Mixing Masterclass with Michael Brauer [MixCon 2020]

[Music] get it [Music] [Music] me hi this is justin coletti of sonic scoop thanks for joining me for another mixcon masterclass this time we are with one of the most influential mixing engineers working today this is the mixing engineers mixing engineer someone whose name is known by pretty much anyone who's doing audio engineering or music producing his name michael brower michael brauer has won i think something like eight grammys including for best engineering and he's worked with everyone from coldplay to grizzly bear john mayer to james bay he's worked with james brown with arrowsmith rolling stones ben folds uh this just goes on and on really major dude i've had the honor the privilege of interviewing him a few times and i could listen to this dude for hours he's one of the most fun people i have met and one of the most entertaining people to listen to when it comes to this stuff because he really connects to the artistry and the emotion behind music it's a big thing for him and i think the mix that michael brower is going to be doing for us today is gonna be super instructive because every once in a while on mixcon we'll get complaints that people will say oh those tracks already sounded great when they got him no wonder the mix sounded great that's not the case with this mix in this case michael brauer is going to be taking a stereo instrumental plus a lead vocal track and then magically making them into stems and then mixing from that so he's taking tracks that are going to be you know reasonably well recorded but you know not set up for mixing and then figure out a way to make a great professional sounding mix out of them so really exciting really interesting to see this kind of mix where it's kind of a compromise situation and he's going to make the most of it and the attitude the insights and the techniques he brings to it i think are remarkable he uses a ton of tools here this one big thanks sponsored by plug-in lines it's a great fit because michael brower uses plugin alliance all over this mix he actually puts the ssl 9000 j plug-in from plugin alliance on every single track even if he's not going to use it just to get its tone and that's one of the first places he starts for eq and compression i saw him use a ton of plug-in lines plug-ins on this there's the black box comes up a whole bunch of times some of the brain works amps or stereo spreader their sub synth the spl stuff is on here a whole bunch of stuff from their line of course he uses plug-ins from other brands too but i think michael would agree that plug-and-line stuff comes super in handy and there's a ton of it here so big thanks to those guys for making this totally free to the public and for designing that ssl 9000 j plug-in practically on michael's request all right let's get into this one it is a band an artist that's a good friend of sonic scoops john from alto music is actually the artist here it's some tracks from his vault that michael is going to be mixing so this should be really interesting really fun stuff if you want to go even deeper with michael you could also check out a whole vault worth of material he's got over at mix with the masters where he's been involved for many years instructing people both online and in person let's dive right in a one last quick thing there is going to be a live q a with michael as soon as this presentation ends so join us there we'll put a link in the show notes down below if you're catching the live premiere of this you can join us for live q a and of course both will be available for replay in the future there's also a big mixcon giveaway going on go to sonicsgroup.com giveaway that sonicsgoop.com mixcon giveaway to win thousands of dollars with free gear from plug and alliance sponsors of this particular installment and all of our other sponsors from nixcon all right thanks to michael and everyone involved let's get into it michael take it away hi i'm michael brower record mixer welcome to my temporary studio up here in the catskills i want to thank sonic scoop for presenting this episode along with mixcon for 2020 and i also want to bring in my assistant fernando reyes who's going to be helping me through this and as we all know everything is in virtual reality these days and he's back in new york city virtually being my assistant and he's got team viewer and audio movers to help me through this i want to thank some important people here that are also sponsoring but it's a something that i use every day there's plug-in alliance and you'll see how much i use them in many forms great plugins but today it's really about how far we've gotten with technology and tools now as many of you know back when i started mix with the masters ten years ago whether i was doing videos that you've seen of mine or you would attend the sessions the week-long sessions in the south of france uh i didn't spend very much time about the technical aspect of what goes on and it's those are just tools it's really about the philosophy and the tools then become an extension of your thoughts now today i discovered something only four days ago on that was so exciting on that i really wanted to share that with you and forgive me if it sounds a bit technical at first it's all about mixing but sometimes a session is more challenging than another and i can tell you that normally i mean as a as a mixer what are we doing we're bringing out the vision that the artist had in mind we're bringing out the spirit of that song and generally they provide you with the palette of colors and the paints and all you got to do is just put those together and you're off and running but it's not always that easy and as a mixer in my vocabulary there's no can't anything is possible now normally you know a 16 track 24 track 200 tracks that's great but what happens when it's just a couple and that challenge first happened back in 1998 when steve berkowitz from legacy came to me and he said michael i've got the most important recording that dylan ever did it's happened in 66 it was a bootleg out that's known as live at albert hall where it technically was actually live at manchester this was the night that he introduces his band going electric his first set had been acoustic you've got a whole audience a purist there and a folk singer the legendary folk singer has become is becoming legendary at this point and the second set curtain opens up and he's not holding an acoustic guitar he's holding an electric guitar and it goes electric the audience goes crazy some of them are happy some of them feel like he's betraying them it's an evening that is so special the energy is just you can feel it in the air and so he goes michael i've got this recording you got to mix it and bring that that spirit out and i was like well that's great so you know this is 98 so we're talking i know pro tools isn't out yet but we've got the sony 24 48 and 3m and says all right fine so you'll just transfer what is it 8 track 16 track you know transfer that and he goes no no it's not 16 and it's not eight i go oh well then it it's four is it you know he goes well it's worse than that it's yes it's on a half inch four track but it's just an instrumental on two tracks and bob is on the third track that's it i was like so i'm mixing that i go hmm so i guess i'll just kind of eq it or something he goes no you you'll see because it's just a documentation of the event you need to bring it alive you need to make it feel like there's electricity in the air i was like okay let's do this i'll figure it out and and so i got the tracks and i molted it out on my big this is at sony studios at the time and i'm on my ssl 6000 i don't know how many 98 it just faders all around the the desk wrapped around me and i don't need all those faders uh but i thought all right well i've got an instrumental let me molt it up and i brought it up on four different stereo channels and then i proceeded to try and and manipulate it because now i'm trying to somehow isolate the drums and the and the bass and the guitars and just try to get things on each track had its own little thing going and i would i would using compression and eq and i'm constantly doing this and when one hour goes by two hour goes by three hours goes by and it still just doesn't feel like anything really it's just it's got very frustrating six hours go by and i don't have those notes they were lost but at some point i kept switching out the eqs and and the compressors and then something happened and it i just got chills all over me and i was like i'm in and then suddenly the show came alive and then i started to move the faders like i always do and pushing stuff and just making it feel like like the evening now has come alive and and it was there it was always there just needed to be brought out and two hours later i was done i mean it was uh you know it took six hours just to get there but i knew it by how your body feels and as a mixers that's what we go by and on you know this was a challenge i mean this is this is a time where not even a two-track was going to stop me and as mixers that's what we do we just got to bring it out 22 years later i get a call from steve this is after many projects that we've done together but he calls meeting us michael i got another project for you on once it clears we'll go ahead and start it but here's the challenge it's not going to be three-track sorry okay great great what is it because it's going to be two tracks and i was like okay he goes so what do you think i go well what i think is it 22 years later there's great technology we should be able to figure it out let me just call my trusty assistant fernando reyes who's going to be helping us out today and see what we got and sure enough i'd already heard about this but i was like wow you know this is the time but i go but i don't have that project yet and i said you know let me just figure something out and i'll get back to you you know in a week or so but i'm sure we could figure it out not a week later my good friend john haber owner of alto calls me he goes michael listen i just found tapes and recordings from my band looker back in 83 we had some success uh i'm looking to remix all of these you know when you've got like a slow period or you know and and i was like okay because i got 16 tracks but i also have like four tracks which are actually three tracks and only stereo mixes i was like i can't believe this this is perfect because but the 16 tracks i go no what's what's the three track he goes instrumental and vocal unfortunately the vocals buried in reverb i'm like perfect i go send me that track and so he sent it to me and i said fernando what are we going to do i want to be able to mix this i need it stemmed out and today i'm going to show you the process of what happened what we did so that i could go ahead and mix a song and make it feel great and bring out the vision of the artist with basically an instrumental and that's what we're going to do today and i hope you enjoy the process because for me literally i discovered this only four or five days ago and i think it's important to share that there isn't anything that we can do that is beyond us it's all possible and i mean i learned that a long time ago i figured if i can't do it there's three people outside the control room that could come in and do it there's three people out there and so i don't want them coming in so my mind i was always like we're going to do this so once you come with me today follow me through this process we're going to have a great time and i hope you really enjoy it so with the help of fernando i'm going to present to you the technical aspect of this which is very boring to me but i have to do it because this is such a cool process and but it's a process that has to be explained so first thing i want to do is just play the rough mix that i had then play you what i after it was all done presented john what he approved he had some a couple of tweaks which was incredible that he could actually make those changes i'll kind of point those little things out but you know nothing really important the bottom line is where did it start how did it end up it was almost like those pictures of the the bald guy and then the guy with a whole lot of hair i mean that's that's the comparison we've got here it's to me the fact that i did this with a stereo mix is just mind-blowing to know the pain i went through 22 years ago and now really in a matter of an hour an hour and a half let's say to be able to just mix and have the stems it it's it's great i mean there'll be a time when somebody watches this video and you'll go ah yeah that's old but for now it's new so let's do this so fernando once you play me the rough mix and this is what we started with [Music] okay so it's a fortunately it was a good recording it's a good balance right you can hear the guitars don't hear so much of the of the bass and the vocal is in deep reverb so fortunately i have on this project i've got my instrumental and i've got my lead vocal mono deep in reverb and then also on that track when there's a solo so i've got the solo already separate the lead vocal is separate already i'm you know i'm a step ahead and let's just listen real quick to what the instrumental sounded like and what the vocal reverb so you understand what the where the challenge was all right so fernando play me the instrumental only [Music] all right so we know that's what i had to start with now let's listen to the vocal which has a lot of reverb on it okay play that wondering please paint it all against the sky your face shines right okay so that's good now just and just go to the guitar solo so we can hear what the guitar solo sounded like to begin with and this one i'm so glad it was isolated because man putting in plug-in alliance you'll see i mean plug in i don't know what else i've got one two three four i got five plug-ins and across that solo so we'll i don't remember anything i did but we'll see it it turned out amazing play that a little bit [Music] okay that's good all right so first i want to play you the rough what i was given and then i'm going to play a little bit of what was approved what i gave back to him the difference is almost like one of those pictures where you see in a magazine the the guy with no hair and then next picture next to him with a guy with a full head of hair that's what this feels like it's crazy it's crazy in the fact that this is originating from essentially a stereo mix so join me on this process it's going to be pretty cool so the first thing i'm going to do is have fernando play us the rough mix fernando play it [Music] okay so that's the rough now we're gonna play the final mix this is what we're doing here and and the fact that it it it's sourced from the stereo make still is just mind-blowing i know someday when you'll see this video this will be old hat but today it's a new hat it's only for me i only discovered this a week ago it's already been out there obviously but for me it's a new discovery so be able to share that with you and show you the process to be able to as a mixer do my job is what's so exciting to me so play the final mix [Music] so the vocals drier the drums are bigger the guitar is tougher the bass is pumping you know all from basically an instrumental so let's let's see how this process happen i'll go as quickly as i can and not get too technical because i don't like i don't like getting geeky but we got to go through this so bear with me on this let's do this all right okay all right here's the walkthrough and i have to tell you this reminds me of you do you remember the oxiclean commercial where that guy came along with that beard who was like and here's a here's some laundry and you see the dirt and the stains and everything and then you put the powder in and suddenly everything clears up and boom you got clean laundry that's what this is like it's crazy isotope has been doing this for a long time i'm using two of their plugins i'm using ozone 9 and rx8 ozone basically breaks it down into three different categories right let's open that up fernando so i can show everybody now you see here you got drums bass and vocals so what we want to do is separate all of three but you can't you you can only do one at a time so we're going to figure out how to get rid of the bass and we want to do drums first and then we're going to print that and we're going to do it again three times now why am i using rx well rx has a fourth option and the option is called other which is basically allowing you to now separate guitars and keyboards now why don't they add that to ozone i don't know that's all 20 000 of us ask him that question and see if they can add it to the ozone the next revision i'm sure they have a good reason but to me it was an extra step the other reason why we're doing ozone first is ozone works in pro tools and rx doesn't and so you have to do it outside of pro tools print it put it back in we don't have the time for that and i'm honestly that's over my head i don't care about it so here we go let's just play real quick what it was what we started with so here it is all right so what we want to do is we want to get rid of the base so you see there's three instances of here so the first one we brought the base all the way down so with that in all right so you see the base is down but you still hear it so my guys did another instance of it so now there's really hardly any any bait but still got guitars and still got drums right so last instance boom we put that in so now it's less bass and now let's bring the drums up right boom see that's highlighted drums up [Music] so what we got here is basically just drums and guitar now so that's the first pass so that went into rx and can we show that so now that i've got the that stem with basically just drums and guitar we now want to get rid of the guitars and so rx comes along and you see the same thing vocal bass percussion other we're moving into the other we're gonna leave everything all that alone and i i can't play it in real time but i'll show you exactly what we did so we fussed around with it actually fernando futs around with it and uh also my second assistant noah steinberg who's in there he's in in the background so let's let's play what i ended up with when rx was put in and then printed in [Music] drums crazy right okay that's good so now we did the same thing again so i'll go through quickly what we did so now and i'm gonna have to make these inactive because man they eat every ounce of cpu power there is it is a power sucker but it's because it's such a complicated intense tool that it's not something you can just you know leave up at least not with the system i have up here in the country so let's play the bass remember it's basically the same stem three times right let's play it get the picture so now we're going to put in the first one and put it in and what do we want we don't want any drums so the drums go down hit it real quick okay stop what do we have on the second instance taking the drums down again let's do it even less all right let's stop third one in what do we got now we want the base up so go ahead and play it now you're hearing a lot more bass stop and the last instance what are we doing again more bass hit it crazy so now we just basically got bass okay good so now that's with the ozone now let's hear what happened with the rx when it was done since you already i've already shown you the picture of what rx is doing we're going to do the same thing and this is what we ended up with [Music] i mean now going through rx it's only bass the magic okay that's good all right so real quick now we're down to the guitars that's all that's left but we're also going to have to address the crazy reverb on on the vocal it helps to have a great assistant i just sit back and go yeah yeah all right so guitars here we go quick this is the original what we started with [Music] we get it okay stop what's the first instance boom open it up what do we got obviously we don't want any bass [Music] all right second instance we don't want any bass again got it all right and what's the third instance we want no drums boom [Music] and again no drums let's get rid of those [Music] okay and so now we're gonna rx that so now we've got the guitars and i'll show you what we did with rx we basically bumped up other which for us is guitars how brilliant is this it's like oh you want less vocals here there's a button there's actually an icon here it's a you know you got vocal down or bass down or percussion or other i mean how easy is that and this is what we ended up with after he got rx [Music] guitars okay enough so we got drums we got bass we got guitars because remember all i want to do is just mix right but we need to go through this process real quick before i can do that and it's not that quick takes time but bear with me all right so now who's the next that steps up to the front of the stage well we got a vocal with a lot of reverb so there's a few companies that remove reverb so let's go to the vocal and let's play the vocal the way it was in solo [Music] please paint it all against the sky your face that's a lot of reverb so what do we do with this vocal we need to bring in three powerhouses we got unveil on vial unveil by synaptic and we have plug-in alliance spl and isotope comes through again with its rxd reverb so why didn't i just use one of them well i started off with isotopes since we've been doing everything else and it was good but this is a severe reverb issue right and the cool thing with with rx is basically it learns so you find the little tail of the reverb and you find it it says learn and then you can fuss around and it you know it removes it it did a a good job but there's two other plugins right and so we started off basically it was one into the other and the other we start off with synaptic synaptic has nice colors nice animation and it is very very detailed and so we started with this and got as much of it as we could out so let's start let's listen to that with just the first one in [Music] [Music] now already you can hear that the reverb is dropping and let's listen to what it was like with just just plug-in alliance alone [Music] okay so that does an okay job too and let's listen real quick to isotope but you put them all together and we end up with that's right i mean so the answer is here is like it doesn't matter whether you use one or ten you just my job here is i want a drier vocal and each one of these guys does a great job and together they address my problem so it's not always that it can be answered by one particular plug-in or one particular tool sometimes it's a combination of tools so now we got a drier vocal at this point now it's time to mix now we're talking about the plug-ins that i used to make things more exciting and get it to where i wanted it because again remember all this is pre-mixing and to be honest a lot of this was done by fernando right i told him what i wanted what i didn't like and that's what a great assistant does he follows your direction boom boom boom does it all and then i sit down and i mix okay but not everybody's got that luxury which is why i'm helping you through all this when you've got your own studio and you're your own assistant your own getting the food your own intern your own everything and so that's why i wanted to show you all of this process because you're going to be doing this on your own so with that said now it's time to mix thanks to fernando he's prepared that now it's my turn now the plugins come into play because right now all we've been really dealing with is our tools so let's get started what do we got we got drums what are we gonna do with the drums okay so as we did with all the other stems once we got the tools because they're this drawing so much cpu we printed that and so the final print is what i'll be using in the mix and then if i want to put any plugins and stuff i can because now i've got my vocal and i've got my bass i got my drums i got my guitars so now now this is where i start having fun his fun fernando's fun is over it's my turn so let's start with the drums let's just hear the drums real quick because i've been able to really isolate the drums i had fernando give me a kick and a snare trigger it's definitely a process because he literally has to take each one and and look at this and i'll separate each snare hit so i'm sure at some point there will be a plug-in that really knows how to get in there most plug-ins right now get close but you're still hearing a lot of mistriggering so this is the tried and true way you go in there and it just slice and dice so now i have a kick and a snare along with my drums that i can add to it but let's hear the drums it was like this now plug-in alliance who i love they designed the 9000j which made me so happy because that's the desk i'd been on for years and when i decided to go hybrid the only eq a channel strip that was available was really the 4000 i mean there wasn't i think ssl did have a 9000 but it it it didn't quite look the same and it was cool but i kept bugging them every you know three four months hi hey listen how's that 9 000 coming along oh you haven't started yet how about tomorrow you know okay finally and then finally one day i you know i said hey they go yes we're sending you a beta i was like ah and then then i proceeded once i liked it i proceeded to basically do all the presets that you're hearing by getting back on my ssl desk and and first of all making sure that their their plugin sounded just like my desk and it was 99 there there was one little thing that they were off by they immediately fixed it and boom i was like i can't believe because it's not just about sound it's just about the the feel when i use it like when i really pump that low mid frequency up there's something that is just so unique to the 9000 and they had it so i got plug-in alliance and the way i mix i want to feel like i'm still on my ssl so i've got 9000 across every channel when i mix that's how i start and so even if i'm not using anything it's going through it so i've got a little bit of that sound all right what else did i do i put in well the black box something i discovered by accident i was looking for something and i slipped and boom this showed up i was like what is this and i i use it all the time now it's a really cool saturation analog kind of box that is just it's so musical i love it i use it all the time and in fact i've got a whole bunch of presets and i'm sure they'll release that has you know on pretty much every instrument and what else did i use i use tried and true pultec even if you don't put any of these eqs in when you put it through this it it's got a sound it's beautiful and what's the last one last one is plug-in alliance they're uh mag eq right and what am i doing i'm pumping a little 650 and a little air and a little 25 well basically a little bit of everything they got right so let's listen to this so i'm going to just start bringing them in so we got drums with nothing and then i'm going to start bringing it in here we go [Music] that's a 9000 black box pultec see how it's just fat and warm it's just like the original pulse the mag know how it just brings up the upper mid range and the top end which i mean that that's just that's really cool now i also have my kick and my snare so i'll add those to the mix so now you hear all the drums and here we go okay there you know i found the appropriate found the appropriate samples that worked with these drums and there you have it that's my drum sound so let's move on to the next one who else is here the bass okay so listen to the bass before all these great plugins okay so what do i do first let's start with my 9000 not really doing much no compression little high pass little mid-range really not much but here we go [Music] now what are we doing here oh yes fat filter i forgot to mention them that's a daily for me all right so what am i doing here let's listen okay taking some of that top end off and then we're going to add ah yes i love this teletronix la-2a that was one of my first that was one of my first compressors that i used when i was at mediasound growing up we only had a few choices la-3a la2a 1176s roger mayer and unfortunately we didn't have any fair childs all the some other big studios had fairchilds we didn't have any of those so let's bring that into the picture [Music] all right so it's just hitting some of the high notes and who else what else we got ah my other favorite this one just add this one has like this kind of mid-range graininess even if you don't compress anything it's such a cool sound so [Music] making it growl more pushing it hard and here we go black box again what's the function here make growl a bit more i've got saturation the pentode the triode little air i don't know why it's necessary but i've said it at low it's cool sound and who's the last one in the picture ah-ha yes this new plug-in from leapwing let's hear what it does well that's just giving me a little bit of the sub-harmonics and a little drive a little saturation it's just kind of gluing the whole thing together which is why it's at last in the chain and that's my bass sound so let's move on to the guitars next guitars sounded like this originally [Music] which you know is already a good start but the fact that all i'm hearing is guitars is insane sorry since this is all this new to me it's basically like the first day that that i opened up rx and i was like you mean you can get rid of that cappuccino machine you know in the middle of a live show that's unbelievable you know so here we go [Music] i'm pushing some 4k one of my favorite frequencies on good rock guitars a little eight and a little 800 and a little bottom that's about it right now what are we gonna do ah now i love that teletronics this is one that's just got instead of using the la2a the the brown one or brown one this one is an earlier version and it's just grainier so let's see what it sounds like [Music] [Applause] [Music] hear that rallying and there's no compression going on it's just the sound right boom who's next hey what a surprise black box let's listen to that [Music] [Applause] i mean it's so musical right and i'm doing the alternate tube saturation the flat you know a bunch of stuff here all right can it get any better and that's why i always go wow this sounds so good can i get any better well i do love uads bx sub synth you can go crazy with this thing it's not just about low end so let's see what i did with this gee i hope every one of these that i had actually sounds better but we'll see soon enough so this is pushing it and when you're you're getting some drive it's squeezing a little bit more adding some low harmonics in a musical way and then the final one which is so cool at this point i'm like okay we're good and then i go but you know i'm always like you open up plug-in lines and there's like all these other plug-ins that i've never even heard of like and so sometimes i go oh well let's see what this could do that was one of these days i'd never opened this before and i was like what's this thing do and i was like oh well i wanted to kind of spread it out a little bit but instead of just getting a regular widener i said let me see what brainworks is going to do so this is what it did we'll know soon enough i could have no memory of this [Applause] [Music] it just widened a little bit and gave me that kind of lower mid-range thing it let's see where i got some i got shred on there speed a little bit of a mono make no no i don't uh threshold i don't know i have no idea what these things do but you hear what it does it's cool so that's my guitar sound right so then i was lucky because the guitar solo was on a separate track so check this out so this is just having fun i just want to i want to match the the guitar sound so this was my solo you know so let's see what i did well i love wade chandler great man and here's his amp the gav 19 t i have no idea what all these things do i just kind of move them around i go wow that's cool and so i started off with his [Music] right so now i'm kind of squeezing it and just making it like he's like digging in a little bit deeper and then who else comes into the picture hey what a surprise so now it's again a little bit more present a little fatter but bringing out what the chandler plug-in has started i'm just now enhancing it and what a surprise black box in the picture again why that's why and here i'm i'm using the low end saturation alternate tube you know the other stuff and then finally who's the final one ah a little flanger doubler check it out subtle but within the mix within the track it's going to be great and there you have it i also have some backing vocals i played so let's just real quickly listen to those those were all on that one vocal track [Music] so i got the stereo maker on that because it was a mono and then what else do i add black box again why [Music] oh you know what i didn't do here i also had the 9000 on my guitar solo i put that in so now let's just finish up with my i'm doing a little mid-range taking a little bottom doing a little compression and basically i took those vocals and i doubled them so i took it from somewhere else and adam put them back and forth switch them so it sounds more like a couple of people so put those babies in and then the lead vocal so remember let's listen to this lead vocal which was dripping with reverb so we started off with i'll sing for you so now we essentially have that dry and we got a deverbed vocal what do i do to it well let's start with the ssl i'm just taking a lot of bottom end out and and adding a little bit of mid-range you know really not much and then once again you can see the theme here see what it sounds like actually let's just go right to a verse please paint it on the canvas the sky your face shines right by your box i'll sing to you another day without care i mean in this situation a black box just absolutely brought it to life let's i'm just going to play this again please paint it on the canvas the sky your face shines right through there's the presence i was missing okay who else is in the picture ah we got psp with their crazy amount of different plugins within one rack some of them i'm using some of them i'm not but this is a really really cool tool you know when you really want to dig in and stuff they're all very musical you got a little bit of everything with these things you've got preamps you got you name it and i'll just go to it you'll see and so what it what did it do for this vocal please paint it on the canvas the sky your face shines right through what am i looking for i'm looking for some distortion here i'm looking at to be more stressed right and that's what these guys did and then finally pro eq comes in and you can see i'm using dynamic eq here so that i can get rid of the things that aren't attractive so i play please paint it on a canvas the sky your face shines right through right so here you go you know i'm getting some of the i'm working on the ds a little bit i'm bringing out little things that are missing in it which in this was around 460 500 over here there's some mid-range was probably a bit harsh to me 1400 and getting rid of some of the s's at five you know i mean i'm not looking at the numbers i'm like you know i'll go to something and i'll go wow how bad is it i'll just go like this oh man you can really tell how bad it is by just going way up okay i just screwed that up it doesn't matter all right so there it is all right so now with the lead vocal it could use a couple of delays which we printed on and one of them we just took the line and just copied it over but my delays for the double i'm using paul wolf's doubler and what else am i using on the double i've got la2a and then for the one of my delays i use uads which is very close to what might well it even says it the korg 3000 i use my cork 3000 for years and years i i think did i sell that one alto selling that one so somebody owns my 3000 with my presets in it but i've always loved the sound of that 3000. now what else do i have going through it that oh you know i wanted to do something what did i do i took some top end off and that's about it oh and and i compressed it and i gated it all right then the last one for the solo solo delay it must be on the oh i must have had that on the guitar solo it's an atr it's ampex atr and i just got really really really tight 10 14 delay you know it's like just a slap it's just a widener really you're not hearing anything more than that but because of the character of this particular you know machine you're going through it's just adding a little bit so technically this is pretty much all done and the last thing that i did is the way i quite often do when i'm mixing i'm going to put something across the stereo and in this case it's my channel limited the germanium and this is my preset that i've used for i don't know 10 years i guess when wade first got me these i i just didn't use it it was in my rack it must have sat there and did nothing for about a year i was like i don't know maybe i'll just sell these and then one day a record came along and i i tweaked a few changes i did this and i don't know to me it was like it took a year for it to get old all the caps and everything needed to do which isn't true because i get the same thing with a brand new one but something happened and i was like whoa this is so cool and that's been my main one although i go between that one and the shadow hills and my adl fairchild the 670 adl and the manly so those are my four that i depending on the song is i'm gonna try listen to those so today i'm using the the germaniums and i'm using this this brings me back to the original days when i was mixing to half inch i always use 250 tape and the studer and that's what we had at media sound others studios rock studios were using the atr but since we were doing r b we had we loved the sound of the 800 had a silky top end and the 250 tape was our favorite tape and a bit basically as soon as i put this across a mix my memory went right back i could feel the way that i was making those records which is really a compliment for a plug-in today of what it's not just a great looking gui it really sounds great and i don't i know gps and i know the 900 and i know the 456 a little bit but generally the kind of music i was doing the 250 was perfect but they really nailed it it's it's amazing and for those of you who grew up on analog you should check it out because it works all right so those are my two so at some point i guess i'll play you the mix with it out and with it in but it's time to mix so before we do that fernando won't you just do real quick explanation of how you went about getting my kick in my snare sure so because we only had the drum stem the first thing we tried was isolating the kick and the snare using gating or using eq bands to try to get the triggers that we needed but because there still was some residue of the base on the guitars a little bit in there and because the particular kick and snare that they used on this recording were pretty similar in tone we just couldn't get the triggers to behave properly so like michael said we went to the traditional way where we just grabbed the stem that we had created tap to transient to each hit of the kick and the snare slice it up and that's how we got the triggers working properly okay so now it's time for me to mix so let's mix all right so here we are it's time to mix thank goodness because that's all i really wanted to do fernando has done all the pre-production for me and instead of watching me as i build my drum sound i've already done that with the plugins so really all you got to do now is just throw the faders up and have a good time and we're going to be done but this was all i wanted to do and the ability to do that from a stereo mix is where technology has really come in because it's a musical approach technology has allowed me to mix a song when it all i had as the source was an instrumental so this is very exciting for me because now literally anything is possible and as i said 22 years ago the process i still i still ended up with something that that was accepted loved um alive but the process was painful and and i could have never done the separation that i was able to do here here now it just sounds like a live recording where you've got leakage going into the drums that it you know of other instruments but there's really good separation so now all i got to do is just mix right let's do it [Applause] [Music] i mean listen to how important being able to trigger the kick is because really this song is rocky and it needs to be driven by the kick and the base so you know without these samples it's okay but with it in now it sounds much more modern [Music] [Applause] [Music] peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so it came together really quick i only have a few instruments to play with but you can hear the difference and we'll go back to the original rough you know and yield what i was able to add here is john wanted a lead vocal answer so i've got my the vocals here with some delays showing up and we edited the beginning of the song so it just starts drum edit and goes right into the song and then i can just write it the way i normally would [Music] your face [Music] through [Music] i [Music] anyone [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] dreaming [Music] now and there you have it [Music] out of a two-track came something that i could actually mix guitars i could ride solos that i could ride drums that i could make louder kick and a snare that i could beef up the drums with that makes for a good mix so i hope you enjoyed my little journey and my discovery and understand that anything is possible there is no such thing as can't not today's technology anyway i hope this provides you a chance to [Music] discover your your old mixes or somebody else's and um and turn something that was kind of okay into something that feels great more alive than what you started with and the limitations of stereo is no longer really a limitation so there you have it thanks to justin colletti and david weiss over at sonic scoop on thank you guys thank you plugin alliance and all the other great plugins that allowed me to mix a song and just have fun thank you all right that was a great master class with michael brauer big thanks to michael brower for doing this with us big thanks to plugin alliance for making this one free to the public if you don't yet have their mega subscription bundle you should totally get it michael has it i have it i use it practically every day it's probably one of the biggest steals in the world of pro audio so definitely check that out plugin dash alliance dot com it's plugin dash alliance dot com if you want to go even deeper with michael we're going to be having a live q a with him right after this if you're watching the live premiere of this video you can participate in a live q and a with michael ask your questions and get them answered in real time look for that link down in the show notes below and of course if you're watching this you know in the replay many months or years into the future the replay the q a will also be available and i'm sure it's going to be great also if you want to go deeper with michael you can check out he's got a whole library of videos over at mixed with the masters he's been making videos teaching people online in person for years so definitely check out our friends mix with the masters but again big thank you to michael brauer big thank you to plugin alliance and if you want to win thousands of dollars worth of free stuff from plugins alliance and our other sponsors from mixcon just go to the mixcon mega giveaway that's sonicscoop.com mixcon giveaway sonicsgoop.com mixcon giveaway put your email and stuff in there and you will be signed up for your chance to win all right big thanks again to plugin lines big thanks to michael big thanks to you for hanging out with me this has been justin colletti of sonic scoop see you next time

Channel: SonicScoop

Views: 328,167

Keywords: mixing, mixcon, masterclass, michael brauer, SonicScoop, Plugin Alliance, mix, mixer, Justin Colletti, Coldplay, John Mayer, Grizzly Bear, James Bay, Aerosmith, James Brown, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel

Id: PS7f_Jsln04

Length: 68min 6sec (4086 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ownpacetotheface]

Step one have a really good assistant do hours and hours of work with RX. Step two mix like a normal song. Easy as that!

[u/NewNorth]

I like how he doesnt care that all of his plugins are peaking

[u/Vexest]

"I don't really know what any of these things do, I just kind of move 'em around and go 'Wow! That's cool!"

I've never felt so validated of my process in my LIFE!

[u/JustinColletti]

Great video. Whoever is doing that intro is awesome X-D

[u/squcecompany]

fantastic, thanks for sharing !