Mixing Masterclass: 'Mixing Your Track for the Club' at IMS College Malta

I'm JC and I'm here today to talk about mixing truck for gloves I think we've got all decided that we should mix maybe your don't ride maybe differently than any other type of music I tend to disagree with that I've been mixing for about 13 years now and I've started mixing dance music from the early 90s on big ssl desk and etcetera and and the way I've approached mixing was always the same way for me a mix comes with the style of the track so different type of style dictate a different process and a different result so if you mix hip-hop you're gonna want a slamming snare drum a big fat cake big fat bass if you mix drum and bass often you're gonna have the kick drum higher than the base because the bottom and the sub bass is gonna have to be on there so it's all about different style again if you do an underground track it may be it may require to be a bit row and not so much processed whereas if you knew you do an ear that idea and track for example super polished and super processed then you're going to have a lot more going on in your mix so for me mixing for club is about more at understanding what it is what the style of what the aesthetic of a mix should be for so for me the techniques mixing for club it is the same as mixing any style you're going to use compression EQ levels pan effects all those kind of stuff so the tools are exactly the same but what are you what do you need for club for a track to work really well in a club environment you're going to want to make sure you've got nice and punchy clear butterman that's going to work well on those big speakers and system you're going to make sure that you've got a balanced mix no matter what it is and easy Jean it's gonna have to be balanced that mean your bottom and your meats you want your the clear meat to be really much there with the presence and clean so one thing may be that you need to consider more for club than any other style is your mix gotta work in mono many clubs especially nowadays kind of modern clubs are made of small rooms so you may be at the bar to get a drink you may go on the dance floor then you may go somewhere else have a chat and you're gonna have little son system in all those different rooms so if you have a mix that uses a lot of stereo what I mean by your elif stereo is maybe one part on one side another part on the other side both of them are out the main riff of the song you may have a problem where you end up being in one room and you hear one song and you go on to the other and you're not hearing the main reefs so mono compatibility is a really big thing in my opinion for club also as an exercise for mixing if you're mixing it sounds great in mono they're gonna sound absolutely awesome in stereo because in mono everything is fighting in the middle so you need to work a little bit more in getting separation whereas as soon as you start telling things you're leaving a lot of space southern in stereo you're like wow so like I was saying in terms of the style of club it's the same there's so many different zone if you go back in the early 90s late 80s early dance music when it was on the ground and there was no budget and nobody really knew what was going on a lot of those records were made at home on a small studio if you think Daft Punk first had been home work was mixed on a Mackie mixer which is a 600 ton mixer it was all about the production about how it was put together it was about the track it wasn't so much nobody was now I'm not sure about the mix on that track people embraced it because the music was great was exciting having said that very much kind of like mid nineties I did a lot of mixing for people like Frankie from set and Sasha and by the by that time we had which a point where there was budget people were buying remix a lot of money we're putting to mixing to the point where actually any single record in pop in the pop world anywhere had two three remixes so we could afford to go in big studios suddenly we were mixing on SSL studios that cost a thousand pounds a day so that kind of changed again so it's important to bear that in mind when you approach your own mixing what it is that you want to achieve so in terms of starting the mix here I've got a track from Ray it's one of our ex students at pond Blanc and we signed the truck we liked it we've got a label that one blank on blank music and we loved the track so much we decided to put it out and it can't be gave us the mix so I can I could play with it I'm gonna play you briefly the mix as is given it to you so that's the mix that regular get me well I like about that mix it's that it's already sound they're you know pretty much as you can see on my mixer every feather is at 0 DB and it clearly has bounced everything the stems for me very nicely I push on the faders on 0 the mix it sounds pretty much there now with electronic music that's one thing to consider is that I don't know how many of you guys when you produce do you mix as you produce I think I've heard those discussion before and I think most people do that and it's probably the right way to do it because you're shaping up the sound and you're building it up to the point where you're like yeah the track is sounding 20 nice now so having said that I don't know how many of you mix with all the MIDI and the virtual instruments contact whatever it is that you're using personally I like to put everything to to audio at some stage like it is here I'm glad that revealer gave us the track in that state you see everything is audio there's two reason why I think mixing from audio is better you're saving CPU you know if I had to have let's say battery for the drums contact for the bass reactor somewhere some synth I'm already heating the CPU pretty hard on top of it as we talked about if you start mixing as you produce you're probably already gonna have lots of plugins as well so by the time you're kind of in a mixed situation your computer is already pretty much strained with the CPU so that's one reason I love to put everything in audio the second reason is that once it's in audio it's totally committed and I think one of the problem nowadays when producing music in the box is that I don't know about you guys but I'm struggling to finish tracks you know with the computer because you're wet thinking I probably could change that and halfway through the meteor shall I change the kingdom should I change the club oh maybe I'm gonna try a different baseline and it's that when are you finishing the song what are you finishing the track and I think comity toward you helps you toward that you're kind of like yeah that's it I'm going to live with it and you know just if you really hate it so much at some sense you're gonna have to go back but committing is really really important because I think many producers limit themselves so they can finish tracks so that that for me is really really important in terms of organizing your mix again I'm so grateful that regular gave me the mix in that state I never receive mixes like that never most of the time at a tent you have to spend the entire day cleaning up so I can start mixing so this one is really organized it's even colored so I've got all the drums at the top in green some effects in red since I mean it's perfect for me I love that I can get on with it right away you see it's working pretty well to the point where I'm like it propped up probably with a bit of mastering probably could put it out that way so what can we do to maybe improve a little bit on that track so I'm gonna close that session now and I'm gonna open that one which is the one I've worked on normally I would probably have a lot more plugins but because that track was stunning so now it's already was pretty much there I felt it wasn't that much to do and I think that's really important there are so many people who suddenly feel oh I've got the plug-in I've got the latest plug-in I've heard this one is wicked I've got to put it on and it's like well do you really have to just because you just bought it or you know whatever so I'm trying to keep it to the minimo because ultimately if you have to do too much to your mix maybe you should go back to the production and kind of fix the problems there's one saying that every mix engineer says this you can't polish a turd so you know make sure it sounds absolutely brilliant to start with and the mix gonna give you an extra ten twenty percent the mix don't expect you know it's about setting your expectation you just you shouldn't expect the mix to suddenly make something average right it just should it should you should have to make something great fantastic that's the plan so more and more I tend to start with the master bus there's a reason behind it and it comes from back in the days of analog world if you start shaping the sand if the mix like it was here was really nice to start with it really works there's no point starting to go on EQ in compressing every single elements what I'm going to end up doing is probably destroying what was working there's a strong danger of that so when when you mix I think it's important to kind of like video knowledge I'm at a stage where it's working that's my reference point you don't want to go below that you want to keep improving so I start on the master buss because that means I can shape my entire cut the color the tone of the mix yeah teach you'd of the mix and what it means is back in the days of analog if you put let's say bringing up a bit of brightening up the entire mix usually you know boosting a bit of Turpan about your mix if you do that on the master buss that means you're gonna have to do you're going to do less on every single Channel if I put let's say 15 K + 2 DB on the master buss I'm probably not gonna have to do as much under my hi-hat on the vocals on whatever the scenes because it's already there and it kind of glues together so I'm a big fan of that and I would advise you to try you know think of it as almost like a pre mastering type of approach if you like so I'm gonna show you my main bus the chain of plugins that I use and obviously there are a lot of alternative every engineer have their own preferences so I'm a big fan of this wave plugin for a start I don't know if any of you guys know that one DNS bus and maybe what I'll do is switch them all off so hopefully you can hear what's doing that plug-in is quite subtle what I do with it is the idea is to emulate a mixing board it's called nonlinear sameen one of the problem with digital is that what you give into it gives you exactly the same back in the days of analog you would send something it could come back to you slightly different that was due to imperfections of analog but since then we've realized there was something nice about it something quite musical about it and since then we are back into kind of chasing our tails a little bee trying to bring that kind of musicality in terms of sonic musicality if you like it simulates three different desk spike with a famous mix engineer and that's his SSL or Mike hedges another famous mix engineer and it's an EMI vintage desk if I spray the difference DMI des armes a bit different the bottom line is different the Japanese difference it has more that kind of I Phi curve if you like and then you've got the Nev Neve oh you had neva is a good friend it's not a lot of work with us at home brain he's an engineer and it's got a customized Neve desk and he develops a lot of plugin for waves it's a much more cleaner desk maybe less color if you like I tend to put that on the master bus first thing and after that what you can do we start putting it on DV individual channel and what it simulates is that kind of summing that happens on an an hour on an analogue desk I'm a big fan of that the second thing I tend to do is put an SSL compressor now it doesn't have to be an SSL it can be an API it could be a vertigo there's a lot of burst compressors for thought for your entire mix the SSL camera is a classic in the sense that it kind of gives you that glue together so now I'm bringing it together with that again I'm doing very little but all those little things had up together and becomes something awfully much better I've got to say I'm a big fan of the UAD plugin and this one sounds so so close to the original and I tend to put a very slow attack and as fast result release as I can that way you preserve the transient the attached very important in dance music the transient on the kick on the snare all those kind of elements are purchases that gives you the energy so a slow attack means that the peak can go through and the contrast I start to compress once the peak have gone through it's one way to add punch to certain sound works a treat on hip on snare and kick drum so you're gonna see I'm doing a little bit of it slightly starting to bring it a little bit more together maybe the low meat is starting to bring up a little bit really lovely again I'm doing about 2gb of red action so not much you know when you go on the master mix I wouldn't descend for mastering I wouldn't start hammering too much because you're doing probably more likely to do more damage if you want that kind of heavy compression go back to your multitrack and do it on individual elements rather than the entire mix the next thing that I'm doing I was telling you about EQ so I'm a big fan of that one I don't know if any of you know the manly pacific you quite an expensive EQ but 3,000 pounds probably as a hardware but again the simulation is absolutely awesome on that one and what I do with it as you're gonna see I'm almost doing a bit of what you would do on a hi-fi system where you boost the top and boost the bottom and it gives you that kind of luck often at home you may do that you know and often if I feel that I need to reach to that on there I Phi am as well do it in the mix to start with one way to get into that again so here I'm boosting about 16 K is it can't see properly maybe 18 I'm doing a little bit of boost at 18 a little bit at 60 60 80 60 Hertz is a lovely posh frequency that give you that kind of warm really nice feeling so now I've got it in let's have a listen and I'm gonna bypass the sweet football [Music] starting to hear what you're doing we're starting to get some improvement all together here now something else I tend to start doing a lot I'm a big fan of harmonic distortion in our manic distortion is kind of loud when you drive an N power line into tour it's basically slight distortion harmonic distortion is very useful when working in the box because it's starting to bring that warmth and that's what I call natural compression instead of hitting your compressor were you really here once it has passed the threshold and you're starting to hit the compressor you hear what it's doing and sometimes that's what you want but harmonic distortion distortions usually brings a bit of compression it's part of the process is intertwined but also it can bring some low meet bring some warmth and for me one of the main thing I don't know about you guys but working in the box for a long time I felt that mixing in the verse wasn't really working for me because I didn't like the top end I didn't like anything about 2 3 K I felt was a bit harsh and a bit too much like there and I want you to find a way to make that more pleasant and all those new tools now I think for the last five years now the plugins have gone to the point where it's so good you really can get very similar result that you would have mixing analog this one is a black box it's a kind of boutique hardware again it cost about three thousand pounds three thousand dollars as a hardware so quite a quite an expensive distortion but it's used a lot by mastering engineer mixing engineers and plug-in Alliance have done the simulation which is absolutely awesome it basically to keep it very simple you've got saturation you've got two different type of valve during the even harmonics which are the more pleasant one and other harmonics even harmonics the one that slightly more unpleasant but a combination of both can really increase the level what is we known as perceived loudness for the same peak level and as you know probably guys one of the game at the moment when mixing and mastering it's all about getting that kind of level and if you produce a track and you mix it yourself master it quickly and are you all DJs as well as producing all of you produce our DJs as well so often you may do a track in the afternoon finish it and you can't wait to play it in the evenings the last thing you want is suddenly your mix to sound like that compared to other commercially released tracks so although it's a mastering subject and I won't go too much into it I really believe the kind of perceived loudness to increase the overall loudness starts at the mixing stage with subtle compression that mean at the mastering you don't have to hit the limiter so hard because limiter is what really degrades the quality of music and gives your transient and your punch and you want tons it's important so let's have a listen what I've done here with that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this is the small jump here [Music] without [Music] ha absolutely falling in love with that plug-in I'm becoming that one my first go-to plugins now it has air amount again bringing a bit of Japan you know making that that mix clearer and Pangea the the pentode and triode valve are starting to bring you that kind of excitement but without being overly excited to the point where I don't know about you but sometimes you're gonna have to go to a club where the Sun system may not be as good some club system are brilliant in some clubs another scrap system maybe not so good and for me the worse the club's system is the mixes can some really harsh and really kind of like take your ears off and your I've gotta leave that room now so one of the thing I find with mixing for club it's really important to try to keep not only the punch while maintaining some warmth because then you can really play it loud and sit being quite nice whereas if it's too harsh as soon as you play too hard you're like that's it I'm done my ears are gone so all those little techniques that are discussing with you I think really helps towards achieving that kind of warm sound but still keeping the punch etc finally on my master buss I have this again it's a u ad it's a ted machine that is the classic tech machine that pretty much most records by the 90s were mixed onto a lot of the classic house and stuff you would have those machine because there was no choice that was you had to print your mix you know nowadays we bounce you know you click the bounce button and you get a nice audio file but back in the days you had to put to a tape machine and that would go to the mastering engineer would you know prepare for vinyl or CD this simulation is lovely again and it's another way to achieve what been discussing nonlinear kind of aspect of mixing what I love about analog is that if you put 10k at that level with some analog equipment the 10k is going to be kind of slightly curved it's going to give you a more pleasant so it's another way to deal with what I would call didja Titus which is the bad aspect of digital that makes you here you know go a bit crazy but also tape is known as a compression I don't know if any of you know about Ted compression out you may have heard of it tape as soon as you start hitting tape it creates a bit of compression on your bottom end and across the whole range but especially the bottom end so it's another way to head towards these perceived loudness getting your louder mix but getting it still keeping the warm everything under control so let's have a listen now that we've got all that although all these chain [Music] small punchy it's a bit louder I'm still getting the same level but it in my opinion sounds a lot better starting to sound like a record couple of other thing just to make you aware of that I use a lot on the master buss is one of them is that one I don't know if any of you know that magic a/b from sample magic it's basically when you mix I don't know about you but when I mix I like to have a reference at some stage to check other track commercially released so I've got something - am I in the right ballpark am i doing okay is it something like a record basically my seed far away from what it should sound like this plugin allows you to load nine song with any cue point and literally a is your mix B is whatever audio file that you've loaded into it I mean such useful tools I've always wanted one like that and that's all as it came out I was like yeah prayers have been answered here I'm gonna play that track here put it if i bypass it nothing's going to happen so that's the original mix [Music] that's the original mix when everything was on zero and that's where we are now [Music] pretty much the same peak but we've gone much louder already so it's kind of a pre mastering kind of job but this is the kind of stuff you can really achieve with subtle subtle changes on the overall mixbus another thing that may be useful to you I always get that question how loud my mix should be those kind of question there's this theory about 6d be eating 6 DB of headroom when you finish your mix and send it for mastering I think the key is it doesn't peak it doesn't go over zero and sometimes they are very short Peaks when you get let's say if you mix hit - 1 DB - 2 DB you may have some accidental Peaks that are gonna go over zero that your normal metering won't pick up there no not in the sample peak for example of true peak so you the 6 DB theory realistically is to make sure that you don't go over 0 what you don't want to send the mastering engineer a chart that is clipping effectively you know so 6 DB is safe but I would say 3 DB is going to work as well as long as you don't pick this mastering this metering tool is really useful it gives you Headroom [Music] so it's not 6 DB Headroom its 3.2 but it's it okay as long as I'm not going over 0 another thing that is useful with that plug-in is you can check the stereo field and I'm gonna get into that in a in a second about the mono that we've talked about but you can check this here you see that indicates that most of the stuff happens in the middle and the thing on the side is your face the relationship between left and right you should be worried when that goes below when goes negative that mean you've got a major face problem so again a no-go face problem means problem with base not as round not as clear not as punchy and and to the extreme where if you've got a major base problem you won't be able to put it to vinyl and I know if I notice becoming a thing again so maybe something to think about finally here I've got the dynamic range dynamic range is the level between the quietest and the louder one of the problem with modern mastering where everything is super loud it's not so much that it's super loud it's the fact that to achieve that loudness you're reducing the dynamic range what it means is that even the quieter beat I have weeded out and allowed a beat a little bit louder but not that much that Fermi creates a problem because you don't have impact anymore you know let's say you're coming from the intro and you're hitting the big part of the song and you're getting a little jump I'm not sure it's that effective what you want is feeling a big jump so when you're kicking in yes now we're in another thing that I love about that plug-in I go back here is you can listen in mono so we talked about it I've already mentioned now let's have a listen in so I'm quite happy with height sounds in mono because you're not getting a massive suddenly the mix is completely changing you know and that can happen sometimes and if the change is too radical between stereo and mono then those problem that we've discussed earlier on about being in one part of the room in another part of the room will happen whereas here I'm quite confident that wherever I am I'm getting what it should be when listening in mono something that not everybody knows about I guess is it's quite useful to listen only to one side instead of using - left and right together in mono listen to only one side in mono and you can do that with a plug-in do you see here on my father waited oh yeah I'm on listening to the left hand side [Music] it's obviously quite er it's normal but again I'm not getting something completely different I'm like whoa I'm not freaking out it's everything is cool finally I'm this mixing there's something really nice which is base space one thing about dance music which is very important is obviously getting your butter men right because you're in a club big sound system you want to make sure the kick and the bass it's because that's what makes you dance that's what drives the facet on job dance anyway so you need to achieve a clean but a man and the way to do that is to make sure that there's nothing that gets in the way of the kick and the bass so this plugin they've designed something which is pretty cool you basically mute the bass mute the kick as soon as I'm gonna find them yet I've got them here and I'm gonna listen to it she gives you those frequencies [Music] absolutely nothing I'm getting 40 80 120 hundred 60 if that starts to go in the red that mean you already have too many things happening in those frequency and they are probably going to start creating problem with your base and your kick now the more experienced you are the more you've trained your ears you will pick on that but when you start your beginner it may be quite useful to check you know it's one way to kind of lock okay I'm in the right direction and especially at home if you work on small speakers sometimes you don't hear everything they don't translate that well especially in what's going on you know video video hundred and sixty Hertz I've showed you the master buss which in my on that mix particularly was the most important but there are other things that I wanted to really discuss with you today one of them is compression and everybody's camera as soon as I put compression is going to sound fatter and it's kinda but it doesn't quite work like that compression does it so what I wanted to illustrate to you guys is on a kick drum compression is to control the dynamics of sounds yeah so if you have a real instrument let's say a bass player and he plays three notes you may play them at different level just because it doesn't heat us out or send with a real drummer so you try to compensate that with the compression a little bit it's one of the aim of using your compressor semmen vocal the vocalist may move away from the mic you'll start to try to compensate for the movement of the mic or singing quieter but with electronic music when everything is programmed you not really need to control dynamic because if you need a sound that is quieter you just bring the MIDI down and it's quieter that's what I mean by getting your production right you know you produce everything and it sounds right so why do we with compression compression sorry in electronic music on electronic sound there's two reason to control the Banamine we all want a track that sounds super phat in club however and I'm not going to go into the theory of acoustic but don't know the lower the frequency the longer is the wave form yeah wave is a physical thing that we don't see but it's there stand in front of a PA you're gonna feel those vibration the low-end it's gonna make your tummy go funny that's well you know the bottom end does that to you because the waves are longer so you want to control that in a way that it's tight it's fat but it's tight if it's not tight then you're gonna have this kind of Rumble going on and that's what you want to avoid so compression can help you having those fat loss up but at some stage you tell them you stop here you know I'll let you go for a while but after that you stop here your control you're in it you know so it can help compression can do that for your betterment but it also can shape the sound in the sense that compression is going to change the transient can I change the front and end of your sound especially the front very much so so you may be in a situation where if you want more attack putting compression with a slow attack it's going to emphasize the attack of a kick drum or a snare drum if you've got too much click too much front of the under kick drum you may want to put a fast attack and suddenly keep it under control a little bit more so let me demonstrate that on the kick drum here main kick drum yeah you hear what it's doing to the kick drum now [Music] what I've done here on the kick drum I want you to get more so I've used EQ because I wanted to get a bit more attack but I've used compressor with a fast with a slowly attacked out on me so I'm gonna maybe increase that I'm gonna put a fast attack now are you noticing how much it's compressing it how much is please right away it's taking the sound and it's keeping it there straight away whereas with a slow attack it's kind of leave the initial part of the sound go through and then it's capturing it that way I'm able to emphasize the attack of the click but also making sure the bottom anestine they're controlled one of the occasional we get a lot at home rang from students is should I put my EQ or compressor first who should come first totally different type of ways to worry about it typically I tend to put compressor first but in dance music sometimes you want to start exit exaggerating making the Banamine a bit stronger over almost like I would say overdo it so I tend to boost and you will notice here I'm boosting fifty Hertz on my EQ I'm gonna can you see guys I'm boosting 50 Hertz here I'm also dipping at about 200 which is where the muddiness can happen there was a bit of a nasty resonance in there so just dipped a little bit I'm getting your cleaner kick now that's without [Music] just fed there was a bit of resonance on the low meet which may be in some club it's not gonna translate really well see it's cleaner it's got more punch it's fat but it's still controlled so that's what I'm achieving here so what I've done here I've put the EQ first and the compressor afterwards so I'm sending those I'm boosting those this low end but then I'm going into the compressor and I'm saying to this low end yeah you're there but I'm keeping you there under control rather than let you go wild into the speakers you shouldn't aim to completely radically change it if you're not happy with your kitchen then go back to your production and change the kick drum to start with but in that case I was happy with the kick drums that the producer brought into the track I just wanted it to fit slightly differently with everything else I had done so I've shaped it a little bit and there's a big difference between shaping a little bit to suddenly change it radically if you want to change it radically don't do it with EQ with compression go back and change your kick drum here I also have a clap so I've done something on the clap here and I've done a similar thing except that this one I've put a fast attack that's your original clap now let's go back to eighth place the problem I had with that clap was a little bit what we talked about you know on honest on a Sun system that may be a little bit harsh that for me was starting to be a little bit over the top so I wanted to keep that over on the control still keep it nice and crunchy but just make that a little bit more pleasant I've done that see without bit attenuation so what I've done with that is a fast attack the compressor kind of tuned a bit quicker on it I've made a little bit more warm so I have added 1k 1k is not harsh 1k still fairly warm it gives you that kind of bite it gives you attack but without being really fierce and painful to the years and then I've made a lot of space like a low cut a high pass filter to the Honjo just to make sure it wasn't in the way of anything else because there was just a bit there and and I think it works better so on the drums you would see I've done very little just that the one thing on drums that I've done I've put it into a bus always bus my drums all together again I'm trying to get that sense of togetherness and I've put a comfort tiny compressor on the other whole drum this time round I didn't use a necessary views the API the API is known as a compressor to be quite punchy it's an American design and they're really really nice so let's have a listen to what it does here on our track [Music] but they are becoming just a tad more tight together and again like I was saying you know I love the idea of doing a little bit a little bit every step of the way until you get something that starting to sound like a record but I think it's important to start learning the tools you know I think about mixing it's about developing your critical listening skills and understanding it can be overwhelming nowadays because very quickly you just go online buy a bunch of plugins and suddenly you've got well all the tools that professional engineers had for 20 years for you know a few hundred pounds but you end up with all those tubes and you don't take time to learn them and for me it's really about learning them I'm getting to the stage where now I feel a bit more comfortable with yeah I know how are you having 76 sound an area where an SSL compressor therefore depending on what it is that I'm after I can make the right choice of compression because a lot a lot of it is about choosing the right tools which can be difficult when you're you know when you're starting and you have all those tools at once so I think if you can spend sometimes when you don't make music even just play about with some compressor send some music into it and and see what they do and you're gonna start learning how how they work and appreciate and then back into your music you billa I'm gonna try that because that's probably gonna give me that you know you're getting to the stage where you almost know what you have to and what's gonna happen it's a good place to be so that's for my drum then bass bass is probably on that track where I've done the most I don't know if you know plug-in alliance I mean I've showed you the black design before the another box the BX control is a great tool that allows you to make mono certain things so here on the bass I've really wanted my body meant to be mono that for me was vital so I've put it really high because the base was quite stereo I mean let me bring that down and now you see the base here if you look at the red it's the balance between left and right can see it's moving left and right a little bit the base is stereo effectively so I thought I could make the channel mono all together and therefore we don't have problem but the nature of that base it has a bit of high stuff in it as well and I thought I'd like to keep that stereo so what I wanted I wanted all know that kind of inverted triangle shape for my base so the bottom and the low and really mono but then I'm quite happy to have stuff on the higher frequency to move about and give me a bit of space because it's not going to have a huge effect but it's gonna feel a little bit more stereo so what ended up doing is put the mono maker here a bit higher about seven normally I wouldn't go that high but for this example I wanted to illustrate to you guys and then I put some stereo width so what the stereo width does is the top end is I made it wider and the low-end have made it narrower like literally mono so let's have a listen [Music] so you see now that the red meter is hardly moving anymore because the butterman is there in the middle but after you've kept the stereo you turn on headphones still gonna get the information left and right so I've started with that then the bass like I've said it's big part of history of tones club music in general no matter no matter what so you're gonna spend a lot of time without anything maybe I should stop playing it without anything actually dies and I felt it was still moving a little bit it wasn't really tied some of the notes were jumping out and etc so I really wanted something like really super solid for that so I used again another type machine this one is the twenty multi track to the classic studio again what I've done here is I'm using it at 15 I PS the concept of type and I'm not gonna give you a full lesson on tech machine because we could be all there for the entire weekend but it's the slower type run that the more compression you're getting that's the idea the downside of it is are getting more hits as well but with digital we don't care we can get rid of the hiss if you need to so it's it works out okay and also the more you send into it the more kind of harmonic distortion you're getting and the more compression you're getting so this timeline I'm running that one at 15 IPs and I'm driving the signal quite hot it's not that hard actually you could go ya see I'm some of the notes the lower note I'm at the hay eating so it allows me to even things out a little bit the low note which is jumping out and higher note we're disappearing a little bit so it's one way that machine is great it's again what I called natural compression rather than heating the compressor it does it in a more musical way in my opinion next and basically what I've done with the tape here already is basically a view noticed haven't used any EQ because one way to also even out notes in a bassline is to each note as a frequency known as the fundamental or the harmonic and you can EQ down or up and therefore you could almost rebalance certain certain bass notes but here because the tape is doing it for me I'm like well if I don't have to put an EQ I'm not gonna put one just for the sake of it another compressor the absolutely love a bass and it's one of the most used compressor for bass is this editor a tell atronics a new ad have done like three version of them and they all sound completely different and what I was saying to you about learn your plugins is that for example especially with vocals you'd see the three different model completely works in a different way they sound the terpenes gonna sound different so I've tried the three of them on the bass and I felt that one was really nice so so again I'm I'm getting like dropper compression again and about eating about 340 D reduction at the most you're starting to the Dutch East height sounds with even now studied and then when I said in and put EQ actually I did after that because once I had all this work done I thought we still can do a little bit more on that bass I've put another compression this time the SSL yes I said it's kind of VCF where has the one before was a optical compression they all work differently the optical is slower a VGA is more transparent but the optical gives me a lot of color and warmth so again it's about knowing your plugins what they give you yes I said is a bit more transparent but I wanted something that to finish Martin my chain of plugins I wanted to keep it clean and make sure it was really staying there and not going anywhere in terms of nodes also I thought the high frequency or a high mid of that bass sound had gone a little bit in the track because he and I'm soloing with you guys but when you work you should we did not EQ too much one what in solo because what you do in solo is make it work for what it is but then you put their everything in and then it's kind of like oh it's not there anymore so once I had the whole track going I realized that maybe I was not getting as much of these the bass was only down there not let's bring a bit of them here we're getting the attack the click of the bass a little bit more coming through once the food-truck his own so again you notice the little stages of stop that I've done to get to where I want it to be one thing I've noticed on that track was that everything was bounced with effects so I've tried playing with a couple of reverbs and stuff and I was that what does not really need because it's already been there in the first place so I kept it quite dry except there was couple of sounds I thought these these sounds the pad could be a bit more interesting just might Li not saying you know that without the effect of Troodon [Music] notice is becoming warmer it's becoming a bit wider and what I've used for that it's a run and classic piece of kit called the dimension D original it's got four buttons I love simple plug simple devices that do one thing really well I'm absolutely loved so I used this mod pressing button three and four together it's basically a slight chorus modulation so that gives you a wider sound but it's kind of lovely tone I've used that on the pad and a couple of other scenes again that way to do things I do it in parallel I would have done via else and toast fader going back and then you mix both the original sound and the effect together so I tend to do my effects like that instead of as an insert I feel I've got more control if I wanted I could EQ my modulation I could put a delay a reverb on it so I love parallel all my effects I tend to keep them that way so I think that's pretty much me going over the mix process for Club thank you thank you very much [Applause] you [Music]

Channel: Point Blank Music School

Views: 167,214

Rating: 4.9528394 out of 5

Keywords: Point Blank Music College, Ableton Live Tutorial, Learn Ableton Live, Learn Logic Pro, Music Production, Electronic Music Production, Production School, Music College, Learn Online, Ableton Live Tutorials, Logic Pro Tutorials, DJ Lessons, music production tutorials, ableton tutorial, logic tutorial

Id: LUIXtDO4d8s

Length: 48min 21sec (2901 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2017