Masterclass: Mixing Orchestral Scores w/ Jake Jackson and Christian Henson

[Music] hi this is justin coletti of sonic scoop and thanks for joining me for more mixcon today we are deep into mixcon 2021 with a special masterclass from not one but two amazing masters in their craft we have got the film score mixer award-winning film score mixer jake jackson and the acclaimed film score composer christian henson in case you're not familiar with him jake jackson actually did a mixcon masterclass a few years back and it was a big hit now he's back for more and going to be taking a slightly different angle this time which we'll get into in just a minute he has worked on huge films tv shows with big artists names like star wars loki doctor who black mirror and a whole bunch more he's worked with artists like nick cave boniver laura pussini and christian henson is a composer who's worked on scores of scores in particular in his native great britain and he's also one of the founders of spitfire audio one of the makers of some of the best instrument and sample libraries out there for film composition video game composition tv composition as well as you got major artists using these things bands like radiohead and you two have been known to crack open these spitfire libraries as have countless artists and producers the world over so big thanks to spitfire audio for making this one free to the public check out anything they make over at spitfireaudio.com in this mixcon masterclass their focus is going to be on combining sampled sounds with live recorded sounds whether that's in the context of a big fancy film scoring stage or a humble home studio where you're taking live sounds that you've recorded and layering them with sounds you're going to find in sample libraries both to enhance the sound of sample libraries but also use sample libraries to enhance the sounds of live recorded material you may have tracked on your own end really extra cool treat both christian and jake will be answering questions so if you want to enter them into the live chat right here they'll be answering our questions in real time so if you've got a question during the live premiere feel free to type it right into the live chat right there to get an answer from christian and jake one last quick housekeeping note for you we have got a huge giveaway going the mixcon mega giveaway where you can enter for three chances to win thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of free gear from all the mixed con sponsors check that out over at sonicscoop.com mixcon giveaway that's sonicgroup.com mixcon giveaway for your chance to enter to win the mixcon mega giveaway all right without further ado let's get right into it christian jake take it away hi there my name's christian henson i'm a film tv and computer games composer and also founder of a sample company called spitfire audio i'm jake jackson i am also working the same field i mix but i record and mix music for film tv and computer games i also work on a lot of the spitfire audio um samples but i've also mixed tv shows like loki uh films and uh games like ori and things like that so it's like some you know hi we both work in a nice world and enjoy music and mixing absolutely and we thought it'd be interesting to talk today about um film score i'm working on and a technique that i always use which is a hybrid one which is using a combination of orchestral samples and a live orchestra and i think it's particular opportunity on this one because we got to use a an orchestra of 40 strings which is quite a big force at air studios in the hall of air studios yeah um i i think some of the things that we'll talk about today don't have to be you don't have to worry if you don't record uh orchestras you can use the same tips and techniques for just using samples or even just your own recording sounds so i think we could try and make it as inclusive to everybody as possible a friend of mine said once the difference between um sample only music is that you know good composition with great sounds can make the hairs on your arms and back of your neck go up but live musicians will make you cry and i think that that's something that i always talk about when comparing say for example i imagine we're going to maybe listen to the demo um and versus what we've recorded and what you've tracked and mixed um the thing i often urge people to not listen to is the difference in sound but in the difference of how things make you you feel and i think that there's certainly um some real established techniques that we've employed in creating these hybrid scores which people may find interesting yeah and we can also talk about the relationship between a composer and engineer too which is quite useful for for up-and-coming engineers yeah absolutely let's to start by describing what we've got this in a session because it's this is a session that is kind of it's based on my mix template for 5.1 we're going to monitor into stereo today because i have a stereo fault down in it too but just just to very quickly show you how i would set up a mix session like in this in this form um we won't go into the real depth of that because it's taken that's a must gloss in itself i think i want to talk about more about you know techniques and mix that you know that the process so just quickly talk you through what we've got i i won't go into the i o setup page because it's it's it doesn't necessarily need to but we've got um the film at the top of the top of the session this is this this one um i tend to i tend to uh view it in blocks rather than frames just to stop it rendering those frames all the time which just ends up when you zoom in and out takes time uh sorry that that's there's why it doesn't look like some people would expect to see it we've got the dialogue and effects here that i play out i've got them on a vca here so i can easily toggle that on and off and control the volume of that and also the stereo and the 5.1 mix which are independent of each other so that i can listen you know so i can if i'm playing back with dialogue i can play back with music and more music level you'd expect but we'll turn off the 5.1 and listen in stereo because that's how you're going to hear it i've got here my record tracks so i've got 12 stems here we've got here a demo so this is the christian's demo we've got some uh three or four um stems of his playback for when we use that at the uh recording session then i've got here are the each of the multi-track of of the stems and i think what i decided to do with this score is not give you like a massive kind of 60-track multi-track um i instead just kind of went with with instrument groups and styles of playing so stuff like strings long scary strings shorts i also really featured the cellos and basses so i made sure that the cellos and basses were on a separate channel so that we could balance those up stuff like percussion uh untuned percussion pianos that kind of thing so so that we're not there's 120 minutes of music to track and mix here in just just several days so it's not about breaking my my mixes into smithereens and getting jake to spend his valuable time basically rebuilding my mixes the other thing is that we are working for a client that client is the director and what's absolutely crucial is what he's signed off on doesn't differ massively from what we deliver so it's it's it's about giving us both a fighting chance and using our time for what it's best at so you've spent time um in the writing process with the samples and perhaps you should talk about that a little bit as well um in terms of how you might choose um tonbra over volume maybe for type some of the things but but there's no point in me asking for every single sample um separately when i what i'm going to do is put it back to the same level because like christian says it's really important that it matches to a certain degree what the director has approved and the director and the producers and because he might be ten people who have approved it um and as long as i think it sounds better then it's all it's it's all good but it can't sound drastically different same but better i think that's great i think i think one key key factor here though jake is that we are mixing in my writing room um so if we felt that something was a little bit it needed to be separated we did do some reprints absolutely very easy but that i think that's important for mixed engineers to understand too sometimes it is worth going to um the composer's room if they've got a suitable room to mix in because they know what it sounds like and so they're much happier to approve cues much more easily because it's based on that i mean i know this room well and i know you well so i knew what i was aiming for but so but perhaps sometimes you know and i do a lot of mixing in my own room but sometimes it's good to go hear other rooms learn different things different speakers and yeah and techniques and and plugins and whatnot uh just to finish off going through this session we've then got the orchestral multitrack which is a lot of tracks um we're recording 40 strings and in fact we have 40 microphones plus the room mics the reason for that being is that um this is 2021 and we're in the middle of the pandemic and in the recording in london each musician has to be um isolated for each other via space not by anything else but but they're in their own isolation so it makes spot mics between there are no desks for for those who understand uh orchestral layout um for string layouts but we decided to put one um microphone on each player a to have more control but b because that's the sound that you were yeah i knew that this was going to be a socially distant session when i started writing it six months ago so i actually lent into that and one of the instructions i gave to the band was i didn't actually want them to particularly worry about creating a silky blended sound but to actually play out as soloists to give us a slightly more bohemian sound and i think that suits use of close mics which i think that we both agree can be a bit shonky sounding sometimes certainly it's certainly depending on the room but also you know when you're in a bit of a room like that but this is a yeah when you hear that this is a horror score so it needs to have that edge and individuality so i've got myself control of that which is you know a lot to deal with but but there's there's not a lot of um pre-master you know stems so this gives us a lot of that so you can see that is in fact here uh two we did this in two passes um a bigger big string section and a smaller string section so we've got um a a main line and a second separate short line and this is edited because i just put it in time there's a bit of a bit of loose timing near the beginning so that's what that's those chops are um and then we've got in the some of these folders we've got um this is this is some level some vcas for the reverb so i control volume of if i need to do some rides with the reverb levels for whatever reason i've got those here and then i've got my um master buses um i've got uh reverbs here before each stem again we'll talk about stems in a minute so you've got all your stem reverbs and some delays and some surround effects and some sub effects and some rooting effects so let's briefly talk about stereo versus 5.1 most people know the difference between stereo and 5.1 but it's um the 5.1 is to kind of step up what you get in most cinemas these days before you go up to atmos but it's just um it's a stereo left and right with a center speaker um surround left surround right and uh lfe channel and the lfe is the sub which is a effects rather than a for a film mix you should use as a um effects rather than a base management and that's an absolute that's a if if the dubbing engineer uh um who mixes the sound effects dialogue and music together if they see continuous program in lfe like continuous like waveforms um they'll simply mute it because it will interfere with room ambience and and sound effects and all of that kind of stuff so it is absolutely not part of your base management uh so we'll talk briefly about stems um why do we why we got so many why are we mixing to so many tracks well that's because we're doing a film mix and again when we're not we're mixing i'm mixing for you and you will approve a 4.5 a full a single 5.1 mix however we're working with temporary dialogue we're working temporary effects um we're working in fact to temporary cuts in fact most of the time this day so the music has to be edited or or there'll be new sound effects that have come in and so if we gave just one mix file like you would traditionally if you were giving a um you know a record and there's a really important bit of dialogue that's had to move or always been needs to be whispered you don't want the uh to be able to take all your music down if there happens to be a like a tympani or a symbol scrape or something across that moment so if you give it in stems that gives the music editor or the double mixer a chance to just take that one instrument out without losing the actual your melody for example or you know anything like that so it's it's a very common thing now to deliver in stems um and importantly if you're delivering stems for a film the 12 or in this case 12 or all the stems should some to make the full mix so that you're not um there's no difference between the full mix and the and the stems okay so basically the full mix that is up there is is an internal sum it's an internal sum yeah yeah and obviously stemming uh uh means that you can't then master the full mix because the full mix has to match indeed yeah because you don't want yeah this is the way it's done if if you're worried about it being a mask mastered sound then that happens at the output on the film or then when you make your soundtrack absolutely so stuff like um you know slamming a drum track and having the strings pumping against it is difficult to achieve it's difficult to achieve but not impossible but it is difficult but that's but that's you know that's that's the job of the mixer to try and get to get it sound like that and because you've got uh these different stems i imagine every stem has to have its own reverb yes that's why we've got so many reverb returns is because if i just scoot down here you'll see um each one has to have its own reverb so that the strings go to the strings reverb so that you have everything is kept separate from each other um i've got two 5.1 reverbs on each of these channels so i've got a um an altiverb here with mechanics hall which is a really nice sounding not too bright um 5.1 reverb and then i've got a exponential audio symphony 3d which is a again another five foot one reverb i like to use a combination of out of a of a convolution and an algorithmic reverb at the same time i think it helps blur the edges between one sound um chris and i've done we've talked a lot we always talk a lot about reverb but we've agreed we've kind of agreed that having two reverbs just makes it sound more well less less like a reverb or more like you'd expect it to sound because the two mechanics of reverbs fight against each other and i think i think that's true with with most perspective most aspects i often use two reverbs over one because i think it just sounds better yeah absolutely it's like one's dealing with the early reflections of a fake room and one's dealing with the tail yeah exactly or just the fact that there's two they just might they just confuse the ear to take it's more you know to make it sound less like you're hearing i think it's because you all reverbs have a characteristic um and you and if you know that reverb you then know that characteristic whereas if you use two you're covering both those things up but it's a kind of it's a it just makes it to muddle yeah and we mix wet for film for a couple of reasons one is the perforated screen means you get a bit of top top roll off which basically is the first thing to disappear is reverb as you probably know but also the minute you add in dialogue traffic noise anything that contains white noise it really dries things up like makes them dry as a bone so i usually with jake pre apple dolby atmos spatial audio days um uh would recommend uh remixing slightly the original soundtrack album to be a little bit drier so you'll probably be quite surprised at how wet this mix sounds but the minute it goes gets thrown onto a screen but you know speakers behind a perforated screen with all of your leaf rustling and clothes rustling and and dialogue um it it becomes that kind of widescreen cinematic sound yeah and you'll see the eagle-eyed amongst you'll see that i've also got this thing called long bourbon i mean this this score requires some really long reverbs um so we've got a 10 second reverb here which sounds like a lot and it is a lot but i'm using this sparingly or in the right place in the right context and on the right sounds and that's the great thing about having um stems is that you can each of these can be different and and it works for each individual instruments now you'll also might wonder while i'm glad i've got these on sends and rather than across the actual the track that's firstly because these are stereo tracks and i need to make a 5.1 so if i have it as a as ascend on here bus send i've got control over sending it that stereo to a 5.1 but also i've got a way of controlling all the reverb level if i want to so if you want like you say if we come back to the stereo mix and we want it less we do that rather than have to go to individual channel and change in the mix thing so i work with the majority of the time i work with um my reverbs at 100 and us and have it as ascend be warned against uh not making your mixes if you're going for an epic widescreen sound i'd be very very wary about not making your mixes nice and wet because i what i've experienced it was admittedly in a dubbing theater in france about 15 years ago but they suddenly whacked loads of elise's quadriverb reverbs on the stems to to make them even more widescreen um which was a bit alarming this is the this is christian this is how christians have been writing and then with how it's been delivered to or been approved by um by the the the next director thank you [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so that's a mixture of um all of the samples the orchestral samples you hear are spitfire audio we've got this new sample library coming out so it's got some an early previews of some sounds from that new sample i've been there but also those kind of plinks that you hear are actually from a piano that i um basically someone was going to throw it on a tip so i took it into a studio and i abused it in ways that you shouldn't abuse a piano but it was for the tip anyway so saws hammers nails plucking with fingernails putting flannels on all of that kind of stuff and what you heard there is a combination of all of those i then dropped it from a 100 foot crane to see what it would sound like sounded rubbish um uh so um you know then you put it did you did put it in this gift eventually i did it did actually go into skip eventually but i think you know it's it lives on in it's it's sampled form um so um the the important thing for me to represent to the director and producers is how it's going to sound on the day it sounds it sounds extraordinary that you are creating something that sounds hyper realistic and then spending a lot of money making it sound just a little bit more realistic but as i say you know what i think you know you should bear in mind is not the sound but the feeling i think this this particular cue uh really best exemplifies that but the other thing that's absolutely crucial about the demo and i've had worked with engineers who they play me a mix of my track and it's so clear that they haven't listened to the demo and it just gives me the fear because if you send it then to the dub and a dub is a high pressure environment for a director and he doesn't recognize what he's listening to it really can create a lack of trust in that very important relationship between composer and director so um i'm sure it's quite agonizing sometimes listening uh to my mixes and awful base management and all of that kind of stuff but it is a a good starting point it's a very invaluable starting point for a mix engineer because more often than not unless you're mixing your own music you're being brought in for somebody else and they want you to make their mix sound different better but it's also got to have most of the time certainly for film music it's got to have the essence of what they've been working to particularly these days this modern way of where an artist is working on themselves and so we'll be working on a laptop and we'll have spent a lot of time getting the sounds getting in the mix kind of close so i think the job of the mixing engineer has changed a lot you know even the last three or four years where with self-producing artists where you have to take what they've done and just give it that final polish and the the key is i hope i'll give you a few little tips about how to just make those not not take away from what the engine what the composer's done but just give those little mix tips and and there's mixed gloss so maybe just we could just skim through some of the the stems that i've provided you yeah and you'll notice that they're all in the in the um track and they're all live so there's a duplication effect with um with samples so if you hit one note saying the cellos you may have 10 cellos 50 microphones and a hall the minute you hit down two notes you've got 20 cellos um a hundred microphones and two holes so it has this this real kind of epicness to it and there's a richness and a lack of focus that people have become used to in modern film schools so you'll find often that many composers will keep the samples in but kind of sitting underneath the orchestra but it might be just if we could just blip through each stem to show how these things are broken up for sure the only thing i do remove from the stems for jake is reverb because i know that he needs to blow that up to 5.1 wants control over that but if there are any musical delays i will leave those in yeah the the important thing about the reverb is the fact is that i don't want to be putting reverb on top of reverb because then that makes it all too wet so i asked for it just you know like i said unless it's a specific invaluable to sound or i can't recreate it i have them dry let me just start and just show you my routine so i i would start here in a blank session i've already routed these to their stems but you can see here here are my um here are my 12 stems we've got a way of rooting to 5.0 to stereo surrounds or the sub but i'm just going to use the stereo because these are stereo tracks and i wanted to go to the left and right so um here are the long the long so what i do first is i listen to it dry because it's the most that's the best way of being able to hear it in its rawest sense and i'm not going to try and do too much what i want to do is just add a bit of eq really because from what you were saying about the multiplication effects this is where samples for me you most notice the difference in samples is the brightness of adding you know three or four in a chord lots of things it just quickly fills up um the kind of 3k region that is in a way makes it sound faker and so my my kind of tip for most samples is to try and remove around that two three four k region and just pull it back a slightly only two or three db but it just makes it sound more real if you don't really know what i mean listen to some orchestral recordings and listen to the way that strings sound in a you know like a john williams school or something like that that's been you know been it's been that's been mixed by um anna myerson or john murphy you know it's got rich and it's got a real beauty and samples don't have that quite so much and so i think this is a great way of starting to make it sound more real so i just grab around this kind of frequency and pull that away so i can find a bit this a bit so i often like to put the top just a little bit of the top end back in again like that so you've got that i'll see if you can hear the difference you see this has just got it just makes it feel just a bit more mellow this isn't i mean this is this these are muted string sounds it's not it's a slightly different sound but even so that i think that makes a a real difference um and then i will add my reverbs now if we go to here we've got uh we're in a second stem and here are my reverbs so we'll do that and again what i'll do is is i will pull it to the right level start and stop listen to how much tail it's got and again it's about knowing what these strings sound like in a realistic environment is how much we've put on them for this stage it's like now obviously they're recorded in a hall but you don't hear the tail when you're playing it like that so you have to add a little bit more reverb in and it just again if it's got not because of noise reduction the way samples made you need to still add reverb back in again even though it's recorded in a big room so that's why that's it this is it that's it with one reverb let me put the other reverb on and see if we can notice the difference again it's a similar level [Music] i put them about the same same volume now if you listen to the tail for me it really sounds it's on the movements i hear it yeah so that's so that's now what i'll do that's what i would do is that i've also got a way of adding a little bit of extra surround information because of course these are stereo files spitfire do do a way of being able to make you can split it out into surround but however that just adds a lot of extra extra time and yeah you can recreate it with with um with reverbs and with effects so i've got a surround effect that i do here a neat tip with with uh with british pro tools is you can save um let me just add some of that surround um information in again you can't hear that but it adds a little bit extra surrounds now a great tip with pro tools is you can actually save these information as um a recall send if you save the track preset um features into user and this is um stem two verbs now that whenever i get to anything else on stem two i can for example this um these these ones [Music] once i've got my reverb setting [Music] has had a bit more richness i think just because i know this is a needing to help carry this melody but now i can go to my recall send and bring in my stem2 verbs and it puts all those settings up so it saves me again it's a way of just saving a few seconds which this is only has you know 10 sounds but if i had 200 that would save me five minutes yeah 200 times 50 cues you know it's it's a lot of that so let's just flick [Music] through these ones short strings we actually want this kind of abrasiveness so i'm not going to take that away too much in fact i might enhance it a bit you know but you notice a lot of the eq i'm doing is very subtle and that's kind of my style i guess but i think you've got to be careful with orchestral um mixing is that you don't change the sound of something because then by changing the sound of something you're then taking away from what the actual instrument instrumentation is and i think that's when you'll start chasing your tail as a mixer i like to think of almost moore's orchestral mixing as a as a balancing act rather than rather than a mixing thing where you're trying to get each of the each of the instruments to sound as beautiful as it could like you're really like you're in an orchestra you know like the best orchestra will sound best with the best musicians and the best instruments and that's what i'm trying to do this year so make the best sounding thing i'm not i'm not going to try and take away some of you know i'm not gonna take away too much of this stuff this stuff because immediately it's just because you're worried about it getting in the way of the base and that just they don't sound like strings anymore they sound then and that will never pass your ears or the producer's ears so it's about it's not about using some of the traditional um banned things of taking frequencies away it's more about just making everything sound really nice [Music] again um i'll put some reverb i won't go to you see sounds but you can get an idea of what we're going here we've got some scary strings here let's look at some of the other other sounds and what i might do today shall we christian so here we're into much more with atmospheric sound and here my delays musical delays are in place now because i've got the um so what might do again there's no there's no need for me to compress this this is not a loud sound it's not it needs to sit in the mix so i'm just going to give it a bit of follow my mantra of making it sound really nice so what can i do to make this sound sound really nice well i'll start with just just checking if it needs any eq or not again i don't want to go completely crazy because this christian sound he's used to it but i want to just give it little extra bit of that's quite nice if i might even just make it um give the give it extra bit of width where you can play using the using the side eq as well and this this resonance might be a bit much so we'll just perhaps just i'm trying not to cheat by using uh this this eq but it's really helpful for making against saving the time to be able to look at i'm not looking at that for that thing for that frequency but to know which frequency it is is really helpful so that sounds it's nice and so we're going to add some reverbs to this um i start off by having each of the reverbs the same so here is um and as a composer i like things to sound like they're in the same room yeah exactly that's absolutely i think that's quite important as a guide to start because each year you end up with a lot of you might think this is a bit boring having 24 20 12 the same reverbs but if you put ever if you start with everything in the same reverb it will sound like it's it makes better much better than having yeah 12 different reverbs so that's nice but i know you've put delays on this and i think the delays would sound nice so i've got myself some delays as well and well how i've done this is um i have um some echo boys just set here some ping pong delays um just a quite straightforward style and i've got these ones going to the front and i've got these let's go to the rear and these ones are slow at the rear so you get a really nice like ping pong at the front and back it's a really nice effect um i think it's it's really nice um so let's see what that sounds like you can't hear it in stereo but but you'll hear what happens to it sometimes you can use these almost like a revo but you're not necessarily hearing the delays that much we're using it as a way of extending the sound it's nice and then we also let's use this really long reverb as well for this one because i know that's we're going to need to go there with that [Music] so you can really hear that that's long but it adds a little atmosphere to the mix so that's nice we've got a piano so this is and this is a kind of normal standing piano so for example this is your recording we recorded together this is the felt piano recorded at air studios with me playing it [Music] again it's a quite a straightforward um sound i might put a little bit of compression on this just just because there's some of these notes that just stick out a little bit um i've been using throughout this film for the piano um the dbx 160 let's find where that is and there it is and just again i don't want to do much compression i want to catch it if there's any notes that just stick out because it's a yeah because it's a sample sometimes with pianos you can't really feel that but i quite like this is a it's going to just again let's find that sweet spot where it's just taking it just taking the edge off and then a bit of eq [Music] it doesn't need much eq this sounds really nice i know it's a really nice instrument again just want to help just help it cut through the cut through the long strings a bit and i'll again put the reverb on it and the like now what's the the is the piano is the drops piano it's the abused piano so this sounds kind of if i see if i look at this now i'd be like okay right i've got a very dry sounding piano this can't be what you want so let's let's listen to the demo and listen to what christians have done here i can hear this has got big reverb on it and it's loud and it's proud and it's kind of exciting so what can we do to make this kind of sound exciting well let's make it really resonant so let's find those resonances in the in the eq [Music] and just give them a nice little push [Music] and as those jangles are really nice so let's give them a lot of brightness [Music] i know that'll feed really nicely into our reverb so let's do that [Music] but we know so this was going to sound great with our uber long one this is what it's designed for number eight fantastic um now mandy's what is mandy's christian mandolins mandolins [Music] sir you're actually with us in edinburgh and there's lots of amazing folk musicians up in this part of the world in scotland yeah anywhere scotland uh so um so they again sound lisa sound lovely and these will really cut through with a nice bit of really nice nice bit subtle [Music] let's give them a nice bit of brightness you can see we've got a bit of let's take away some of that little bottom end we don't need it's from the recording i'm not going to try to take away any of the sound but it's going to get rid of that low stuff just to that that we don't need obviously because it's just that's just yeah foot taps or just the room again this will sound real what i'll do is i'll show you how i treat this is when we open up the my mix session and then here's um some monitoring percussion so the end here we've got some so here we've got some nice low end low end that will add to the sub so again let's just put that in my sub settings here [Music] and again would add a long revive to that so then let's just talk briefly about the multi-track so again this is this is massive and this is a whole we could talk about this um as a mix mixing by itself forever i know that i've got um the tree mics for um basically we've got the room and we've got the close mics so if you're being if you're not an engineer who is going to record this but you're going to be given it by a recording mixer engineer look out for two things look out for the room mics and look out for the close mics if you're lucky enough to have it recorded in a really good room then use the room mics for what they are um the tree is a kind of industry standard way of recording a room and start with that that goes to the left center right as you can see from from here so left center to right speaker um it's three m50s generally three m50s on a on a deca tree um we've got some outriggers here these are and it go in addition to the deck of tree to make it a slightly wider signal um again these should be used to cut to taste of how much you how much water you want it so this is a tree and you can see when we add in um the outriggers it just takes the image that's a little bit wider so you just need to to taste you know change the level of that to taste nice the ambience or the surrounds are what go in the surround speakers again they're at the back of the room you can see actually that this has been not not um at the recording stage one size is a bit lower than the other so what i'll do is i'll just trim this one up so that it's it's level at this stage so that i can don't have to worry about my levels here being different from each other because that just puts your mind up at rest again you could eq these if you wanted to but this is down to i chose these microphones so i know they're the sound that i want for those i might have some very subtle eq on them just to roll off some of the rumble up there but that's it i've got some mid mics because the orchestra was so spread out i've got those again these are going left center again across the stereo spectrum the gallery is fantastic this is air has this amazing huge room and these give us some real natural reverb [Music] if you compare this to the tree for example the tree is three meters three and a half meters above the orchestra and the gallery marks are [Music] kind of 20 meters away and you hear the difference it's really nice it has a real nice rich comfyness around it um and then i've got some uh bass mics overall mics and then some ribbon mics for a slightly different sound [Music] and then i've got all of our spot mics now you're here by listening to these that they all stay these are um you know close-up mics and these are panned as to where they are in the room so you can really hear now you've got the violin you've got violin mics you've got the second violin mics [Music] violas [Music] jelly and the bases so you can see you've got obviously these were recorded in the same room so there is no separation as such but it gives you control over individual elements so that if you say you want to have more of the cello lead under the bases i can i can control those so this is a balance of of of the close and the room so very interested to see how that's on on the mixing desk how how that yeah of course let's have a look so um that's what they are they're down here so you can see here we go let's just close some of these windows so you can see them a bit better so here you can see that um the tree is left center right surrounds around and then i've got what i've done here is um i've got a 5.1 channel or a stereo so anything in the room i tend to put the 5.1 and this other ones i put in stereo because i don't want them going to the center speaker because the center speaker is for the dialogue i'm really surprised that the faders are almost in in unity and that's that's because i haven't i'll show you on the other one perhaps perhaps now's the time to go to our session so let's pop together a section we'll see how i've done this one you bet one you've prepared well i prepared earlier you can see actually this is finished because you've got the um the the the finished mixing in here but if you go through we can see what i've done here i've got some um here's all my and so to attract but when when you're mixing are you monitoring through those tracks that you yes i am i'm monitoring this track so i know exactly what i'm listening to and then when i print it i'm looking at it so i can see if i've made any mistakes by having you you might you might if you've got you might have put the reverb to the wrong stem and so you can see yeah so so you're monitoring actually the what you're actually listening to is the full the full mix yeah i'm listening to the formatting so you're miss listening to the sum of all the stems yeah that's correct so here is um here are our multi-tracks let's have a look at this on the mixer how that might look i've gone through and um here's a folder you can see that from looking here i can see how i've rebalanced these and so let's have a look at the mix of how how that looks so here it's this blue one here christian so this you can see i'm using a lot more of the of the tree the trees here i mean it's a bit of the mids and then i've got quite a bit of rip quite like the ribbons in there because they're generally quarter anyway and then i've gone through and balanced each of these spot mics against themselves and then i've turned them all down a bit so they're down about six or five or six db against the room mics because that's what i felt was about the right let's see if i can actually if i can demonstrate that to you put that on i've got all the spot mic so here we've got all the room the room it's a really nice sound but it hasn't got quite got that bohemian that edge you wanted and here is all the spot mics so you can see it's much more immediate and in your face and i can hear there's a little bit of reverb on there as well yes that's yes because that's going through my reverb saying exactly which goes from here so if we then combine the two and that do do you find that putting a bit of reverb on there on the actual band is a great way of blending with with samples absolutely absolutely yeah yeah absolutely yeah so you can see here you've got you've got so you've got some of that close individuality you're after i'll just turn them on and off the spots and you can see the level i chose and why i chose it it's subtle but i know that it's a it's a it's a beautiful sound right yeah it's stunning so let's have a quick look at some of the choices i made in the actual mixer here we've got this um crystallizer i put on on the um i wanted to add a few extra delays but but there were pitch to add to even more accentuate your alternatives of it being about june piano being whacked um i have a listen to what i did here with this just makes this look more chaotic [Music] cheeky let's play that without it so you can hear what the reason i did that [Music] see this was me trying to sneak in a little flavor of something i could sneak in without you realizing but it made me feel happy to be able to throw in a few little few little things and i always have a wry smile on my face because i'm very attached to these things so i i hear when things go in but you can see i've i've automated it because as a way of trying to hide it to a certain degree but also not to make too much of it because then say that would then get it we've been wasting my time let's look at some of the other bits and pieces i've done here [Music] there you go so you can hear this is this is so you can hear the sound with them without my effects [Music] because it makes it a bit more present it does yeah uh it's a bit loud as well i guess there's one thing but there's a [Music] synth so i'll put a little bit of extra chorus on that cheeky chorus is illegal and it's about some of the spring shots can i had a game no a bit naughty chorus [Music] again [Music] um these mandolins i mean these the civilians have these sounds [Music] and then we've got um our second part of strings have a quick listen to those you can see i've i've ridden these with uh fade and player movements and some i've done with clip gain um clip gain i tend to use for kind of like you can see here just as a way of doing a long fade which is just quick as i know i wanted to get to this loud at the end and this at the beginning why don't the fades phase massively this is this is a this is a equal power phase so it's just all it's doing is changing the volume it's a very neat way of being able to use it if you use a different phase one it's still using the same information it's just changing the volume between i've got i've got the first half of it at one volume and second and it's just going it's taking between the two volumes oh i see yes so i just it's much quicker than me having to draw it in and also if i just want to if i doesn't get to the right place i can i can just tweak it i love using that uh but the strings i like to do as i go past and i've used the faders here and you can see i've got them there on on the group uh or the folder tracks in fact and then here we've got some um more strings here it should be noted that i asked them to play out of tune at that point yes he wanted it wanted it all to be quite uh kind of bohemian sounding i think this is a really good way of mixing is is for the your client to not be with you at the mix and you prefer that as well yeah i've learned the hard way that um you get snow deafness i call it um and i think that what's great about working with an engineer is you come in with your objectivity uh and i've been working on this for months on end and things that you think could be improved are very obvious to you and then when you've been you know in in the weeds with this i can then come in with a fresh set of ears and and a fresh perspective so i think it's kind of like a tag team uh thing i think there's also there's something deeply frustrating um about listening to your music being messed around with and and mixed and uh i think that tempers can fray with impatience and all of that kind of stuff yeah i would certainly agree yeah we do it in blocks so um uh um i'll let jake get on with it into you know afternoon into the evening and then in the morning best time to listen to stuff um uh we congregate with the coffee well you have a water and uh and then um then i just basically sit in the hot spot and i always keep my mouth shut unless there's something absolutely fundamentally kind of that there was a piano cue that we did today and it was like no that needs to sound more like a lead vocal a bit more in your face than in the room um yeah if there's something not kind of fundamentally wrong with it i'll just sit there and just really analyze what it is often when you listen to a mix it may appear to you to be totally broken and then you'll just go no hang on the mandolins are too loud and it'd be that one thing that you sit them back and it just suddenly locks into what you recognize so i'm very calm and collected and just wait to the end and um and i find the process really speeds up i think it's it's probably best to say that it would be unwise to mix the whole film and then have me come in no no no no it should be just to finish off your final degree with you i i like the fact i also like the fact to be able to re-listen to something with fresh ears whether that be the same day or the next day you listen to the fresh perspective you're listening to it with somebody in the room with you which makes you you know makes you hear it differently i also try and listen to it listen to a mix well i'm not listening to the mix so i might be looking at my phone doing an email um and or you know just doing something to distract myself so that i hear things a noise or a volume something that i haven't heard for you know three hours because i've been concentrating on something else and they yeah by not listening your ears trick you into it but well no no just i think it's unwise to do to mix the entire film of course and review because we established just a few there are yeah well i mean there are a few things that yeah that you you would approach from a slightly more produced sound which we do we have done i said no i just want all of these instruments to sound like they're in the same room yeah and so it's a so it's a case of you don't want to go too far so i did one or two queues and then christian told me okay great fine now you can go off and do your day job and i can go do my day job and then we can congregate together and i can then you know i can mark myself the next day as well which is which is great and yes i know that means i can't use any of the fancy outboard and log out build gear because i'm constantly tweaking my template and my mix but i think the benefit of being able to mix in a door is so great that you can use all these plugins and they're all they're all recallable and they're all and they recall within 30 seconds you know you've got that but but you're a great pragmatist as well i mean if if we had time to use all this you know if we had a month to mix this you know and we had an assistant to print off each string yeah yeah yeah then then i'm i'm sure we'd we'd we'd relish the chance we're part of a crew that has to deliver a score uh in a reliable manner on time and in budget as well and in budget yeah absolutely and i think it's really you know i look back to working with some other engineers and my own working practices where i used to sit in the room whilst the engineer was working and we worked through the night sometimes not sleeping for three days we have to be responsible um and keep ourselves in in in in a in a state of physical and mental health that enables us to make the right decisions but to also prepare the score so it doesn't screw things up for the rest of the crew absolutely and i think some of those some of the easy way of doing that is to is to you know learn to learn your door and understand where you can save the seconds so if you're doing something all day long and it's taking you three or four seconds to go to a menu and find out what it is and do that every time you know go there make it a key command or get a something you can make to those key presses do whatever it is like put those recall sends on this so that you can recall so that you can save yourself those seconds because it adds up it adds up and it really and it really but also give yourself a beer break from time to time as well absolutely well i mean i see i i've i used to find that when i prepare my templates for uh within my door which is logic um i used to find that first week of just messing around with routings and instruments a bit indulgent i felt guilty that i wasn't actually composing but it really saves me it can save me weeks at the at the other end and that's you you're just like you're a real kind of pedant about preparing a template that is going to uh not add minutes to absolutely no this this template you know the the kind of top and the bottom of this template is one i've been working on for three or four years and it looks the same so i know exactly where it is i can zoom up and down find it it is and you know think simple things like having to name these tracks they find the quick way of using this this batch track rename so you can name the tracks really quickly so you don't have to go each one each time it's just about making it quick learning your door learning what sounds really good and learning to have the relationship between your client and in connection with that jake um so we we looked at all of those you know the fabulously mixed uh orchestra how things were panned uh and we've got 40 cues to work on so do you remix the orchestra on every single queue no no i don't well how do you go about doing so so i start with the first queue where it's the first queue in the movie or the first queue that i want to start with and it is a blank template it is a blank table so i start with the orchestra and i make that sound like i want to sound i choose to reverbs i want to sound i put it in the right space i choose the amount of reaver i want and then i set that up like it's a mixing desk so i kind of go right there's those channels on that desk the next time i open up a piece of music that i'm going to put the orchestra in the same place and it will sound the same that's my starting point and then the same with all the other things so i start do the strings long put the right reverb on it that is and i do say then when i finish doing all of those i do a save as remove the audio but keep all the settings the same import session data which is pro tools is incredible at and then i use that to then match those tracks so that string long goes on string long the goes on the the synth goes on the synth and then i can press play and i'll know that you've given me things at the right levels yeah and i and i can then use those settings and so it becomes exponentially faster yes and that's part of my responsibility to you and that's something that the the relationships with composers and engineers uh uh uh that i mean i was part of the development of of this system amongst various composers and engineers in this country understanding that i have to be totally kind of fastidious about the way that i label my stems so you can do the match tracks because it literally saves you hours and hours and hours yeah absolutely the reason i'm doing this is because these sounds stay the same throughout the entire movie they are the sounds you've written to and so there's no point in me starting scratch and opening up a fresh session every time to do the same thing too so it's about focusing your mind and then spending more time mixing and less time on the admin of of this job great so yeah let's listen we've talked about it through let's listen to it [Music] [Music] stunning work jake thank you and i think the comparison for me is it just sounds more emotional more intense or feels rather let's have a let's have a disturb let's see if i've done my job great let's have a listen to the just i'll just flick between the two things you can just hear quickly what the difference is [Music] same piece of music same production just sounds better thanks ever so much for watching till the end and hopefully we can do it again soon cheers all right another great mixcon masterclass i really enjoyed checking that one out in its entirety i hope you do too if you want more from christian and jake we've got another mixcon presentation that's really just on the mixing side from jake we'll link to that here as well as christian you can check out his company over at spitfireaudio.com one of the best makers of sample libraries in the business used on countless major scores for film tv video games and even for big bands like u2 and radiohead and more all right thanks again for joining us remember you can enter to win in that mixcon mega giveaway just go to sonixgoop.com mixcon giveaway that sonicsgoop.com mixcon giveaway for your chance to win thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of free gear also be sure to check out more mixcon we got playlists and all that in the show notes down below if you like this one you're gonna like a lot more of them thanks for hanging out with me this has been justin claudy of sonic scoop brought to you by spitfire audio this time see you next time

Channel: SonicScoop

Views: 14,111

Rating: 4.9374022 out of 5

Keywords: #mixing, #MixCon, #filmscore, #composer, #audioengineer, #mixingengineer, #mixengineer, #filmscorecomposer, #spitfire, #spitfireaudio, #JustinColletti, #masterclass

Id: MSd7Y_skCnE

Length: 63min 7sec (3787 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021