an imager if it's guitars if it's you know if there's some kind of it's in the guitar range kind of stuff going on um and you want something different play with c and you know and I mean that's why they're there right I'm giving you a starting point what I've got works on many styles but music is changing all the time you know I've changed the ABCD has gone through different Generations right I mean somebody was asking me or mentioning the uh the Joe Meek right Joe Meek was my guitar sound for years that that has a shimmering and you would never want to look at the meter because a meter was like practically slammed and that it was only when it got to a certain point maybe an inch from from all the way to the left that the music would the guitars would just to this shimmering thing and and I can answer that the question was do you ever use that in mono or or um multi stereo I don't ever remember the Joe Meek 1.05 having an option I had one meter in the middle and it controlled both sides I don't remember a button in the back that said um well I don't remember if there is one it would be multi-mono let me put it that way but I don't remember that it actually had that option so that now I answered that question really fast and sorry I I didn't get the username of the person that asked that but that was the question uh for the Joe Meek SC2 user okay so our next question is from Roberto uh in France and he says hi Michael and Fernando how are you doing I'd love to know about Fernando since he is a meticulous wonderful Dude you have a fan thank you thank you uh when he was making the available plug-in emulations match the hardware did uh I'll talk about you like you're in the room did you do it all the all by ear and a buttload of patience or did he ever or did you ever enter the world of plug-in doctor and graphs um well look looking at those and he says I know Michael's rolling his eyes right now stop at Brower uh Mercy um I I know with being next to Michael I I am rolled more into like a very technical role because he's not too technical but compared to other people who are very technical I'm not too technical either so I don't know what the hell is plug-in doctor uh I I couldn't open the um diagrams or the electronics for the gear because I wouldn't understand them right I'm not a tech I don't know how to fix gear or anything like that so the thing that I relied on when I was doing that were just my ears because I mean I know I have good ears and they're trained and developed so I trust them um the more the most uh technique thing that I did would be like if I was trying to emulate a piece of gear uh that I know it's used on the vocal maybe I would like put a vocal through that and like uh see like an analyzer to see like how that piece of gear was affected in certain frequencies and then I would put it through the emulation that I was working and then compare those graphs um to see like where maybe I was lacking or I was too high that's like the most you know um technical thing that I did and and it did help it definitely did help but uh 85 percent of the work was done literally just by years uh a bud load of patients like you put it hundreds of tries not hundreds but a lot of tries and just comparing comparing comparing tweaking tweaking tweaking until it it felt good and and then every time he would be at a point where he's like happy then he would bring it in right that's he'd say okay listen to this and so I'd put up a track and I'd listen and um if I had comments I would say okay you know I like this but tweak that this I'm not feeling so the fact that let's say he had been a total tech nerd and had it on graphs and stuff it means nothing to me because I could just as easily go yeah I don't it doesn't feel right and he goes yeah but it looks right you know I mean that would Fernando would never say that but he has a happy balance between Technical and musical because he knows how it should feel and that's from years of you know of my mentoring him and and him listening every day to what I'm doing um so I think that uh for the most part could have been the doc the sound doctor or something could it have sped any of the process up it might have given you a bit of a quicker starting point but we were already we already knew what we were looking for and what we wanted to hear right so um this is a process that worked for us and it worked really really well because you know going back and forth trying the ideas and saying okay I don't like this I like this why am I saying I don't like this it's like because that doesn't quite feel right to me yet it doesn't feel right it doesn't that's always was everything was based on well how does it remind me of what I was doing in the hardware world no go back and keep going Miron and hopefully maybe you know four or five months later a new plug-in would would come out that's an emulation of you know another variation of a particular Hardware that I was using he would try that and he'd come in and go here try listen to this I'm like oh I love that what did you do whatever you did we're good okay now maybe let's just tweak that right and we're like super happy because again all I want to do is just continue whether it's in a laptop or it's on a desk or it's in a hybrid I just want to keep feeling that certain energy and that certain playfulness um that I was getting in the analog world which I have to say um from what we've been doing in the digital world is actually more Dynamic warmer deeper wider it's crazy I trust me I was all I was hoping for was at least the same there was no way I was going to be 10 less than what I I was loving so I was all I was aiming for was it has to be feeling as good it didn't take long before I'm going wow it feels even better so that was the bonus I was not expecting that I was maybe wishing it but not expecting it yeah basically I approached I approached a very technical process from a musical standpoint instead of approaching a technical thing from a technical standpoint and trying to conform it into musicality later exactly because that's not going to work you know and some of the questions that we've been reading you're a little too hung up on the technical side and not using enough of your Musical part of your head so um what will address those so I think that that answered that question awesome um you had a positive comment in the live chat there they said Fernando you hit it on the head we as Engineers have to listen and stop looking at our music who cares what it looks like music has to sound good 100 percent who would have thought yeah you're sending the artist back the mix as a as a wave file they're not seeing what the hell you did in your session they don't care yeah does it sound good or not right does it feel good or not yeah and feeling and sound of course awesome okay um there was a question in the lab chat if we're taking only questions from the pure mix Pro members or uh from the live chat as well right now we're doing the pre-submitted questions that happen from the pro-mix members or Pro members on pyramix and then we're going to be transitioning into the live tune your q a and we're trying to go through this as fast as possible yes to so many questions all right next all right uh we're on 12. let's keep going okay all right this one's from Ivan uh in Santiago he says how can you get instrument signal levels at -18 dbfs to work with analog gear and plug-in emulations have your faders around unity and have the right instrument balances okay um I think you may be misunderstood because the minus 18 thing that's just like for the calibration of like the ABCD you're you're not trying to mix with your instruments at -18 right so the minus 18 is just so that you have your bosses calibrated the right way but then just mix into them and it's all about the feel it's about hitting them in The Sweet Spot the so they're not like either over compressing and squashing it or under compressing and not doing enough is about that you know that push and that and that pushback so don't try to go with like numbers or where to put your your faders just just just mix yeah just mix yeah okay cool unless you want to add something more well just um you know if somebody had the faders at zero on it I mean it's literally just bring them up until it feels good that's right that's the point that's it zero being down yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah infinite down yeah earlier when I was talking about it's nice when a fader is at zero it's like the number zero you know there's like minus 10 minus five zero plus six at least on on this one it's not like zero is like three quarters of the way up it's not like zero V U or anything yeah yeah okay all right uh next question is from Liam hickey in Liverpool and he says I found gain station to or I found gain staging to zero on Vu best for my vocals do you gain stage into each compressor when brow Rising uh kind of in the same vein of the last question well yes the the calibration for the buses is set we have the video so yes we do calibrate them when we browerize uh in regards of the vocal um actually we have a the template up here I'm just gonna show it for a sec because this question made us think that yeah we explained what we did with the vocal very extensively on the video we just didn't quite show the calibration um well we said the calibration should be at it should be plus one calibration and then you should make sure that the return no matter what comes back should all be at the same level but this needs to be done with a vocal it doesn't work with a with a tone especially if you if you put it at 1K forget about it it's not going to work I mean the closest thing when Fernando was trying to do that we said I said I don't remember us doing tone he goes well in one case like all your all your compressors are like way off they're all jamming I'm like that's not possible I would have heard that I mean and he goes and then if I I said well let's just do the vocal and as soon as we put the vocal up all the calibrations we had done was perfect it was right around One DB because because a vocal isn't at 1K a vocal is a full Dynamic voice a big round sound of low end mid-range and you know fair about you know upper mid range and so the com combination of that is what's triggering the compressor so to try to just use one in the in respect to making the vocal sound um you need to use a vocal that what I did have Fernando try is okay 1K definitely would not work try a hundred Hertz you know and so he tried 100 Hertz and it was a little bit more in the ballpark but what I'm telling you is don't use frequency use a vocal yep it's a vocal return compressor use a vocal and then look at all the compressors now some of them aren't supposed to do one DB right because the nuke the nuke on the on the distressor is supposed to go crazy the um 1176 with the ratios and it's supposed to go crazy and the um the valve one the I mean that one is no the rest are kind of like in life okay the line but there's a couple that are strictly for the feeling of urgency or the feeling of saturation um so there's no that's not going to sound right if you do it Plus One DB it's a whole other animal it's not even acting right right that's that's its purpose um and then they all have to return so so that the vocal sounds the same level when you go through all of them now having said that and Fernando reminding me is I said you don't put all those faders up and then you mix with that blend together I'm saying when you're calibrating you want to be able to go between one fader and the you know one sound and the other and not have one too low and one too loud because you might go oh that one sounds better because it's louder once the initial calibration then you leave it alone then you put them all down and then you build according to the which one sounds the best to begin with and then the other ones are usually you know depending if you want to use all them or usually 5 to 60 bead lower you know I for a long time I was starting with it with a t TLA that was I love that sound and then I would build the chest and the head and the throaty and you know the urgency if I needed around that one but they didn't all go at zero because then you obliterate the main sounding one so they'd all be like maybe five or ten DB low or maybe even less because all I do is I'm bringing up the other ones to see how it can complement the main one right and then I started listening to I think I put in the Presto that that Devin uh what's his company's uh Powers yeah um he he emulated the Presto that he and I I think we were the only two in the country that had those and we loved them and so he he sampled that one modeled it and I started using the Presto first and I just fell in love with the Presto and so now the other ones are subordinate to it um they complement the presto it's what you're doing it's whatever kind of record you're making that's why you want to try all of the other ones right yeah yeah so to summarize it the the ABCD has a very specific tone calibration process in the low end the mid-range the high end and then you said you don't forget it when you're calibrating the the vocal compressors put in a vocal any vocal you like um just to make it easy just grab like one phrase of the vocal that you Loop so it's the same uh the same impact impact on all the compressors set up your compressors send that vocal put your fader like where you would normally mix a vocal right like don't put it too low too high like usually where you would sit it and then you tweak your your compression so that each compressor is doing like 1 DB um if you're if you're doing like something like Widow with like the blue stripe and the stressor those are like you know more you know wacky because they're doing a specific thing and then you have all your faders at zero uh you match the gain in the plug-in if you need to and then uh you mute all of them and then that's where he was saying when you compare one to the other you're you're hearing their returns be the same so you can decide which one you like better or maybe you want to try a different plugin once you've built your different compressors then faders down and when you're mixing you build your vocal tone based on which compressors uh work better for that genre and you're gonna find as I have that on the next song you start with that default you make that default right and you can you can write different defaults it could be like a pop default on Urban default rap default who knows but you know I find that that when I've got one that I really like and maybe it's just because I'm going through something different I'm like you know this is I just love this new sound right and that's what's so great about it it's like you just come up with these great cool combinations and then the next song that same default I request I go okay you know Alex and this is my new default okay okay and so the next time I I mix a song that's going to be my my new setup like now lately it's been to presto as the top dog and then the other ones are support and sometimes I go I don't need those other ones I'll just turn them off it's it's they're there to complement the the motion the sometimes the sensitivity or other times the anger or other times the urgency or other times the aggression of a vocal that sometimes isn't quite there when it was recorded but it you know they were singing it but it just didn't come across so you start adding some of the throat and some of the urgency to it and you get this big fat beautiful vocal that is just very powerful but it's not banging the meter yeah all right next question so yeah if you guys want to see an example of Michael doing that uh there was a question in the in the chat too about what video we're talking about so Michael has a video explaining this entire template that's on pyramix um you can head over to puremix.com and see the video you go through and you mix a song at the end of it and this one in particular is episode five yeah right episode five is talks all about the vocal and and I you know we looked at it today and was like oh you know what we didn't say it should the calibration be done with the vocal so at some point you will see a little subtitle goes use vocal for calibration probably in that voice yeah definitely okay cool um so I'm gonna go past the game staging thing um okay so this one's from Harry and Vienna and he says what are your personal biggest struggles in the current music industry well that's a good question but I can tell you that that's been an ongoing uh challenge for me since the beginning I've always been I've always felt like I've been struggling because I've never stayed in the safe zone for very long right if I succeed at something and I I really am doing well and then I have the luxury of course to to show it off by mixing a record that really um brings out whatever style I was working at right because I'll I usually spend five to six years on a particular style of music and then I'm like okay this is great and now I'm like a bit too comfortable in this you know I'm already being pigeonholed as now the r b mixer right because I was starting with Luther and Aretha and James Brown and I'm like okay well it's time to move on now and so I would say well what do I want to do next and then I would spend a you know I would spend a good six eight months thinking about what would I like to do next and then when I would decide it usually happened over Christmas I said okay now I'm going to start moving towards a new style of music and then I would slowly start changing my go-to's you know it's always going to have to be a go-to the the changes are going to be the drums the vocal sound the base those are the usually something you know what's down in the root and what's down at the top you're going to have to change that and I was you know at the time I don't know where I was I was I wanted to go more towards r b rock right which eventually moved towards my doing the stones so I would just start changing and whenever it was appropriate I if I was mixing a record or a song that allowed me to not use my go-to's you know I'd be really scared I mean like oh it's so easy just to do this and I go yeah but that's not going to work that's not going to get you the phone call you need to really just think differently and of course I'm always you know I got two three four people talking to me when I mix it you know try this try that don't be scared you know I am scared you know and so then I would start doing that and I'd have to prove myself all over again right labels will go well you know you're you're an r b well no actually I'm a record mixer [ __ ] you know I can do other things but I would spend a long time and eventually I would get that break of that kind of record and I would do more of those and then I'd be getting to be known and my my changing of approach um would work for that different style of music and then you know I'd get to that Pinnacle where I go this is great I'm getting really comfortable again I'm going to enjoy that for maybe another four or five months and then I'm gonna get scared again like where do I want to go next because I'm a record mixer I want to be able to mix all styles you know that's my joy and then and I start thinking and then like I remember the one when it was Indie music you know and I was like God I really really want to do grizzly bear I really want to do Twin Shadows they would never call me you know with the records that they're hearing that I'm doing they would never call me right I was like well what do I have to do you know and and I'm start thinking you know am I listening to other music yeah I would be listening to what they had done and I started analyzing well how do I adapt what I do to that what what is the problem right now with what I'm doing that would not that would be objective to um to maybe an indie wreck okay well the sound of the drums that's got to change the vocal definitely has got to change where in the song yeah the guitars there has to be more it's a different image okay so I slowly would start thinking about that in time I wasn't like okay I got myself a week I got to change my whole life around I was just like slowly months and months versus am I thinking about what am I going to do next and then I'm going to do and then you know then I gotta hope that these guys would be interested I mean I had a good manager I've always had a good manager who could help me at least make the introduction and then sometimes what do you do you mix something for free for somebody and if you want to move on it's like who cares it's it's you know you have to commit and try and and con you know and people want to hear what you're doing just because I'm good at this they don't like that kind of style of music well what if I show you what I can do and it's on me here let me do one song you like it fine then we make a deal um that's how you start you know when you're trying to break into a new approach so and then I'd have to you know and then I have to prove it all over again to the labels right so for me it's always been a struggle but more more recently now going completely in the Box um has been just accelerating I mean it there's just so many more things I can do now but moving towards Atmos uh just discovering new approaches um you know maybe not as well sonically yes but but jumping into more of what this world is about and again it's it's a you know it's a struggle and then also you know once you get that that title of Legend it's it could be a kiss of death because they're like oh he's a legend he's an old guy you know I was like who wants I mean there's always something to battle in the struggle but I I don't care I still love what I do I love to mix a good song so I'm always searching for a great song and you know it can be with an unsigned band it can be with a label um but for me I always feel like I'm struggling which I think is a good thing because I always feel vulnerable I always feel a bit nervous um I've always feels like I could just gotta nail it I mean I've always felt I gotta nail it when I wake up in the morning I'm gonna blow mines that's what I do every day that's in my mind it's not in mind I don't feel so good maybe I'll just do an average mix nobody will nobody will call you know notice I mean look at all my gold records and my silver oh and my Grammys nobody's going to notice that's [ __ ] you don't mix it well it sucks and you're not doing you know you're doing a major disservice to the artist so every day has to be great so for me I'm always struggling you know that's the long and short of it uh nothing changes it's a great answer awesome all right um there's a computer setup question and I was thinking it'd actually be pretty fun to talk about your travel rig that you brought today okay too with us uh so uh this is from Ben in Germany and he says the walkthrough of your Pro Tools template is extremely detailed but you must need a lot of processing power to run it what is the hardware that you use to smoothly run your fully in the Box setup so we have a Mac Pro trash can maxed out we've had it for a few years now we're definitely gonna be transitioning I would say in like the near meet near future to one of the newer M1 M2 um you know just waiting for Pro Tools to be rolled out I know they're in beta right now and and all the plugins we like to be to be native and then we'll probably do that but right now we're running our trusty trash can we have three produce HDX cards we have three uad octo cards so we're running 24 chips um pretty much it I mean the Orion converter um the faders but in terms of computer processing power that that's it yeah yeah awesome um and then you mentioned this travel rig um this was great it was a point where when I when I moved out of the city and basically I just moved up to the country in my house I was like oh this is cool but then so I'm thinking well now I don't have this huge albatross around my neck I don't have six double-sided you know power eating analog I can do it all in the box and I'm thinking you know what I'd love to do I'd love to do what Tony does I mean Tony would tell me he goes yeah you know I'm on the plane I'm mixing a song you know and then I go there and then I don't know if he was working with Beyonce or one of the great artists you know and I get off the plane I go to their house we tweak it and then I get back on the plane and then I go back to the studio and I'll open it up into some of the analog stuff but it's all there and I can travel and I remember him saying that like I don't know five six years and I was I was just like oh that's not possible you know you can do that you know and then so I want to move it up to the country I'm thinking okay the other thing that I started doing is I used to have a racing team many years ago and then I started training again and full time because I'm I'm about to be country now and up up in the mountains and so I thought okay um if I'm going to be training if I want to travel if I'm going to be training in Colorado or you know Tucson or somewhere and I'm going to be doing a two-week block and I've got stuff to mix I should be able to mix anywhere I want in the world and I thought how cool would that be I could be just like Tony you know and all the other guys you know literally all the other guys but Tony's the one that always refer to and so I said Fernando one day hey I want a travel gig rig man I want to be able to and I gotta have some faders I gotta have my faders I'll I'll take one bucket if you can fit in two buckets it'd be great but I need at least one bucket fully loaded Mac uh keyboard and then of course I won't have speakers so I needed some great headphones which at the time we we hadn't really found but now we do it's the old Desi um mm-500 oh Manny Manny nailed this I mean really literally the first time I can put those headphones on mix my record and and it's like wow sounds great it sounds great I mean everybody's ears are a little bit different so headphones different headphones for different folks but I love those Fernando has them he loves them I got a pair from my son he loves them um so we're all you know big big fans of that and so now I could go anywhere I'm not going to be disturbing anybody and I can mix I can train during the day I can mix in the evening or train in the evening mix in the day on and I'm I'm I'm so happy because I've got the best of both worlds so that that's how that started and it's in one of those what's those cases a Pelican case um it ships really easily it's under 50 pounds um and I have my two uad satellites and I got my Dock Of course I have to always remember to bring my eye lock from my main rig um and then I've got the lion uh monitor right uh it's black lion Revolution 2x2 thank you interface right and I'm set it's like that's what I love about technology I mean the idea that I'm free to just go anywhere that's just the best feeling in the world I just can't ex and the fact that I learn how to mix all in the box now so I mean I I feel good I feel I feel better in the box and I would back on an analog desk um I think just because some of the limitations and they're great again maybe putting going back on my SSL at at electric lady I would I would get a sound that I oh my God that's such a great sound but the records I'm making they sound really really good so I don't feel compromised at all um it's a new world for me you know by moving into this but it gives me the freedom and yeah and I couldn't be happy and then I'd go anywhere in the world and I can still have access to Allison you know or Fernando they can still jump in on TeamViewer if I need their help because you know something goes wrong I'm like I don't know what I'm doing you know I mean it's just I don't know what's going on in the engine you know I have to call them that's just the way it is I mean I slowly am learning and getting better but I don't know I'm no rocket scientist for that next question awesome okay next one is from Alexis uh charrier and they ask except for the multibus do you have do you also compress on each track individually uh and then separately about Reverb and effects do you use separate reverbs for each family of instruments or do they all get the same auxes because I think it messes with the separation that the multibus concept creates question mark um all right first of all yeah I'll I'll put plugins across the tracks I mean I'm getting a sound it's not like as if everything has to be um untouched until it gets to the ABCD there's no rules here this is It's a starting point you know and and I have certain plugins that I love there's certain eqs that I'm ready to go with you know I mean I start off with SSL on 9000 across every channel but there are times where I've got Mike hitsville that I'd like you know on my kick and my snare um I've got certain things already as a starting point on my base I've got certain Port starting points on my vocal before it gets to um you know the next stage of of the returns and then um okay and then as far as reverbs what was the question on the reverbs it was um do you remember what it was yeah yeah he'll answer it okay [Music] um no we don't separate the reverbs by instrument family we just have you know the six seven reverbs that that Michael likes and he can access them from anything though the guitar maybe using the same uh Reverb as the vocal as the snare it's a glue factor and then and when you say yeah but that seems to go against what you first created no it it isn't there isn't that kind of Separation they all work together there's Independence between each other but that doesn't mean that there isn't cross pollination going on in between it's music They're all playing together they're all they're all playing in the same room I just if you imagine okay me and the drummer I mean the drummer and the bass player I was the drummer whatever we're playing okay we got a nice Groove going all right and the guitar starts playing really loud and the vocals starts screaming loud it's not going to affect the groove we have but we're still playing together so the vocal can scream all they want and it's not going to affect the processing that has me and the bass player getting a nice Groove do you ever get that thing where you you start off with the with the drums and bass and and it feels really really good you've got you've got your compressor across all of that and then you start adding another thing and then the compressor starts to work a little too hard and then you add more and then eventually that cool sound you had going in the drums and bass kind of disappeared well with the whole ABCD you're not going to have that because there's Independence but they're working together so the Reverb should be you don't want to hear it you don't want to make it sound like the guitar came in from you know Oklahoma and just called their part in I mean you want you want the glue right you want everybody working together so the Reverb should be shared next question awesome uh this kind of goes back to the one that we just did but there might be something interesting in here this is from uh my beard is bigger than yours uh how do you reinvent yourself and stay relevant every year uh which you kind of answered before but I kind of answered that it just never stay in the safety zone for for you know for too long yeah I liked a couple other parts of this so do you practice as telling me Maserati says um do you do anything for practice outside of like regular just mixing practicing like what leg mixing you know do I practice mixing yeah yeah well I'm mixing right I I'm no yeah experimenting on a new idea I might sit down and try something new but otherwise I'm experimenting with a song that's appropriate for the ideas I'm trying to get yeah awesome uh do you study the competition no and do you think you're done learning well that's a dumb ass question yeah I think you already know that I I I mean that respectfully I mean to me that is just like how can you say I've stopped learning I mean once you once you think you can stop learning then you know that little sand timer is officially turned over and you can watch your career you know and your creativity just going down down down grain by grain I am if you're if a point if your point where it's like I don't need to be learning anymore then you're probably sick of what you're doing you've probably become pretty jaded and you don't care anymore right I love mixing I love a good song music is always evolving both from a musical standpoint and Technical technological standpoint right so here I am I'm all in the Box I think I'm still current technically and from a musical standpoint I'm always going after new artists I'm always making myself available to those who are not um signed to a big label and I'm still having a lot of fun so um the idea of first of all I am always curious I've always been curious so I it's not in me to say I don't need to I I'm not I don't want to learn anymore if that if that day comes then I'm done I'm saying I'm gonna say goodbye and I love what I did I'm on to something else right but um I I just can't imagine being in that position where I'm like I don't need it anymore I mean that's just not me that's not my character that's a great answer to a question you didn't like that was a really good answer to it okay awesome uh this is from David London and he says what is it about any Reverb character or quality that you seek and consider to be good for any particular Sound Source so how do you choose Reverb oh foreign asking technical questions I mean I mean I don't even I have six different reverbs going on I have a short I have a medium I have a long I have ethereal ones and then on and those return right the sins and I've got the five or six returns along with those returns that maybe maybe one is my altiverb well I've got four different ones that I've gotten to really love that are now uh bypassed or disabled and depending on the record I'm doing I'm like oh I would love to hear that Sunset you know like Ross Hogarth did some presets you know for the sunset oh my God I love that plate and I I just specifically use you know his or maybe you know there's the Motown Reverb like oh my God that's so perfect for what I'm doing and you know so they're there they're already there but you know they're bypassing I just undo and I go to that one and for that record I've got the Motown played or I've got some other plate for me it's fun it's really fun I don't I don't think about much more than well what would be cool for this record is it a short plate is it a chamber is it a room you know is it something weird you know so that's how I determine is what's what's appropriate for the record there's records where what I'm getting has already got everything it needs I don't need to be adding Reverb and and delays and stuff because they kind of they already did it and it's right and there's other records that just you don't even turn on any reverse because it's not going to be you're not going to get your depths from Reverb you're going to get your deaths from different forms of compression or what Chad Blake is the king of how he uses his Distortion then Distortion he can just put it maybe some he'll use delays to to create that kind of depth and stuff but he does different forms of saturation and he's not using any verbs on some records you know and you're just you're like oh my God that's so mind-blowing because it's it's perfect so he's one of my favorite I mean he's just the bomb all right next next question is from artem and bitumi Georgia uh if a song is good but you don't feel connected to it or connected to it do you always say no if not what's your approach to this I was thinking about that question what did I say on that one when we were thinking about that I was I was like well if I'm not connected to it then in my mind it's not good I I don't know how Associates like I like it or I don't like it is it good but I don't feel like I can do it well that's not gonna happen um if it's good to me then it means that I can connect to it so that's the only way I can answer that question do you when you're choosing projects do you ever turn ones down that you don't feel like you connect to on a first listener yeah because I don't like it yeah so connect don't like right or connect I think right you know awesome okay uh next one is from Hector alavas from Mexico and he says what type of saturation Plug-In or Hardware did you use on the vocals of the song X's and O's from Ellie King and what was your approach right you know that was over 10 years ago and um I can barely remember what I ate for lunch yesterday so I do have recall notes which I still have all the way back to probably oh many many many years ago and so what did we do yeah so we we got this question from Mark yester and we looked up those patch records just for you uh so it seems like you melted the vocal into two channels one was more like a traditional vocal approach with a fabfilter the SR EQ uh 1176 compressor uh that track went to a console channel in the SSL which you had inserted the Presto compressor and then you Blended that with another lead vocal Channel which you were processing with the ATR 102 tape and you follow that with the waves money marking distortion which then went into a different channel in the SSL console and you inserted the ear compressor I had no idea wow that sounds so clever doesn't it who would have thought of that I did do I remember that I could have ever done that no because it's an Impulse it just happened you know I'm sitting there I'm like I want to you know how did I come up with it did I come up with that well let's see um technically if I bring this up and break that up no I'm thinking man she needs to sound a bit nastier maybe in the courses you know and she's I gotta I wanna I know she's singing with that kind of like that lip going like this you know and and she's got that attitude but what I'm hearing is a little bit more tame like all right how do we get that nastiness especially in this section or that section well what's nasty all right well how about if I throw in throw in an ATR with it what is it with a delay on it or something um who knows the ATR tape machine and then I'll throw Manny's Distortion across it now it's all nasty and gnarly and I'm like okay well that's not the main vocal I'm just going to add that whenever I feel like it so it could be a word it could be a line it could be maybe you know a bridge or something and I'll just bring that up and then that you know that snarl just starts to show in the track so yeah that was uh yeah that that is the one song that I have used an extreme abundance of compression over everything on everything with a ton of culture vulture and it worked it worked awesome okay uh let's just I'm gonna group a bunch of questions into one here um how are stems affected by doing the brow rise method so when you have to deliver stems okay so we do something called the stem key which essentially what it is is you print a version of your mix before you hit the master fader processing so essentially after all the ABCD right there you make a print a stereo audio print and then you will grab that stereo audio print you will feed it into the side chain input of the first compressor in the chain which is the SSL compressor and what that does is it tricks the compressor into thinking that the amount of compression that is happening on each stem is the same amount of compression as if you were feeding the whole mix so when you solo say the kick drum to your stem the compression in the master fader is not going to change it's gonna react as if the whole mix was triggering it and then you just go you know folder by folder we we don't do you know all drums all bass we we like to you know do pre-broken down stamps uh we'll print each individual track shout out Bounce Factory under ships lifesaver thank you Lifesaver Time Saver Money Saver Money Saver um and then that's that's pretty much it now if if you then grab all of those stems and put them in a blank session and compare them to to the mix is it going to be a hundred percent no but it's gonna be pretty damn close and it's just a deliverable so now I have to say when when we were using the uad version of the SSL unfortunately that one doesn't have a sidechain input so there was a while there uh that we just had to stop doing that we were just print the stems uh like I said one by one but without any side chain compression um they were kind of like more uh a little bit more over the place um but it was what it was you know what I mean but side chain you want to find a compressor that has a side chain if there's a slight difference in Sonics between one that has no side chain and one with side chain which is what I did I was like well it sounds a little bit better and now all the stems are going to be a little bit wrong but I don't care I wouldn't go down that route I would go with the one that's got a side chain on it and make your life a lot easier for recalls yeah I'm curious back in the in the analog days where you we had a side chain on the 9000. you were doing kind of a similar thing where you were sidechaining though that comes from the analog days that comes from here I just hear how to do it in the Box amazing right and yeah but here's the difference right you hit you hit uh Andrew Shep's little button and then you go home yes back at Electric Lady they would have to run each one individual yeah right and then in real time in real time yeah and there was always a button that wasn't working and sometimes it would be the Panner so suddenly my strings are like you know when I do the recall I'm listening I'm like strings on the right what I never did that you know and then sure enough there was you know a little dirt on the left banner and then we they'd have to go back in but you're looking at generally it was through two to three hours yeah let's say three hours per song but I'm mixing two songs a day so yeah I would mix the first song they'd be taking all the recall notes right and of course all the automation on the SSL is being recorded and then I would put that one down and then pull up the next song and I would be done generally by six o'clock right it makes one in the morning I'd be done by one one Thirty pull up the next one be done by six and then I would go home now at six they're now printing all the stems for the second song then when they're done they pull up recall the first one and they have to a b back and forth between the print and make making sure that the recall is right and along with the the recall notes you know my my all my analog gear which I generally I'd stop touching right so that the recalls were easier and then another three hours so you're looking you're looking at an extra six to seven hours after I go home so from six until one or two yeah they were doing recalls it was just so inefficient and absolutely exhaustive for these guys right um it it was so longer than it was for you to mix the song yep yeah easily yeah it took them you know I yeah yeah the recall alone was the amount of time that it that I did now now the thing with that is that as long and painful as that was it would have been worse not doing it because then the next morning there there are mixed revisions on that song but he needs to mix another song what are we gonna do like recall the whole thing so we were doing the difference the key difference is back then we were doing those stamps so that we could use them to make mixed revisions right from those stems without going back to the analog nowadays because we're in the Box those stems are being printed are just for the lyricals I'm not gonna make a revision from those stems if I can just open the session right right right way more efficient awesome okay next question next question uh I think that we should switch over to the live chat that's great yeah let's go let's go all right cool so um let's see okay so Muhammad al-tali uh asks you put the God particle plugin in your template that you put in pure mix but you did not talk about it in the educational videos what do you think of this plugin and how to use it well the fact that I'm using it means I like it but I use it a bit differently you know the way Jason he came up with that to replace all the other stuff he was putting across the stereo bus but he came up with a combination um and I tried that a couple of times where I just turned everything all my stuff off and I was mixing it as but to me it's foreign right Jason is is compiling what he lives with every day and I I couldn't quite do it that way because it didn't I I couldn't recognize my mix quite well enough there was just a lot of other artifacts going on that I wasn't familiar with right so but I love the sound so what I would do is I would keep my SSL I would keep my germanium and then if I had maybe other eqs or other maybe a studer across it or something I would remove those and then I would put in the particle at 75 percent I tried a lot of different things I tried thirty percent forty percent and you know over several songs times that I was mixing and I ended up at a happy place for me at 75 percent and then the limiter which is such a cool sound that's usually I might drop that down a little bit if it's pushing a little too hard right and in all those early days um early days of learning how to incorporate the particle into my mix I would always have Fernando listen and say okay what what do you think he's always been my sounding board for many years um it's great to have that luxury having somebody who goes you know I like this or I wouldn't you know I would do this or you know what you know maybe try this in the chorus I was like awesome I like the idea I keep it I don't like the idea I don't I don't keep it you know it's experimental but with a with a particle um there would be times where he would say okay say I I like it but I don't like it because it's changing the feel now because sometimes I would just pop it into the chorus like that's what what I often what I'll do is like this feels really good but now I want like a a Sonic soundscape change right and I'll pop it in and then suddenly the field changes a bit um and there are times where I've thought well maybe I'll put it through across the whole song and then he'll listen you go you know that sounds too pop now like what you had before right there was a there's a record I was doing and so I was like I kind of like it you know I go you know what I'm gonna send both versions and now I mean I think I was throwing it in the chorus only maybe no I think it was across the whole thing so I sent both versions right and they all agreed with Fernando but whatever this second version wasn't quite right for the song right so um you know you just play with it but I love it I mean I use it often and when I want kind of a scene change or I want exactly what it's got to offer I'll do it but quite often I'll play with the limiter level right as I bring the level uh limiter level down you know that's right near the output at the bottom right um then it'll you know it it'll change that intensity to maybe a little bit more calm and stuff it's it's really really fun really and it looks cool it really looks that's one of the coolest guise out there yep awesome all right next one's from G uh he says anyone who's seen Michael actually mix on an SSL knows how he plays the board like an instrument how is he doing that in the Box does an S6 feel like a console and how about console one okay well when I had my S6 and I had my 32 fate faders I was I I couldn't feel any difference right there is a delay there's a question somewhere in there about you know you know we have we have it down to about 300 milliseconds still eventually this will be removed somebody will invent something that technology will allow us to be maybe 100 or 50 who knows we should explain that real quick like what that delay is between the face okay once you explain it and then I'll go from my musical in on this with the amount of processing that we're doing each plugin inherently adds some uh delay to the system so like if if you're in Pro Tools if you do like you know Command 2 and open like the session settings you can see what delay um I think the default is it comes in in samples but you can change it to show you milliseconds so that's that's the word the 300 comes from like 300 milliseconds um so when you are automating the faders like my goal is in writing them you have that in that inherent system DeLay So if you move the fader up it takes 300 milliseconds or whatever your delay in your system is to to react so at the very beginning when he was getting used to it kind of confused him yeah but then he'll explain it but now like sort of like his mind just compensate for it so he's he's reacting even though there is that 300 millisecond uh his mind and his hands are just reacting it in time to to the music anyway um sometimes if we are uh processing heavy heavier than than usual maybe with like some ocean or something uh I will usually try to uh commit or print stuff down to bring down that system delay to what he's already used to right yeah and trust me I got real Grumpy in the beginning right because I don't know what's going on all I know is I'm doing this and then I'm getting that right and I'm like what's going on here what have you done Fernando I'm like like it's like there's something wrong here fix it you know and and it was back when Steve was still with us too and they're like you know there's a 300 milliseconds that's not good enough I want it at 50. you know and we talked to a lot of people and on and eventually they were like with what you've got going on you should be happy you're down to 300 and and I was like that's it that's the answer I'm stuck until some new technology you're gonna have to and I was like fine so I'm like and then slowly over the months it just started to blend in and I would predict I would just move it to the point yeah I mean just a 300 milliseconds you're talking about a third of a second come on you know the brain and your hands should be able to look ahead a little bit third of a second there's not much to look ahead if you just you know have have the mindset that you need to be starting to think a little bit ahead and then eventually you're not thinking about doing that because you're just doing it so um you know and until they can figure it out and again because of the processing I'm going 300 is you know a good day and if things start to feel too slow um you know then we print but if it's across the stereo bus and it's just got really bad I leave it off until I've done all my moves because what am I trying to do I'm trying to enhance the overall sound okay I could live without that and make my moves because in what are the moves generally the real fast ones are going to be all my vocal levels right and then maybe my guitar solos because I like to ride the solo like I'm playing the solo or you know try to vibrato it or something so I you know all these things I I don't want any more than 300 milliseconds and then once I'm all done with that I pop in that slow maker and then uh you know let it print awesome all right great uh great answer anything else that you want to add about the s1s or anything or um well look you know I had an S6 there's no way I could get the S6 into my house that thing is about 400 pounds I could never get it down the the stairs I mean it just wouldn't happen and and the room isn't quite big enough so I got three s1s what's the difference look the S6 for me is like the Rolls Royce right S1 Rolls-Royce but you got roll up Windows maybe no AC you know but it's still a Rolls-Royce you know can I can I live without the metering yes can I live without the center section which you can buy you can buy meters you can buy this intersection I mean it was great I could hit a button I'd go back like four bars and you know there was like all cool little things can I live without it we've programmed some of those oh yeah I've actually have that's right I have one button As I push it it Scrolls back um I've been able to do you know with those little buttons on fine and and I don't miss it at all and I'm never looking at meters and I'm not and I don't have the monitor in front of me as I'm sure you all know from the video we did that my monitor is to my right um and so I'm just mixing you know just mixing and I in the in the first year I had a second monitor it was my my TV and on the TV I had a a bus B bus C bus D bus uh some of the main main compressors for the vocal right it was a huge thing and I was looking at that just so that I could see what's going on because when I used to mix on an analog right I could always look back I could just look back and see my ABCD just as at a glance I could confirm what I was hearing but anytime I turned back it was just confirming what I was hearing like oh I think I'm compressing too much I look back oh yeah I am you know I would bring the sub Master down a little something and so for the first year I had all this so they'd always have to have all those ready into the second monitor and I found myself just not looking at it anymore and and I don't like that stuff in front of me I just want speakers and nothing else right nothing in between the two speakers and eventually I know something came up with that monitor oh that was creating a huge huge delay right yeah no not system delay but like a like a visual delay there was something with with the Monitor and the HDMI in the system we couldn't figure out making me crazy we had a tech come in spend all day to figure it out you know and then he went like the problem went away I was like oh [ __ ] TV all that money for the I said I don't need no stinking monitor you know at that point you know we tried it actually on on the one Monitor and I was like what am I doing I know I know the sound I definitely definitely think that until you get used to it you should have a second Monitor and you should have ABCD on it I really truly you should do it until what what you think you hear you can actually see as a confirmation right I don't have to do that I I don't have to do that but you should so if you have the ability to get a second monitor you should have your ABCD on there and you should have your uh the lead compressor it doesn't matter any one of the compressors of the for the vocals as an indicator of how much it's compressing because you don't want that thing compressing much these are the tone makers they're not the com they're not compressing they're not meant to be compressing your vocal they're meant to be compiling a beautiful vocal sound so you don't want more than one DB except for the ones that are wacky right so I definitely recommend a second monitor until every time you look at it it's confirming what you're hearing right but until then you should probably have a visual um just as a confirmation as you're developing your ear for this approach next awesome okay um I'm Michael infernando plug-in Alliance just released the extressor distressor emulation we literally were talking about that today I knew somebody wasn't over here says it has the British mode yep right check it out so check it out we are going to check it out he checked it out and you know remember with with ABCD we use tone so when he's using tone it was completely inaccurate yeah I haven't but I haven't had the time to listen to it I can't comment on the sound I open it up after installing for like five minutes through some tone and try to calibrate it so we had a start point and it was giving me difficulties is not reacting how the hardware or the uad that we use reacts with the calibration so I don't know if so so with that in mind if you try to put in my settings that I've given you for the uad it's not going to work so um at the very least we're going to start playing with that because I really want the British mode but I might also call the guys a plug-in Alliance and and see if they you know just get some information as to why it's not reacting the same way it might be you know some simple changes that you know might be updated who knows yet I I can't say anything because what's the most important is can we get it up to the point where it sounds just the way the original distressor sounded with the British mode because British mode was very important to my drum sound and and without that I've had to have the wet dry um uh balance pretty much against it like it around one o'clock or something you know there's a lot of transients going through because I don't have the British mode so um yeah so we'll see I mean I'm I'm very hopeful for it but on initial just putting in the same exact calibration it's totally different awesome okay uh next question is from Dario he says hey Michael um I always wonder about uh the sound of John Mayer's album that you mixed was that your sound proposal or his petition well it depends which album and the two albums that I did mix was split between me and Manny so um I don't know which one are you in particular you know again on what the way it was recorded and how how much time was spent on getting those sounds right by both Steve Jordan John you know the band Chad you know on on the engineer on what I ended up getting was already unbelievably great what did I do I I enhanced what was already great there you know um but it was already unbelievably good sounding awesome uh G asks which channel strip are you using you endorsed both the console one 9000k and the plug-in Alliance 9000j or are you actually using some or are you using something else now like the actuality SSL native two I don't know plugin Alliance 9000 yeah awesome uh Stefan Wessel asks hi Michael do you use the soft tube console 1 in any application nope all right uh one of the other ones this is a quick one while I look for the next one favorite uh stereo bus compressor the gold question you mean if I was stuck on an island first of all I wouldn't get myself on an island and if I was on an island that's the last piece of gear I'd have because there'd be no electricity I would go for a nice big Italian submarine sandwich on a daily all right with all that set aside what is the one compressor that I've been using for many many years the germaniums so I like those I like it it feels really good in that one setting I've never touched that setting when I first bought those the the hardware version they sat in my rack for almost two years I never used them because I had in my rack I had three different stereo compressors or four different stereo compressors I had my 670s the the ADL 670s I had very meal very Mew I had what Shadow Hills the Shadow Hills and oh I also had the API the modified API 2500s that uh Paul wolf modified for me that somebody has when I sold it and then the germaniums and so what I would do is I would just I had an A B button so I could easily go between two different compressors as opposed to having to do the patch it was like instant because that's the only way I can really hear if I'm going to like something you know I the time to wait you know my mind will trick me so I had an A B button and I would go back and forth and the germanium just never never did and I don't know I had I didn't have quite the setting but I was about to get rid of them and then some project came up I don't remember which one it was and I was like ah you know and I just played with a little bit more and I put the knob on the little toggle switch on dirty and I gave myself more of a parallel than I would normally have done and I was like these sound unbelievable and then I'm thinking to myself it must have been age it had they must have aged because it was so obvious how good they sounded to me I said the they must have just had to sit in the racks and heat up and just age for a couple of years right wow and but the fact is that when one of them went bad and and you know then I got The Replacements they were just fine so I don't know I don't know what it was it was the mind was ready for the germaniums but yeah those they're really special they're really great it's awesome another great answer to a question that you're like it's another great answer awesome uh this is a wonderful question NYX Corsair S1 tips asks also how's the vocal plug-in Development coming on ah you mean the vocal the vocal plug-in yeah the uh briefly mentioned yeah that's that's in talks I actually have um I've had a couple of false starts um but I am in talks with one person one company who's very interested and it's a matter of that some of those favorite compressors or mine are going to need to be modeled first so I think it might it might even turn into a combination of two different companies but once we do it um it's going to be really exciting I mean it's been it's been really tough I mean trying to get somebody to to do the brow Rise um you know to me that's going to make it so much easier when for some a lot of that is already in one box just like just the way Jason kind of put everything into his box and you know and Joe chicarelli did a lot of his stuff in his you know and and there's but of course the ABCD is a much more complicated form of Matrix that has to be done it's It's Tricky nobody has jumped on board for that one yet but the vocal chain is going to be cool and that's that's in the process and it's going to be very simple you know it's going to have what well I don't even know yet anyway it's it's moving forward let me put it that way all right uh D War says do you know what happened with ADL Anthony demaria Labs it was that was all about us 20 years ago what happened to it yeah well he decided to to get out of that he was a good friend he modified my la3a and I still have that one I haven't sold that one yet probably won't um so that I have la2a cans in there and la3a cans um and then he you know he built a 670 and then he modified that one for me um but he he got tired of it um he wanted to move on and um and I think I think it he sold it maybe I don't know he sold it somebody else has taken care of it but you know he's loving life and he's a chef um he loves to cook so he's a happy guy awesome okay um let's see I'm gonna grab one more so guys I think we're getting to the end of our questions here if you have a question that you asked earlier in the chat and we haven't gotten to it yet because I missed it in the scroll or something put it in the chat right now um and I'm gonna go back to some of the pre-submitted ones we'll see what pops up in the chat in the next couple minutes and then we're probably going to be heading out of here so cool all right all right um okay the last one from India while we're doing this I I think we should just one just focus a little bit on the importance of how you're going to gain the tracks into the folders okay you know I think we really should spend while you're looking I think Fernando should explain it because if you get that wrong at the beginning and and from questions that I've had where people are writing me directly it's it's really related to that it's so important that you get your gain stage going into the folders the right level so Fernando understands it way better than me um why don't you if you can show an example of what you would do um just so that you get some kind of like a a visual I mean can you show also with just a the Pro Tools session or something I don't have any tracks here but well he pulls that up can I ask a question yeah yeah while he's doing that yeah it's kind of I think in a similar vein when you first sit down at the console of the mix um what are some of the first things that you do do you already have the session prepped up uh by Fernando or somebody and you know it's either well now it's Alex and that preps all my sessions um but what I always have her do is a fader match and the reason for the fader match is twofold maybe three-fold is one this is a way to make sure that there's nothing missing and this is the fader match to the ref a fader match to the rough mix right so that when I put that up when she puts it up if there's a guitar solo missing she will know because she's trying to do a fader match she's trying to get it to sound like the rough mix if there's important effects missing this is the time when she's going to go like this if things are in mono if it sounds like it's like this but the rough mix is super wide we're going to want to know what caused some of that right um I'm trying to basically start where the rough ended in many cases the other cases where that's not the yeah really the job but from the standpoint of of making sure that we have all the correct stems a fader match is the way to do it that's not what number two by learning how to match she is now really learning how to mix in a sense and I think Fernando jump in on that because I was I spent a lot of time with you there were times when I say the artist would say I love this mix I I want everything I'm hearing now but now do your thing to it okay so if I'm trying to restart it from scratch um yeah and do my own thing they're not going to like it because that's not the task they're asking for they're asking for I want this but make it better all right and so I would have and especially with something sensitive like maybe some jazz or something you know I'd say Okay Fernando give me a may I which is a match and improve but he wouldn't do the eye he just match match this and I'm gonna go through this and I do not want to hear any difference because the artist wants it from this point and so he would sit there right and then and then I'd be listening and I would go Fernando don't you hear this right okay he goes what I go listen to the roads listen to the width on it or listen to the depth I don't remember I mean you can use an example where yeah [Music] um yeah when I when I was learning when my goal was teaching me this like many years ago matching matching a pre-existing mix is really an art because I find that a lot of mixers will want to start their mix and build their their levels however they want which is completely valid but then when you have to match exactly a pre-existing one it becomes a different task it's not just it's just not it's not just Sonic and balance it's feel yeah yeah so by doing these exercises of setting up these mixes for my goal and having to really really really match these rough mixes and we're talking about like when I started to getting better at it like if I'm like if the home match is like almost perfect and like that one roads is like point three DBS off it's gonna be like that's not a match and and he was right that's not a [ __ ] match right so by learning that um as a way of you know using the prep in as an as an exercise another tool once I get through that besides my years having been like expanded exponentially like the ear training that that gives you insane when then I would go back and do a mix of my own I think when when I was doing that process is where I really started seeing exponential jumps in my mixing I was like oh damn right I get it right right so now with our new assistant Alex and she's going through that process the pain yeah the pain yeah I don't know but never had a huge impact when you were going to make the template too I mean just that specific ear training that you were doing well but that's what he had that seems that's a very good point mark is that that by the time but I had full confidence in Fernando at that point right right but I'm saying Okay match it he knows I don't mean technically or sonically yeah it's got to not only be signed but it's got does it how does it feel it has that 30 33609 has to feel just like my 33 609 and he had the hardware to Aid be it against it wasn't like a memory thing he he had the real deal so he would be doing you know the the emulation and then comparing it to the real deal so he had that to go back and forth and then he got to the point where it sonically sounded right but it didn't feel the same yeah so now how do you how do you go from there that's experience like okay it doesn't feel how do I get to that feel point and I would just you know I would Point things out and I'd leave Point him in the right direction right but but the rest was all him learning and and what you know obviously he understands this now but that forced him to become just an unbelievably good mixer listener who can interpret you know who can sit there and when he would nail that I'd be like God I could have never done that you know I mean it's just yeah you know that's the level that he attained which which takes time and patience and and confidence and Alex and you know is just at the V you know she's on base one of that right she's at 101 on it so so what's with there she can do a great comparison you know on one song it's like pretty much nail and the next one is just not even in the ballpark and like what what's different what am I doing you know you know and I'm like Dr Fernando man I don't know I don't know what to tell you it's not the same you know so but that part of that there's 90 of the time or 95 or 98 I'm not starting a mix with a faders up I'm putting all the Fate in there but I'm doing that to force her to learn yeah so and I haven't been doing any of that like I don't listen to the fader matches because I just want to you know be start starting to mix but now I'm like she's at that point where I'm like okay so uh just listen to your fader match you know she's like [Music] so now I'm like every song I'm Gonna I'm like okay it's a fader match today it's a fader match today every day for the rest of your life is a fader match you know yeah and and it's just a matter of time you know she has the smarts she has the ability she has the musicality but she doesn't have the experience and it's it's very very tough right yeah it's very tough but you have to be patient yeah that's we've been talking a lot um just around around pyramix about uh things that we can do to try and like encourage practice exercises like that and that one sounds pretty good just to match the ref that's yeah there's a few drills that I do when I'm teaching seminars all types of you know there's a few different ways I haven't done that one because that takes a lot of time but um yeah it's it's a good one yeah it's a good one because it really develops your ear yeah I mean you're doing this to make me happy because I'm saying to you I want a fader match so you you know you're following my direction because I want that but the rewards is just right right yeah great training all right so let's let's just quickly explain to everybody out there the importance of how you're going to start the gain stage yeah so there there is there is a few different gain station points that you have to be aware of with the template the first one starts at the audio track level right the multi-track the stems that you're that you're receiving and from some of the questions um I would love to be able to give you a number and be like this is the number you gotta hit you're gonna be good I just can't do that because it is 100 a feel and an experience thing I just know when it's right and I know and it's wrong and I know if you're just starting to use this it might not be that helpful but I'm gonna try to sort of like put into words so with this session for example this is a mixed session um all the audio tracks right that that we've uh put into our our folders all of those audio tracks before I put them into the folders I've done a a group and that group I assign to a VCA that I that I have down here uh there you go um this audio trim VCA I will deactivate the the group settings so that you know if I'm soloing one track it's not like the rest are Solo and I'm just using the group to be able to um assign all those audio tracks into this audio trim now if you get your audio tracks and you play them all together and maybe you put the meter that you like and you are seeing that these pre-mixed tracks are already coming in way too hot you know you're gonna have to trim them down to begin with and it can also be the opposite where you put that that meter at the beginning and you are so low you can barely hear the tracks that you know you're gonna have to to gain them up the thing that you can use as an indicative is where the position of the folder faders are so for example I get a sense of if the audio tracks are too too loud or too quiet I do my initial trim and then I started doing the Fatal match and as soon as I'm trying to match the reference mix instantly like maybe I've just constructed the drums I can see that my faders my folder faders are all the way up um then I know that I need to trim the audio higher so that that those audio tracks are hitting those folders louder which then means the faders come down or in a happy place yes which is why I'm saying on the on the fader the number you know you've got everything from plus 12 down to Infinity down right so I like to be somewhere around -5 between minus five and zero and here's a song right now right that he's put up and my faders are around zero minus seven minus eight so they're all for me in a really happy place what would not be happy is if I had him down around 40. or if I had him at plus six because I have no no where to go and the great thing when you're mixing into compression is that you you don't just tweak your little faders and hear it with my Approach you can move those faders like an inch right so if you're already way up at six where's that inch you're slamming up at the top you've got no Headroom to go and same thing if you're way at the bottom you're like you're like you know you know because between the bottom and and 20 like this it's not it's not discreet I mean it's not uh what is it that that's slight yeah like that it's not incremental it really starts moving really fast so again from the time that I was mixing on a Neve to an SSL to uh to an SSL four thousand from a four thousand to uh and five thousand to a six thousand to an 8 000 then eventually nine thousand they all have different sweet spots whether it was almost a Neve or wherever you are so you find that sweet spot well this is a control surface right but you still have to find The Sweet Spot on the desk because they're faders you want to be able to ride the faders so so I still the concept is still just like an analog disc and so that area between minus five and zero is where I want Fernando to to have the session come up and that's what he means when he goes if he starts to doing a fader match and he's all the way up here then he's going to trim up that initials tweaker down there another three or four DB or five DB but if he finds himself that that in order to do a fader match now let's let's keep something in mind too he doesn't have to look at it because he hears it but you should be look you should have ABCD open up in another monitor because as you're trying to do the fader match if it's slamming you're slamming the compressors you're pushing them really really hard because you you're going into ABCD way too hard so you want to be able to have the faders in that sweet spot between minus five and zero where they're not slamming ABCD or they're on the other hand you don't want them so that they're doing nothing yeah exactly and and and also for like the comfort of writing if you are at The Sweet Spot a move like this is like you know between three four five DBS but like the same amount of move when you have the fader on the down position that same move it's 20 or 30 degrees right right so the important thing is that it is a snowball effect so these are all the these are all the the points where you can control your gain station the first one being the audio trim which is pre the folders which means that uh moving that is going to affect the inserts that you're putting on the folder so be mindful of that so once you you get that set up and you you do your your uh Fair match or your mix and and your faders are in the right position if those faders are in the healthy level that's just gonna translate to you opening up ABCD and you see those compressors being hit in the uh in in the right way now your next gain staging point would be post folders but pre-abcd right so you you are hitting the folders right your inserts there are good but maybe but it feels like you're still hitting ABCD a little hard and that's why I say on every every day you mix a song at some point when it's feeling good you go over to your sub uh stereo master the VCA subseria master and then you just you're maybe play a chorus right and play A Chorus where there's a lot going on and then just start bringing it down a little bit and see as you bring it down just a little bit it might like get bigger and more Dynamic and go oh wow this sounds even better what's happening there well because you were pushing into the compressors too hard and they weren't giving there was no play the lack of play the bounce that that you know I've described to you in in earlier episodes of the videos that's very very important so you can immediately feel and hear what happens if you're pushing too hard so you just bring it down then there's going to be a point where totally kind of unglues and it's like doesn't feel good you know at that point okay you've gone too far then you go back up and you go a little higher you go oh that doesn't sound good or it might you go oh that sounds even better okay this isn't the rule here is that you must feel good the rule is not that the meter doesn't look good is that it must feel good right so that's that gain stage yeah continue which is the the that VCA Aid or that VCA submaster so that's your that's your Point Post folders pre a b c d now uh we we haven't find a need but if you want to insert a point between the ABCD and the master fader you could just create a an actual Master fader in Pro Tools which is pre you know and assign it to the same boss as the faderox and then you have even one more uh control point in between ABCD and and the master fader uh processing and just just be mindful of how you're gain staging in each stage each stage has a different um effect and purpose but at the end everything is gonna it's gonna Domino so if you're if you are gain staging incorrectly at any point you're gonna end up with with an undesired result and again I know it sounds like oh my God that's just too much but just be patient Just Go with It the result is that all of this becomes automatic that you're just driving right you're just fly in the plane and all the stuff the computers and all the other stuff that you never have to think about are doing their job properly but you just have to start the process correctly right and and you'll be fine because you know because I'm telling you yeah I'm telling you cool awesome okay uh question from G in the chat um he asks have you found new compressors in the digital realm that beat what you had in analog that beats Beats [Music] yeah probably I mean well certainly all the tools but there was never an analog tool that could do what you know isotope can do yeah a lot of the repair tools it's just insane um I think it's always just objective like when we we were talking about this yesterday like when we first started with this whole like migration into in the Box our start point was the analog so we were creating all of these chain and these emulations to replicate exactly what we had going on in the analog but then once he actually started mixing into it and adopted but I can do this I couldn't do that then he just um you know opened himself to the tools and then if there's a cool compressor coming out that has nothing to do with analog like like who cares it's just cool he wants to use it he wants to put yeah you know so you know and typical example is when Jason came out with the God particle or or Al Schmidt came out with his you know um his tool which I use interestingly not not how it was designed I'll use it in a bridge to completely change the whole field I think I have some kind of variation of a vocal setting on there but I'll just pop it into a bridge when a bridge is kind of a halftime feel and you're supposed to feel more ethereal I'll pop Al in there and I'll go I love you well and then you know the artist will listen and go whoa what did you do in the bridge and I go thank you that's awesome cool okay um this next one's from Iago and he says hi Michael what are your thoughts about the precasti M7 versus plug-in emulations of it I'm guessing um that's that's interesting I just looked at I went back to Alto yesterday and I snuck a couple of more analog pieces of gear you know like oh I would love to have that back in my room you know um and I saw the M7 there yeah and I was like oh man what a sound that was but frankly I haven't sat down and and but also the other thing is that the place that I was using were all modified I had I was trying to copy other plates with it so that's generally what I would use but um I have not done a comparison test between the hardware and the seventh heaven I think yeah yeah I haven't done we use the the Slade bird suit Classics okay and and there's a an M7 impulse responses that you can download for free that they did for the plugin they just released later so we we loaded those up because they like when we did the template the the really the main broadcasting sound he was using was the uh this this preset called clear Ambience oh that's right I use that every day yeah so we have to take that back it sounds great yeah yeah I've saved that as a preset into my thing after six it's not even like really like a Reverb it's just like like an Ambience thingy it's just this thing that just opens it up into I use that with percussion a lot when I want to conquer just to kind of feel more like so I can hear it it's like it's it's like a it's one of those little pen lights where you can you know if you can't quite hear an instrument and you start sending that to the clear Ambience it almost it's like putting a little pen light you know you know in the pictures when there's a you know serial killer in the middle of a you know graduation picture and then there's that there's always a serial killer and then they highlight that one person that's what that's like with with the M7 you know you sit there and you go B and suddenly you can actually hear that instrument within this you know huge mix suddenly has that little space like a little highlight on there no awesome okay um Dan Yerba asks hello Michael and Fernando how is a mixed review with you and the artist uh greeting from Mexico so yeah how do you handle mix mix reviews once you've turned them in do you guys have everything mixed comments I believe makes comments yeah um they get done they happen that's a thing next question next question okay uh God of Gore 666 says Fernando should totally have his own q a sometime if anyone's interested yeah well I never I think it's actually the devil that wants you to do that so take that as you will okay um Sonic Discovery asks a couple questions so he says what's your method to address phase issues I'm guessing in multi-tracks boy when I first started if you listen to in a very very early interview with me um prior to going hybrid I they would ask me you know can we can you we do this as a hybrid or even in the Box I said no because there's too many phasing issues um Pro Tools is not out of place yet where they've got the delay compensation right and because of the way I work where you've got a combination of sending to a processing but then you got the parallel and they're both going the sound it wasn't like an obvious phasing like you know it was just this hollowness right it was like you know if you if you took um little Labs phase you know you know you you would need to put that on all the tracks just to do a slight you know a slight change and so it was it was undesirable right it wasn't musical because it it was I was losing the tone it was worth in the early days so I said and I was very clear until they can correct that I don't you know I'm not I'm not mixing a hybrid yet I just can't do it because it doesn't work they've pretty much resolved all of that so the only time there might be a phasing issue sometimes is when I have a dry vocal and a wet vocal together and quite often the drive vocals going through my whole processing you know the the chain the wet vocal is just a wet vocal now there are times when the what was done with wet vocals sounds great right but I just want to add mine into it and it just makes it pop a little bit better but I like all the delays and the reverbs and the effects they were loving it they don't want to lose it and I I don't need to reinvent that stuff but I just want to make a little pop a little bit more and there are times when because of all the processing it does not work with the dry so I have to decide what or do something with a wet so what I might do is send the wet the actual wet then that's how I've been able to address it is sending the wet to some of my compressor returns right and try to get some of that going on but there are other times where it's just steadily a bit off and that's where I put in the ibp and then I just slowly change the face till it fills up and then I'm good but I don't go doing that with any other instrument because there's never any problem with with the Sands of you know going to the 1176s and you know all the parallel compression going on they got it down you know I mean I you know maybe logic is better at it but um we don't have a I don't think we run into a problem like that and just to clarify oh when he was talking about the dry and the wet vocal just so nobody out there thinks we're talking about like like the Reverb we're putting or anything like uh we get from the client a dry vocal and a wet vocal with all the processing and effects from the client printed so sometimes to create the vocal sound of the record he will make a blend of those two where he has that thing going on that the client had on on his wet vocal and then he crafts his own vocal with the vocal approach with the dry and then he Blends them sometimes depending what the client did on the wet that's where where they face and and we address it how he explained it now in terms of facing between bosses or anything like that not at all just have your delay compensation on Pro Tools turn on and it takes care of itself yeah yeah great good question all right uh another question best use of Unisom comp I'm not familiar with that one but you know yeah um you used to use it we kind of stopped it was that um that like gray compressor with the big knobs that you you used to have on the you had that California preset that you put on the on the master Fair kind of like to pop the choruses or something oh it's the great compressor with the big knob oh that's the Unison oh the Unison yeah right yeah oh gosh I gotta go back and look at that again you know sometimes you move on to other things and then you forget um and what was the question um best use so probably I think I have one that's called the presets called glue Factor one glue Factor two glue on Bluetooth California one California man and um there's a certain warmth in the lower mid-range that really liked and sometimes when I say it's a glue it's just you know things are just a little bit chaotic and I would pop that across the stereo bus and then I'd be like wow you know and maybe I'm like I'm not sure and I would go through the four presets that I've made and if that works I'm fine if I still don't feel it bypass like I would do any other compressor but it's it's cool I just haven't used it in a while yeah but now that I've brought it up I'll probably try that tomorrow forever of course oh yeah this was great yeah his uh last part of the question is have you guys upgraded invisible limiter to the new version oh um maybe I'm not sure yeah we'll look into that tomorrow I mean uh Alex and shout out to Alexander she keeps she keeps all of our employees updated she's much better at it than I was so yeah we probably are you know you know which one every time I open it up it says new update new update yep what is it with a magic eye and it's update it's got a million every time I open it up like and I'll go hey Fernando did you didn't you update yeah I just updated last week well it wants an update again update the goddamn eye would you like what are they doing to this thing okay it'd be like having somebody come in to work on like your analog compressor every week you'd like go over to use it and somebody's back there like I know get out of here come on how many changes do you need to make you know it's what it is leave it alone okay um let's see oh I forgot to get the username but uh someone has a tip for you on the SSL 9000 plug-in from plug-in Alliance uh it's mixed by dot Rob and he says you can tweak it and make the background of it purple which you thought might be interesting for you oh the GUI yeah on which the stress on the uh on the SSL 9k plug-in by plug-in Alliance um no email emails email us how to do it please no no I am not going to I know that that's just um there was a big issue about that because it would look too much like the one at electric lady so I'm not going down that road at all I see yeah next next you're not supposed to know about that but for anybody else who wants to do it I guess you just open the folder of the plugin and you have to tweak the image files so it's not just like a setting or anything yeah yeah I won't do that right okay um there have been a couple questions that's asking what your monitoring setup is like it's pretty simple now yeah three things I've got my ATC 25s no subs I've got my Sony radio that Fernando also has one I bought three one is in storage one Fernando has one I have and I have my headphones um and I usually go from the 8 to 25s down to the radio to my headphones back to the big speakers this is in the final half an hour or something and then that's the monitoring it's very very simple and and it's all on the Oculus that old Oculus that poor knob is like so I can't get that thing not to rock anymore but it's perfect it works great it's a big knob I still have one big knob everything else digital but I have one big knob I can go up and down it's like that's all I'm left with I used to have like hundreds of big knobs all around me I'm down with one I have the same monitoring situation like that Michael does ATC 25 same headphones same radio as I work here in the same thing but a little tip if anybody cares uh when you're trying to like mix something that that you wanted to knock like an 808 or something you wanted to knock when you're just playing out of the iPhone because the iPhone has no low end I will finish my mixes on my iPhone I stream without immovers the link of my session into my iPhone I'll turn off my speakers and I'm literally mixing out of the built-in yeah speakers of my iPhone to make it knock on the iPhone now put in my airpods make sure it's there good it's all good and you never told me that I'm pretty sure I have yeah I'm glad I know him nice okay um isomatic asks uh what type of things or feelings are going through your mind and body when you're trying to connect with the emotion and feel of the track and stay that way consistently well I'm not really thinking about anything but first I want to hear the story and then I decide by the story how I'm going to build up the track um I want I want to understand and feel good within the first 15 minutes so quite often I don't start with drums and bass I'll start with maybe what it was written on let's say it was written on a piano or on a roads so I'll put the roads up um maybe one other element a guitar because it's really an important part and then the vocal and I'll just get a really good feel about that and I'm just sitting there I'm hearing the story I'm like oh this is what the song is about so this is a song that she's trying to be happy but she's having an issue that maybe the love that she thinks she has Isn't um and you can you know and it kind of opens up unfolds into the chorus where you know you can feel that the hook is more about you know questioning the love and then in the bridge and now I'm listening to the bridge I'm like oh the bridge is you know her really singing how she feels and or maybe the changes she wants or maybe the hope and so I'm listening to all that and then I start building around that so okay so that's these are the main elements what's the main element in the in the intro you know who's in what are the three main elements I always like to keep it very very simple that's I didn't come up with that that's just plane common sense that your mind doesn't want too many things coming at it so keep it keep it simple even though there's a lot of stuff and then I build around the verse and the B section the B section is there to make the chorus feel great but from an emotional standpoint I just want to keep building this feel and if the song is supposed to be a want for happiness that I'm not going to be mixing in a way that makes it angry or super Poppy and happy right because that's not the story and and you can make it sonically sound great and the artist will listen to that and go well I don't like this why because you know you're making me sound angry I'm not angry I'm sad right right so as I'm mixing that's all I'm thinking about I'm not thinking about about anything technically what you know what Reverb I may I've got a bunch of reverbs I'll throw one up and throw another one I don't like that one I don't like that one and here's try I don't like that oh this one makes me feel more like the story that's how I'm making those decisions yeah that's that's awesome um does any does any of that come back from your your days as a producer I mean oh man I wouldn't brag about my production I got that to get it out of my system I had some success in England with that yeah but no that just came from my learning to listen more about what the story what the story is about what the singer's trying to tell you um yeah I mean I became a really really good arranger and by virtue of being working with great producers and mixing thousands of songs you become a good producer yourself but as a mixed producer I mean I'm good at producing deciding to arrange and produce what's in front of me not coming from Soup To Nuts and coming up with a hook and yeah you know I realize after a couple years of that that was not going to be ever happening in my head you know so um yeah so it just comes from thousands and thousands of hours and songs of just different scenarios and and I have all these you know from way back I have all these producers who taught me so much that are in my head you know and I'll be doing it I'll go okay I want to hear more of this and this is how you're going to do it you know and now I'm mixing something and they show up you know they say hello try this and I do that and I go oh that's cool you know right it's just like this library of you know of experiences and then there's is also quite often I mean the the whole British explosion that happened right when all the the British the Wreckers were coming to us you know they had these incredible sounds quite often when I'm mixing a song I'm Gonna Go wow this band is was influenced by Bloody Valentine or they were influenced by the Kooks or they were influenced by who knows right bands that I would note and I'm like I'm like oh maybe I'll mix it so that you get that feel and then you know because I know they were influenced by this band and maybe that band and so as I'm mixing I may have already done those bands and as I'm doing the blend I'm like you know what I'll EQ in a certain way so it just gives it that kind of edge you know and you're not gonna go oh that was the Kooks but you're gonna go Something's Gonna Be familiar and the band of course is going to be happy because they didn't tell me that that was their influence but I know that was there in France and so there's always that all of that history of just listening to to records and you know I'm not studying I can study when I want but I'm just enjoying it like everybody else and it's something that's special it just stays in me yeah and then one day I can recall it because I can analyze I can go okay that felt so good and why well because of the Reverb that was on this and that that you know then I can get like totally technical because I still have freeze frame of that sound and then I can just kind of dig in right yeah I can't write I can't produce I can't do other things but I can do stuff like that you know right um so that's you know that's how those things develop when you're mixing if you found yourself in one of the situations like you know and it wasn't a band that you had mixed which are you know there's not many but uh do you ever like go to Spotify in the middle of a mix or something like that or just not necessarily Spotify but like anywhere to just listen to I I have done that a couple of times I may do it if some if the artist is saying Hey look this was kind of what we were looking for you know and they'll just give me a couple of songs they'll say you know can you just listen to that this is kind of the vocal sign we were looking for we got close but we didn't nail it yeah and then I'll say okay so I'll listen to it and I'll go oh okay you know and that's my little analyzing hat comes on and I go oh okay so that that was probably a 220 delay maybe going into some Distortion you know and I'm just sitting there like you know just surfing inside you know and then I come back out I'm like okay yeah right awesome and then um but most of the time um it's it's interesting it's my memory of what I think it felt to me like and so I'm reproducing or replicating what felt my interpretation or what it felt to me like and then if you go back to that I'll go it's not even close yet I feel that how did I what happened you know right right it's weird yeah right I mean you know what I'm talking about because everything we're doing is the culmination of just all the music that's flying in our heads at some some of it sticks to the walls you know and just and just sits there and as mixers they're just there and then we just go we're just recall them as as I'm mixing and they just just flows out of me and again another confirmation that I'm not thinking technically on anything I'm just going I want to reproduce a certain feel right it's and now how do I get there well I've got years of experience on how I know how to play this my instrument right so I can quickly go to it but I'm not thinking much about it right I'm just like oh I want to do this if that doesn't work I don't care try something else right I'm not hung up on it I'm not soloing I rarely solo right that's yeah that's always a big topic is the to Solo or not the solo thing okay um let's see if we have anybody else in there I think we're just about getting to the end of it um so um how do you find uh new music like when something grabs you if you're let's say you're out you know at a restaurant or something the song comes on well it's generally not the restaurant it's my son Eric Brower who's in California works for dweezel Zappa right now um and he'll call me he'll go dad go check out this band you know or uh there was a time when during Christmas when we're we like to play backgammon you know and he usually is playing the music and he'll be playing a lot of music and I'm like wow this is really good this is really good and this is really good and it was like he goes yeah that's Rado that's Rado who did all that oh yeah that's his that's rados band oh this is right now I'm just like wow who is you know and it's like you know and then Erica goes Dad you need you need to meet Rado right yeah um or lately I think it was Andy Wells right and and I was like you know so he'll send me music and go Dad check this out sometimes it's check this out you should be mixing it or other times check this out how cool it is so I really get a lot of that from Eric and and then there are times of course when I'm hearing it on you know on the radio or in a car or in a restaurant but most of that time I'm not focused on I'm focused on what's in front of me you know um I really don't have my radar hat on but but so it's either that and and Fernando same thing you know Fernando say you know I'm listening to something that's really really cool same with plugins you know Fernando usually is the first one who's going to say hey check this out you know but I also get from the companies I get a lot of you know yeah would you listen to Mike you know yeah and it's it's overwhelming right it's really overwhelming and they'll and I'll just say okay let's install it and then sometimes we'll spend like three or four hours because it's like seven or eight new plugins and we'll just listen to it and we'll throw it on everything and then we'll do a quick judgment on what do you think what do you think yeah you like I like yeah cool right boom keep it or yeah you know it's too much like something else I already have yeah I mean it's just it's just thousands of them it's like it's so overwhelming yeah well that let me ask you that then when you get a new plugin to check out what are what are some of the processes for that you know so you throw it on everything and then you're listening for boundaries or you know see what it does so it's just like anything do you like it or you don't like it wipes yeah is this is this different yeah this is different than you know is this A variation of what I already have that I'm happy with yes then I don't need it yeah but you know if there's something new that comes along and I'm like this is so cool I mean you know uh Devin just just recently uh came up with the 252 you know the EQ right it's a 252. I think I think it is sounds so good is it 252 or 525 God eclectic um Devin where are you tell me yeah but if you go into let's just see it is is it in the travel rig yeah it probably is um it's a 252 okay great what an EQ oh my goodness it's just and it's it's the uh the knobs on a on a graft you know it's a slider it's a slider knob oh my God it sounds so good so you know when that comes along I'm just like wow this is the you know this is so cool yeah all right awesome all right I think I think we're pretty much to the end of it here um so one more technical question Dorian uh versus asks hi Michael could you bring a bit of clarity when it comes to the flooded vocal does the dry vocal also feed the a bus on the top of all the vocal compressors feeding ebus thanks for everything no no not anymore it hasn't for a while so the the the the floated thing was from from the SSL days but but to simplify it here it just means that the dry vocal um goes into the the compressors and that drive vocal doesn't have an output in the sense that it's not going out to any bus uh what you're hearing as a as the vocal Drive is the the combination of the returns of the elite Vogel compressors the lead vocal wet used to go into a we stopped doing that a while ago we have a dedicated bus called V which is it is it's unprocessed oh no it's it's literally just for like routing purposes yeah um and then the backing vocals do still go molted to a and to d right and the reason why stop sending it to a is because it's already processed and now you're processing it more and a is kind of dedicated to all the sustaining things like strings and piano and you know and and you push a vocal into that now you're messing the vibe of the sustainers you know it goes back to the whole reason why I came up with ABCD I don't want anybody stepping on some you know yeah the drum the drummer and the bass player we're our thing right don't mess with us guitar players they don't want they want to be left alone singers they want to be left alone yeah so you know I realize that what I used to do with a didn't work in the in the computer you know in the Box approach and so that just goes strictly through to to the stereo well to V which is the features and processed yeah the um once in a while but yeah just a routing thingy awesome all right um last question yeah from Theo Mac uh are you okay with what mastering Engineers do to your mixes yes because I choose my mastering engineers um and I've learned I learned this probably probably from Manny on well even before Manny but as far as level I think I probably got that from Manny it said you should be able to mix it so it's mastered flat now that's the way it was that's what I achieved way back from the beginning you know I was like when Greg calby mastered all my records every six weeks because I was recording and mixing every six weeks I would come in come to him with a new album done right because that's that's the time period we used to do them in right and I'd say okay what do you think you know and then he would say okay you know he'd make comments and I'd go back and then six weeks later I would address the things that he thought even though it's a different record and everything else to the point where he finally you know one day said okay I am I've mastered this flat and that was always my goal from that point on now what what I hadn't taken into account at that point because it was going to vinyl was level and so when I was giving them three four DB of of Headroom to the point where they got it then they would squeeze and limit and and so they're now changing the sound and I was like oh right and then it would implode my snare I'm not referring to Greg I'm just saying other Engineers when there was a point where labels took that that privilege of me choosing the person who should Master my record away from me right that didn't last too long because I got pretty grumpy about that but yeah um I was just like wow this is this is not good so I said all right I need to give them less less opportunity to fuss with because I'm still working at towards it being flat I am mixing it so it doesn't need extra work right right so really what they're doing is tying it all together from one song to song and then they're bringing up the level and I ended up at that point I mean I've been through some many many Great Master Engineers but you know lately in the last several years I mean I went to Joe the Porta and that was almost 10 years ago right when I did uh what was that first band anyway it doesn't matter um and I was like wow he really gets it he really gets it and then we I would learn from him like you know what level can I give you you know how much Headroom would you want it goes you know just give me like a couple of DB or DB would be fine I'm like okay so you know and what's that level and it was only in the last year or two that we started thinking luffs right until then it was you know plus nine or yeah you you were using a mirror with a Lu yeah which is important and then you know um who's the other person it's it's both Joe or Lyman Pete Lyman right those are the two that I go to and and they just get it yeah they really you know and there are times when they said flat yeah you know they know when it can be flat they know when they can stay out of the way and the other times when they can help and when they do it's awesome and and I'm really excited but I don't give much you know I give them cup one or two one or two DB and they don't have a problem with it because I'm doing it within the spec of what is going to be released I mean I get rust sometimes that are like at around five five Lush that's the other side of the coin where like because you can't deliver a mix that's quieter than a rough mix because it will be perceived as worse right so we have to like you know I'll mix it at the proper level but then when I send it out I have to we have to bun bump it yeah it's just I mean and it's just there's no way that that's going to be measured at that level yeah that's something I've been struggling with lately it's just like I'm getting it's hotter and hotter wraps and yeah minus five happened yeah and it was like I do I tell them it's just not going to come back that loud or I mean yeah you guys well we we I mean how do you say it I mean I I will say something and then he filters it listen those [ __ ] are like what the [ __ ] you know you know then Fernando goes um everything is great guys hi guys you know can you uh you know can you you understand that that that's beyond the mastering level so what we're gonna do is we're gonna give you um the level that that we've mixed it at but we're also going to bump it up so you can compare it to your reference but understand that you know nice and I'm like yeah you tell them man like you're dictating what he's typing I'm like he's like it is I would say if we if we get a reference mix that's like up to like minus six loves uh who will roll our eyes on side but I'll I'll we'll match it if you give me something that's louder than that uh we we've gotten like minus two yeah which is insane yeah we we we're not playing that game yeah then then the email comes right you know what I mean yeah and that one comes from Michael no no no no no no no no no no no no mine is like what the [ __ ] are you thinking about what do seriously heard about volume knob I think I can hear it without hitting play you know how big your song is this big and you know and what what we've had to do even a couple of times with these like extreme cases is like explain it but then we give them back the reference mix and I've gained down the reference mix and printed it I'm like you should you this is your reference mix I've just gained it down but use this to compare to our mix because you can't compare with a 5 DB level difference you know what I mean so yeah yeah so we'll bring the rough down right and send it back to them and like this is your that's the trick yeah yeah that was yeah that you just came up with that recent I was like oh brilliant right and Brilliant and I came up with that because because of doing Atmos because Atmos is -18 yeah so instead of being like hey um you know because of Atmos blow like explain why it's it's quote unquote so quiet yeah but instead of leaving it in their hands I'm just like so here I'm giving you back your stereo Master I've just gained it down like 12 DBS so if you want to compare your stereo to the to our Atmos you know you're you're getting matched right so then I trans use that for stereo with with loud references yeah because I've done that for Atmos but never thought about doing it it was yeah it worked like a charm now okay on um uh on our mix review platform mix up that audio we do have a loudness match on there so I'm usually okay on there but what I've found is like even when I deliver you know a mix-up link to them they're still pulling up their file you know like in music or whatever and listening to that instead of listening to The Ref that I put inside of myself yeah yeah you have to educate them sometimes you know yeah but I I yeah so he translates for me yeah awesome he translates to the proper language yeah but you know I do that because I can just be I could just be open to how I feel I would never talk to a client like that but but you know when I want to just speak my mind I can speak my mind to him and then and he gets to and plus I'll get dramatic you know just for the fun of it yeah yeah but and you guys have known each other for well exactly I mean you know he gets it so I think that's going to be the last question because yeah we have to get out of here and I gotta pack all this stuff up but thanks so much for thank you you know yeah for making me guys um you know for putting this together because here we are you know it it it's a complex system and I'm so happy that so many of you you know have uh committed to it and and enjoying it and it is a process and it takes time and that's why I thought today you know answering a lot of your questions will hopefully help you understand this method a bit better and um again it's all about really it's just a tool to help you create to be more Dynamic and emotional in your mix this is all about the song how can you make the song Come Alive and be more touching the listener um more touching okay forget the grammar but um you understand that this is strictly a tool and so without your creativity it's me it remains a tool but you do have to learn to understand that everything is about post-compression and so there's three different stages and I think you know by explaining this a bit more today you have a better idea of where to start to make sure when things kind of go wrong go back to this last episode and it I think that's pretty much will address your concern so thanks everybody thank you and um happy mixing foreign

Channel: Puremix

Views: 38,521

Keywords: andrew scheps, andrew scheps tutorial, audio engineer, mick guzauski, mix tank, music production, puremix, puremix live, scheps plugins, waves plugin

Id: 7TxIA7AfWQ4

Length: 178min 54sec (10734 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023