Mixing Masterclass: Secrets of the Mix with Chris Lord-Alge

hello and welcome to waves open sessions my name is Marcel and I'm your moderator for this webinar today we'll be having a master class with legendary and multiple Grammy winning mixing engineer chris lord-alge ii his mixes have been heard on countless records from artists such as Green Day Bruce Springsteen Muse Keith Urban and so many others in just a minute chris is going to open up a session he mixed in order to show you his personal mixing tips and techniques Chris will be using in ear headphones during the webinar to prevent the speakers from leaking into his microphone we encourage you to listen to the webinar with headphones or suitable monitors not from laptop seekers so you can get the best possible listening experience we also encourage you to post your comments on the webinar on facebook twitter or instagram using the hashtag waves open sessions throughout the webinar we'll be having an open Q&A with chris via the chat please submit any questions you have and Chris will try to answer as many of them as we can get to you can send your questions in at any time but you won't see them in the chat as they'll first go to me and then I'll read them to Chris one at a time and now let me welcome our presenter for today's masterclass the Lord of the mix himself mixing engineer whose credits read like a who's who of rock and pop royalty and he's here to show us how he does it please welcome Chris Lord algae to waves open sessions take it away Chris greetings Thank You Marcelo greetings world welcome to downtown Los Angeles I am CLA and here we are I've come down here to show you a few tips and tricks and let you know what is happening in the world of CLA and what I do inside a session inside the box inside so we are inside downtown LA here and I know you everyone out there could be anywhere from Zimbabwe to Algeria to Scandinavia to Tel Aviv to Seattle to Los Angeles so welcome here we are so let's first talk about the most important thing now we're looking at my session right now what I have here is an artist named Evo he's one of my friends he's a Swiss artist very big in Switzerland and we did it actually wrote a song together and I'm actually part writer on this so we put a song together called peace and freedom and you know the song really isn't what's important you know what's really important is some what am I doing with it right and wine why am I making it so it's manageable so I brought this song in here something you know something I was happy with but something it was pretty large to begin with and I'm showing you the condensed version of it and I'm gonna explain to you what created these what created this okay and what made it simple the most important thing to mixing and to what I do is organizing a session all right the biggest problem I have is a mixer and I mixed maybe 20,000 songs at this point okay not all 20,000 those songs were with Pro Tools okay I'm sure the first batch of them were on these things that went round and round they're cold on a long tape so 24 track 48 track 72 track whatever okay it was a lot easier back then why because what I got is what I had today in sessions what's in there it can change quickly so the source material I had to mix from was fixed okay it was 22 tracks or 46 tracks or more if there was more slave rails right and then we'd copy that to a forty eight track tape machine make a comp master and then have 48 tracks and that was the limit unless I locked up to 96 K you know to 96 you know to 48 track machines to make 96 channels that didn't happen that often but now all of you can run all the way up to 500 tracks or whatever we can't make 500 tracks okay and you even 200 tracks it's it's a huge freaking nightmare and it's unmanageable I'm gonna scroll down the screen okay look how quick to sit there's the song okay this was like 200 tracks all right this was a huge mess but I'm gonna show you why it's not a huge mess all right first off the waves such it's the way this my sessions are situated I try to make it I try to organize it so everyone everything is in the same place always and I try to come up with colors that work for me all right if you look at this quickly you noticed that my drums down here this bucket it's red my bass is purple okay my keyboards and guitars are green my vocals are always blue okay I'll make the lead vocal dark blue and the backgrounds lighter blue with the guitars sometimes I'll shade the acoustic to be more yellow so it sits so it's not just a big green blob all right you can people out there you can all use whatever color you want once you start using the same color all the time you look at any session and automatically your eyes get all green guitars Oh blue vocals Oh red drums it makes it easy for me to make it make sense because what do I want to do I want to mix the song not sit there trying to navigate it if you look above at the top of our screen obviously I put the cues in there keep it short and sweet all right it doesn't have to be a whole sentence every time right look I have V 1 C 1 V 2 C 2 bridge R 1 R 1 it sorry intro I try not to use the same letter now this goes back to since I you know this goes back to because I work in a console I don't want to have B 1 or bridge I want to make sure everything's a different letter ok so make the cue simple so the navigation is easy don't make it a complicated route don't make it stupid so back to the way the session looks this is really important ok look you look at this and go oh I could mix that in five minutes well yeah well if I do the homework and prep it then I can focus on just this working and not this long scroll down from from from the North Pole to the South Pole okay this is manageable and this could be anything why do the drums have more tracks than anything else well because sometimes that becomes the thing I need to deal with the most okay so let's go back and look why I always put some keyboards before the vocals now why I do that is because this is a direct translation into the way my mixing desk is if I switch the screen Wow look how small that is doesn't even fill the screen if you look at my console alright let's let's dismiss the Mixmaster in the bus master okay that's just when you're mixing in the Box you have that right these top two which is your you know your these are outputs this is where the whole song goes right buses one and two and then three and four is the bus master correct so let's go back to this very simply right I always have four tracks next to me or six tracks in this case next to me on the left okay which on my counselor would be nine through twelve then it skips and the lead vocal which you see right here starts at seventeen this tends to be my vocal bucket now in this song I have a lead vocal on seventeen I have one pair of stereo backgrounds none two pair of stereo backgrounds now on this because I use plugins to turn a mono vocal into stereo this is now stereo as you see by the pan pots so we have three stereo faders here then a break in my world I have this section I have the guitars then the drums hence the layout okay and if you see here the mono tracks pan and then we move through the kicks and then their mono following I'm saying and then we have all the stereo tracks to follow so we'll go back to this window alright I'm going to now just play a piece of this song so you're familiar with what you're looking at all right so this is now a session so before I play I'll show you I'll just explain quickly that all these tracks is say cm okay all of you that are familiar with the new Pro Tools 1282 or 1281 I think I'm 1282 now in the 12 upgrade okay in the 12 upgrade what we have is a commit function so you can take for example but I what turned this vocal into one track for me could have been a verse vocal right the chorus vocal a verse to you vocal of a bridge vocal it was most likely six tracks okay well these six tracks don't overlap so and they're pretty much the same sound and if they aren't like an EQ them separately once that job is done and even if I don't do anything but combine them these six tracks become one track okay made stereo now because plugins I'm using on it bring it to that place a situation here where I have a piano okay this is probably a cm track if it's not the whole song has one stereo piano right if you also look here you have these strings okay it says cm so that means that these were probably two to four or six pairs maybe it was just four pairs if you start looking at the numbers and you start adding it up I'm making the song way more manageable by putting these things into one pair if it's coming out too if it's coming out as a pair if it's left in right if you can do the same treatment if you can pretreat it why make it take up any more real estate all right to me the biggest thing is mixing is a definition of manageability and real estate becomes a very important part of that alright most of the sessions I see you're going so far and wide you're going from California to New York trying to find the song for me I can get the whole song tour in one County I don't even need to go to a twist that's what I mean by that is I can get it manageable so let's just play a piece of this so I remember what song I brought here [Music] let us Donna come on [Music] the time passed world's gonna see [Music] until we wanna tell you that it's time to peace and free gotta sing to my sister's got a ring like a bell gotta shout to my [Music] from under the spell [Music] now you see because the real estate is so small I feel that I can just reach out and fix it so easily so I'm gonna just play again I'm just gonna pick up play one more time I'm just gonna start soloing a few things just to show you that these cm's these comps you see here right and this is the most important thing to mixing okay this is the thing because because I'd crossed like many years and many formats I've realized that that organizing is the most important part of Mexico once you can organize it you can manage it if you can't control it you can't mix it so this becomes your mission as an engineer as a producer as a mixer okay if you leave a trail of wreckage when you make a song just keep recording and whatever and making it to something that's confusing good luck later okay when I see sessions like that I know I'm dealing with freaking amateurs right when I see sessions that people have taken more than five minutes to name it cleaning it up get rid of the regions or at least if you're going to give me regions make it make sense okay if I see something that looks like a pig pen I know that your production techniques is a mess and that you're not you have no you have snow style and no actual respect for the music or the session and I know that sounds pretty harsh but this is the mentality I'm trying to teach her it's really simple okay when when I open a session from you or when someone opens a session for me a hundred years down the line fifty ten whatever when you're not available or gone you are judged by what it is so I don't want to be judged unfairly I want to try to deliver my best thoughts forward so let's just look at a few more of these tracks as you see there's some more CMS here backgrounds the same thing okay background one choir I like to use short names I hate a long name I hate when it says AC the guitar mic the country the state the dress the singer was wearing to the point where when it gets this to the short term at the left it's like hieroglyphics use the least amount of letters possible to describe okay to describe what is on that track okay what it says when it has all the revisions from you know once you've made the comp right when it once you've decided that this is the Vogel this is the piano this is the this is the Yuka freaking laylee right at least that just called uke you have to call it you want if it's to you call it u k-- one and you to think about it as call it what the instrument is if you want to have it if you want to have details about my king and blah blah blah and all that and I use this mic on that room and this mic on that room then put a cheat sheet with it put it in the comments okay put in the comments that you know lead vocal 47 lead vocal sm7 okay if that helps you great but when it comes down to the comp lead vocal LV this way I want to look at it quickly I'm like boom boom boom here we go so it's actually a question here that I think would tie in well to that they're asking what are the first five things you do it at any vocal to get it to sit well in the mix okay well here's a question right away first since I'm talking about organization if you're talking first five things you do to a vocal to get it to sit in the mix first to make a vocal comp all right if you look at my vocal right here okay let's make it big let's me make a big here look let's make it big right okay when you look at that vocal that's one track now if you have a vocal it overlaps then it's two tracks right but this is a vocal doesn't overlap right if you look at it what do you see you see it's on one track but also what do you see that the waveform is consistent alright once you have a consistent level across the board whatever you do to it's gonna make sense right so we're gonna talk about some vocal processing really simply here right I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary you take an EQ what am i doing I'm taking away some rumble alright and I'll solo the whole let's just solo and play for you got a little fire you love is the word gonna climb a little higher yeah the top of the world gonna sing a little louder until we are heard I wanna tell you that it's time for peace and freedom [Music] so simply on this once you get the vocal to be one track or Morgan eyes this is my taste I'm taking an EQ good I like which is the SSL EQ I'm taking out some Rumble am adding some shine that's it all right see that line amps down a little bit here that's only so it doesn't blow up the plug-in alright then I go into look I could use any plugin I'm using this because I like it because I have the hardware is it on any special setting no it son really the stock setting okay this is helping give it some character then here I'm only using this to do what to add a little top-end right to add a little reverb to add some delay and it makes it stereo because the reverb stereo right so if we go back here and that's just try bridge you what smile down this misery if there is peace and there is free so what I just showed you there right is you know this is just a start point this is just what I do to get this song to make sense so if I play that song right there I'll just put it same spot just listen to the song without the soul here of course [Music] [Music] [Music] so in the track the most important thing is how does the bubble sound on the track nobody's gonna ever hear in solo ok nobody cares so I always make my adjustments to anything in context of the music because guess what nobody cares in solo alright you want to check some stuff in solo just to make sure that that your start point it's great that's fine okay so there's my questions first five things first thing okay get the vocal to be on one track to get the vocal to be all the same level with clip gain if you have to okay three consolidate it right get it to a great level then four pick an EQ five pick a compressor that makes sense and then within the fifth answer there find an effect from this point you can get more complicated with effects but for the song 99% of what's gonna work in this song that's exactly what happened good question there so Mauricio while we're looking at this one take another question yeah do you compress before or after you EQ so simple question there I always compress after EQ I want to eat because I want the EQ to feed into the compressor because it makes a combination sound if you're adding all this top in after the compressor it's gonna the top-end is gonna jump out what happens is whatever your EQ incompletes me from having they used a de-esser and as far as guitars go deduplicate pan left and right and switch phase on guitar parts and if so how do you make those decisions well so okay let's discuss let's let's look at that question for a second alright so let's say that one more time will slower more solo sure do you duplicate guitar tracks pan them left and right and switch phase on them well I mean only way I would do that is if I'm checking microphones if a guitar is multi mic alright for example if the guitar is multi mic I'm not gonna pan him okay I'm not gonna duplicate him I am gonna put him all at the center and then flip the face while they're in the center and then if I hear if I the low ends go away or start to hear some sound I don't like I can figure out that there's an issue so if you must be talking about multi miking cuz why am i gonna check the phase on the guitar right the reason I would check phase on anything as you put the multiple sources up the middle at the same level right then flip the phase on each one or you can compare one with another or if it's four mics you flip the face and look at the combination that you like now it may not make sense but all that matters is what you like now if you think there's a problem look at the attack look look at the waveform if all the waveforms start exactly at the same time then then it's just a phase thing if you see some are differently later than others you may want to shift them to all have the same start time then flip the face so there's your guitar question but panning left and right because you know and for the CLA mixdown do you have a recommended input level for example - 6 dB well I mean there's no recommended mix level there's no recommended if you want to answer that question right now since we'll forward to that if you'd like I'll show you if you want to discuss mix down so it's really simple once we can play this song and here's our bus master I'm gonna just make this a little bigger you know they invented Pro Tools and all this stuff cuz it was a cheaper way to make audio so don't think that you're working on the highest technology or there's in the world we're just trying to make it work the highest technology in the world was consoles and outboard gear and then adding electronics to work with it so so let's look at this mix bus down thing here for a second I'm gonna play this song and highlight it [Music] [Applause] so here's the secret okay I made this plug in then we're gonna put it over here where you can see it right right about here I think if you can all see that one day we'll be able to take the GUI and make the GUI fill the screen but right now we don't have that technology but here's my mixdown plugin okay it's really simple how this works if you want to get the best out of this plug-in Senate see how it's set its zeros across why is it that because that's all I built it to emulate what I use so if you put this on your Mix Master but you put on the master fader or an ox or whatever run your whole mix into an aux feeding this why do we want to do that Chris because what you want to see is it moving 3 dB you don't want to have to move this up and down no the gain structure here I have said is let me get it back to zero again I have designed this so if you feed it with the exact right level you'll get the perfect reaction to get the CLA sound so I'm gonna show you again what I'm gonna do is adjust the Buffs master now what this is is everything in your session is busing to one and two all right or you everything is busing to an aux from that aux you're sending to another box where the plugin is so I'm using an aux just to control the overall volume of the whole mix leading into another channel right which control which has the bus limiter on it you can see well why don't you just use the input fader well no because if you're hitting that too hard you're lowering the input fader it's gonna sound different you want this thing to be set as you see it so as you see it right now is what you want it now I'm gonna play the song again I'll play from the bridge [Music] all right you turn it down it's not doing anything [Music] [Applause] see right there [Music] [Music] as you notice I'm sitting there trying to get it to hang out between 2:00 and 3:00 because that's where it sounds the best when I start pushing in and it's and it's doing 5 & 7 DB of gain reduction the inputs overloading and even if you bring the fader down which I'll show you [Music] [Applause] [Music] if you're not using an ox and this is what your bus looks like and you have to bring this input down it doesn't sound as good okay it sounds kind of like basically so you want to do what I'm doing this is why I recommend it look mixing is all about gain structure if you don't have your gain structure set up in your session I don't care if your digital it's gonna sound like crap it's just gonna be distorting overdriving plugins aren't gonna sound right so how do you deal with gain and structure is right let me just put this back the way it's supposed to be so back on up kiddies and then let's bring our bus master back to whatever you know I'm not remembering where it is because I don't care because I use my ears I don't see well it sounded really good at minus 2.4 or minus 3.6 who gives a about that use your damn near here we go right [Music] and while we're on the mixdown subject and I have it open I'm going to show you the difference here why these other faders what they mean so we'll start the same spot [Music] [Music] for the hell so I resisted there for you was I boosted up the bass the treble the glue ok the glue control obviously you can see that's your gain reduction control so that shows you how much compression you're getting right doesn't mean you can run it hot and then bring that down it's built to run at zero the drive control now that's your personal taste you want to sound a little bit more edgy a little more over driven the drive gives you the effect that you're over driving the console I run my console hot so the zero is the hot spot more than that okay is driving it harder so that that's why this plug-in is pretty much it's a no-brainer it works at the preset zero zero zero it's like even if it's actually don't even need those buttons to be on but if you want to make it brighter or darker or maybe you don't want to EQ okay [Music] obviously that's five pass right [Music] [Applause] [Music] even though it's on zero doesn't mean that under the hood I'm not doing something so if you turn it off it's no EQ the EQ is post compressor on me kill me after the fact because I don't want to drive the compressor with my mix I'm adding like mastering EQ after the fact right that's part of what I do right so EQ after the compression right if you turn these off then it's no EQ in them in the mix buss which means it's flat it's zero when it's on it's zero it's maíam the amount that I like what does that amount I don't even know I just know it's the curve that makes sense for matching my system so this is just adding more or less so and the glue is how much I do so I think that's a really good involved answer because this is a new plug-in you haven't had much time to use it but it's really designed to work under specific rules there you have it mix down and what is the reason for turning a mono vocal to stereo easy question alright here's it it's there's no reason for it but what happens is when we go over here as soon as you put one of my plugins on anything it turns it stereo why why do you ask okay let's solo the vocal and you all have here phone I'm sorry I'll have earphones earbuds speakers iPhones not gonna help you here okay you're not gonna hear this so just saw him children from their mothers what smells misery if there is peace and there is freedom [Music] no katha fathers would take this from us and what children get in from their mothers no God so what are you here okay because my plug-in is an all-in-one right of course it's gonna be stereo because the chamber the reverb whatever I have there right it's there you the delay I've sterilized it because that's what I use okay that's my sound you also have a harmonizer you know uh you have a spreading device harmonizer chorusing whatever you know what what's under the hood is just the CLA vision so every one of my plugins does this why turn them on evoke holdest Erica's now you have all you need for the vocal in one box everybody wins now you can do it to anything you don't have to run the vocal and steri you can get rid of this plug-in have a mono track and then creates ends and auxes in whatever or duplicate the vocal and put plug-ins on it that way so that answers the question why this is tara cuz the plug-in does it and what a lot of people are asking is how do you get the kick and bass to work together so let's just look at the drums for a second okay you know one of the ease you know one of the ways I get drums to work it's because I work in analog right when you work in analog console with analog line amps then you know making this stuff work is easier because you're dealing with a format that's non digital so we'll just try selling this stuff up for a second right there's a few drums here and we'll look at some eq's while it's going oh god let's just turn him off heard enough of him okay that's something though he's a good guy so come on I'll have the bass in there [Music] just a kick mic okay this kick was pretty good I'm gonna have to talk over it a little bit so for everyone have speakers out there it just makes sense if I describe it as it's playing right now so if you want to turn it down or whatever let's just I don't want to stop every time as you see I already had a good kick drum so what am i doing I'm adding a shit-ton an 8k and a little bit of compression then if we look at the second kick it's similar thing I'm adding some top into the second mic same compressor right [Music] let's look at the snare gun okay so here's a snare that's getting some low-end that's on top but then we're going through my plugin believe it or not I'm using the overhead preset on this [Music] but even brighter it how about more Weaver [Music] then if I go down to sneer shoot [Music] [Music] [Music] what's there [Music] now the reason they're in the original questions how to get the kicking basis sound so good well because you know what I keep it simple if you look here am i commit for my compressing the kick to all bejesus no when the guys playing a kick jump I mean you see that dynamic no then we go down here to look at the base setting just to say well what's the magic on the based in there mister algae well what's the base getting [Music] [Music] here's the secret to the bass thing okay if you're starting to add bass EQ right let's look at the bass plug-in you got a bass guitar pick the one that works if it's the DI great you better off with the DI if it's been if it had no EQ added to it right if the app thing isn't working or if you can't get the amp sound you want using amp simulator for this one because of not to say my plugins the only plug-in there is out there but I made it I know what it does so it's easier for me on mine look I have EQ called honk right it's called honk because it's a bass plug-in so yeah I want the base to have some more hump or bark or cut or whatever right so those terms I'm using kind of relates to bass right and with Distortion I have rip-roaring growl so I'm just gonna play it again more distally [Applause] [Music] for this one I didn't want the base to be like shredding I just wanted to make I just want to be driving like an amp cranked up so back to your question look at my yank am i adding any low into the base no if I start going like this and pick like a hundred that notes going to pop out [Music] for me the biggest problem I get is people overeat cue the bass and then one note sticks out and another one goes away so simple question there is that the way you're gonna make make bass and drums match B together is keep it simple if you're adding X amount of compression to a kick drum add X amount of compression to the bass I mean look at them both is the same thing don't look them as individuals they have to work together so another question to answer for you so more so many more questions yes a lot of people want to know if you use parallel compression especially on drums and if you could share a few tips about it okay so let's just deep let's do miss this parallel compression situation okay so what is it and what does it do all right you have this all drum kit here right we're look at the bus master this is Mars will be your parallel compressor so let's just say this is just my drum mix right parallel compression is gonna be this right here except since we're monitoring through this this can't be it so we'd have to have this in addition right so then all it really is and the closes plug in all it really is and I use it but it's like it's it all it is is to get a little bit more top and a little bit more bottom okay it's not for the compressor the compression doesn't really help it so all you're gonna do is whatever bounce appetit drums here which I'll play a little bit more so we take we take this whole balance of drums right here I'm going to try it from like here right [Music] here little little crash it's just right here [Music] all you're gonna do is you're gonna take all these drums you're gonna send to a bus right in addition to where they're normally going it's gonna be an additive bus you probably use a send right you could use you could use a I'm sorry the what do you call these guys here how many you look for right now but my boys you could add the sends you could put all these sends on here right and then send the drums to another compressor the way parallel works is that whatever your balance is you have it at drums you send the exact same level you put every one of them at zero right send it off to another compressor and have that coming back and then figure out what you like with it and add it in with the drums that's parallel compression I use it I'm not using in this section it doesn't need it I find I use it more in an analogue scenario than I would in a digital scenario in a digital scenario I never use it why because I can get plenty out of the drums digitally why I would use it analogue and that's where I came from is you run out of EQ you run out of like angst and you're trying to get like 5% more out of the drums so what do you do you bring up another compressor top it off add some EQ EQ is always after the compressor so there's my my parallel drum compression answer and could you elaborate a little more on gain staging do you have a method for how you set gain before you start to process tracks well there is no perfected way we can use the gain plug-in and look at things and try to get them to a reasonable level what the way I do is it since I work or this is bussing out to it analog domain right this is this is coming out of 44 buses or 48 buses and going to you know going out to a analog situation it's hard for you to judge the easiest way for you to judge is and you use a plug-in to do this is even easier right now how does a plug-in react to level okay and this is a simple question if we turn we just turn these off for a second I'll tell you why the how the vocal works because this is a way to judge you look at this plug-in right we look at the vocal here's our clip gain level we're just going to play if you have this set like this okay this start point which is set for analog tape level right we solo the vocal we're just gonna put these guys off for now turn those unsolo sorry the real secret to this see how I'm doing this go back to the vocal this is very simple and this is a really easy way to know about gain structure would take this from us and watch our children get in from them no God above you no God who loves you what smile down on this misery if there is peace and there is free I'll start here again the first one got a lot a little fire love is the word gonna come a little higher yeah to the top of the world gonna sing a little I for me if you run a vocal if you clip gate a vocal up to the point where you getting between 7 and 10 DB of compression on this plugin that to me is right at zero that to me is right in the sweet spot okay if you take a kick drum or a bass as you see with this plug-in since I'm so used to the gain structure of these plugins and you should be the same way for example if you look at the SSL channel here's a meter okay I'm playing the vocal this is a ppm either so you've got to use meters on a plug-in so example let's go back to this plug-in again and that's a good input because this is short this is not going to show you exactly this is not the perfect example but I'm sure you can use plugins showing that an input and it helps you show your level that's the quickest shortcut I know how plugins react at zero when they're on the when the input stage is zero if I look at a kick drum you know if I if I look at these guys [Music] this is basically using the game plugin and having it read - one level wise when you have it at minus one it's like right at the analog sweet spot because it transient a kick drums transient it's right at the zero because this meter is showing ppm and then it transient from the kick drum is gonna be it's gonna show more than a vu meter well this'll show zero on a vu meter and I'll show it'll show zero here but what happens is I know that with the thresholds at zero on this plugin and I have it about three to one which we can make it exactly if you makes you guys happy and look I'm adding a CQ so let's just we can turn the EQ back to zero so that is that's no EQ that's showing the gain structure this plug-in is perfect because I can get basically three DB of compression add zero threshold of three to one and then when I go here then I get the sound of the plug-in so it's all about gain structures so these are just a couple of ways to look at it I mean there's now a vu meter plugin coming out it's gonna help you okay gain up your guitar gain up your keyboard now a keyboard a guitar is gonna react a transient it's gonna look different so you're gonna figure it out but that's how all this is you get certain things that the the waveform is too low you got a clip gain it up so it actually reacts to your session so that's a great question any more questions here yeah you've been showing the CLA 76 blue in this session do you have a recommendation about when to use the blue and when to use the black okay good question right there so let's let's let them hear the sound difference right attorney solos off the blue and the blue limiters emulating the blue compressor okay what's the difference between blue or black the blue is older and it distorts and it's grimy er okay the easiest way to put it it's grimy R and a bit more aggressive okay it's great on vocals it's great on guitars it'll turn snare drum into something more interesting but the black one is more rock-solid if you want the vocal like to be clear and not dirty if you want to base if you want a guitar the black the the revision when it went to black was just later okay when they came out with the blue it was a certain sound as they progressed with making this compressor they came over the black one then eventually silver and it got cleaner so our emulations that we've created are because the things are you know they're just cleaner so let's just go here play this so there's black right let's go back for peace and free so what's the difference I hear they're okay even though it's subtle but by doing it that way there's it's exactly the same game right the blue one's a little bit more distorted it's a little bit more wooly a let's say a little bit more mid-range bump and the black one is a little bit smoother and then that frequency curve is straighter it's flatter right so that's season to taste okay it's like all these tools are there for the chef's it's like I'm gonna use more salt than you or I'm gonna use more pepper I'm gonna use more you know client pepper I'm gonna use more cocaine in you whatever it is right so that's that question so Marcella what else we got question Department so how do you approach depth and dimension is it levels transient content EQ reverb delay or all of it how do you decide what gets reverb delay and what's what stays dry I mean so that's a pretty broad question but let's just answer it as simple as we can right if you create I'm gonna just go I'm gonna go for this song here I'm gonna play or me show you we're gonna look at what has some stuff on there right that's probably an easier way [Music] [Applause] [Music] for that [Music] [Applause] [Music] well the lab erode why not everybody wins [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'll tell you the secret so I just went through this song and showed you just a couple of things you know well I'm still not getting it Chris all right well what you're not getting is that a lot of you take every track you compress it you compress it to all hell you put too much EQ on it you don't let anything sit the track at all so what happened is everything so hammered that how can you make dimension how can you make dimension when every peak and every valleys been flattened out okay you've limited dynamic the more you compress something the less dynamic you're gonna have in a song so since the drums are just getting tapped okay and if we go through and look over heads I mean it's like getting tapped okay [Music] borrow room nothing [Music] [Music] what happens here is that to make depth and to make dimension you try to look at each part and if you're going to compress it try to compress it the least amount you can get away with that makes it work in the song and then the the EQ EQ everything inside the song if you do all you do all that your heavy lifting right [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and you know what you just you just can go and reformat any which way you want the whole thing is the balanced intro and the way you get the depth and the way you get that is to put the effects on things while they're in a track [Music] I look at what I had here is to try [Applause] [Music] [Music] I use my ears in here inside the track so that's part of it it's like find an effect find something when you sometimes when you solo it when you're done you're like wow you really hammered that one so or because I wanted to give it some character in the song so it's a tough question to answer because that's the whole question isn't it how do you make it have all this depth and things is is that but one of the other parts of it is pan everything as wide as possible and try to think that you only have three pins left center and right I mean left you know LCR so that answers that question Marcelo what do you think more we have one we think one lasts one year so Geno's saying that he noticed that in your mixes after a loud guitar chorus when the second first kicks in it's just as energetic even though the guitars are out how do you do that well I mean in that question in in any song you have you have this first okay you have this first and yeah this lift in a course and you want to come back down and keep the energy level flowing well what you do is you redirect you redirect the listeners here so what's the next important thing so you go down to your up here in this course isn't for example right here we'll go back we'll play from the R [Music] you try to read their director listener to grab their attention with the next important part coming in so I just make sure that I bait I bait and switch almost like okay here's big guitars alright here's a little guitar off to the left okay and now I hear that so the whole thing is to listen to the song be part of the song you know this song is what matters what you're doing to it what you're doing to it's not important as long as you serve the song and not serve the tech in the technical and ER serve the gear or serve the plug in or serve the EQ don't sir you know serves what's going to work for the song it may be a messy approach in your session you have to clean up eventually but serve that so good question there Marcelo alright and since we have a couple minutes left we'll do one more could you show an example of how you use CLA unplugged oh great plugin right so look I'm gonna do this right now on the vocal so actually it's on the piano so piano I had a really cool sound on so and that's one of the things I use it on a lot it so let's just play the piano before that got more damn so the CLA unplugged is I'm going to talk over this a little bit see if I'm Sayla unplugged got two reverbs in it so [Music] what those buttons do is add pre-delay to those reverbs now this is really sexy on vocals okay so I'm just gonna show you really quick here go back to you and then we change this out okay I just we change our setting here quickly to to the unplug right and then this is gonna be cool right let's start here sister's got a ring like a bell got a shout to my brother's got stories to tell gotta wake each other from under the spell cuz we know that it's time for peace and freedom don't you think that it's time for peace and free no God our fathers would take this from and what cha children get in time from their mothers no God above you no God who loves you what smile down on this misery if there is peace and there is freedom sisters got a ring like a bell gonna shout to my brothers got stories to tell gotta wake each [Music] like got a shot to my prayer got stopped eh now how friggin cool is that okay here's what it is dream on Aerosmith okay if you know what I mean right there the vocal with the reverb and they're really long free delay you can get this freaking dimension that goes off into the abyss by having the delay the reverb pre delayed pretty far by having this it says 80 and then forty this is this is what's a B eighth note dotted eighth note and then you go forward then you go on the switch forward which you know ramped up its eighth note right then eighth dotted then fourth and triplet it doesn't mean anything except that you go you go through increments to find a delay that sounds right in the song here dotted eighth puts the reverb in the hole of the vocal that makes sense and that's I have to listen to it got a ring like got a shot to my power got stars got away keys it's all I got to use your ear and you got to get that vision and I've been transported to the freakin cool place and this is great for vocals so I made it all incremental because you never know which one's gonna fit right because found exact science okay I have the vocal it's this is the tempo I need a quarter triplet I don't frickin know what it's gonna be I know that with this you can get really dimensional so there's your unplugged secrets unraveled all right Osmond that'll do it so let's let's just right here at the finish line let's recap okay look the whole thing here with me I mean you can't cover this stuff in one in one trip but it's showing you a couple of techniques a couple of reasons why and the important thing is set yourself up for success set your session up for success okay make it as small as possible without making a compromise right then once that's done and you put plugins on things get your gain structure in order then you can use your mind and use what you hear a vision and take it to a place that wouldn't be normally available to other people why because you've organized a session B you've gotten it to be a great balance with gain structure this way when you mix match plugins it's pretty quick now with my plugins and I'm not advertising them here I just use it because I built them and I know what I can get out of them quickly I don't want to have to friggin wait around to get a sound I want a boom go to it so I showed you a couple of tricks within my plugins so especially the mix down plug-in unplugged which people don't generally go after but that's really great for vocal sounds so until next time i'm chris lord-alge ii and we are downtown LA in the bunker and we'll see you next time awesome thank you so much Chris for an awesome masterclass we hope you guys enjoyed it and if you did let us know in the comments if you want to see more open sessions like these let us know don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to the waves YouTube channel for more advanced tutorials and future product releases thank you all for joining us hope to see you at the next waves open sessions

Channel: Waves Audio

Views: 451,507

Keywords: mixing masterclass, chris lord alge, chris lord, Chris Lord-Alge, mixing webinar, mixing secrets, mixing tips, waves audio, secrets of the mix, mix secrets, waves open session, waves open sessions, wavesopensessions, music production masterclass, audio mixing masterclass, cla mixing, music production secrets, mixing, mixing drums, mixing vocals

Id: rGlYgAv96bw

Length: 64min 10sec (3850 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/onebigtrip]

sweet thanks for posting. sweet airbrushed headshot too, CLA

[u/[deleted]]

Anyone check the thing he did by way of Slate?

[u/[deleted]]

One thing I always notice while watching pro sessions is the high quality source material. The mixing pretty much comes down to polishing glass so there isn't much I can really apply to my less than ideal quality home recordings. I know you can't polish a turd, but I would still love to see one of the pro's have a go at it.

[u/wigrking]

CLA is such a grumpy old man lol. use as little letters as possible to name your tracks, because CLA can't stand long names.

[u/allzpower]

that unplugged moment in the end was cool.