Teezio: Victoria Monét - "On My Mama" - Mix Breakdown

hey guys it's tiio with Engineers I am in my studio in Los Angeles California I'm going to be doing a breakdown for a song called on my mama for an artist called Victoria Monae a song that I love from the minute they sent me the demo and then I was lucky enough to be able to get my hands on it so yeah let's jump into [Music] it what you guys are seeing here on my screen is the mix session the approved mix 8 that came out um so yeah let's run through it so this is the demo that I'm basically referencing um and I have it on a button on my gray so I'm able to jump between the two of them as I'm mixing and sort of putting things together um so yeah so that's the first thing is I have my demo I'm able to go back to it listen and kind of get the the vibe for the rec record so I start with drums so we're going to come up here to the kick and um yeah you know what should we play the record one time just to we'll just play it down really quick from the top and then let you guys hear it and then we can jump [Music] [Music] in when I say she get it from her mama I'mma say you f right body R is unpolite don't being a humble type tell me is you down cuz I'm trying to go up tonight left or right I just want to live in a fantasy I think we deserve it right top of the memories I've ever made in my life permanent easy the ladies is pimps tonight living inside a dream where the love is like I put that on my own my on my hood I look like I look good you can't touch my back what you good I look fly I look too good put that on my own Mama on my hood I look fly I look good you can't touch my back what you I I too good all right cool so I just wanted to give you guys kind of like a little playback so you guys could hear the song if you hadn't heard it before um let's jump right into the drums cuz that's usually my starting point when I start I'll have everything muted and I'll rebuild the mix instrument by instrument reing back and forth from the reference to kind of see where things are sitting um so first thing is the kick let's jump into a couple things so as I play the kick I'm doing very and again with drums and stuff I do very little I just try to take out what's not NE necessary um so we got a little uh cut right here at 49 a little boomy 128 and then a little resonant 414 there boom compression I'm usually using the my first compressor with a Ki is usually the neutron it's very transparent and it doesn't give you too much of like that pulling effect that you get sometimes squashing so I'm doing very little it's probably a DB maybe a DB and a half of of reduction um and after that I'll hit it with just one more compressor just to hold everything in together what I'm trying to do usually to get loud with a mix I need to reduce the Dynamics of things like the kick and the base so that I'm able to get it to be loud but still hitting um so boom that's the compression next thing I bring in is the clap so I'll bring the clap in with this with the kick like this and what I'm doing here is I'm doing quite a drastic two almost two and a half or a little more than 2 and a half at uh 1300 and for me I think let's let's solo this that's kind of like a a resonant frequency you can even see as it's playing that it's coming up above here and it's showing like that's a pretty big thing right there so boom I brought that down a little bit and that actually brought a little more heightened focus on the high end cuz as I brought this down the focus drove this way into this section here so I was able to get it clear um after that I guess I needed a little more uh Clarity on that let's take this off so you can hear right there this Spectre brought in a lot of of uh pop and and brightness to the it's just cutting through a lot better than without [Music] it after that I hit it with an EQ which again I brought down at this is 12 1200 the other one was at 13 up here so I still brought a little more here and I did just a hair a0 2 up 5K and above on the neutron um after that I hit it with the C2 I'm a huge fan of the C2 it's a really vers versatile uh plugin for compression this is the rim shot which is a layer with the clap together so over this part of the record they're not layered and then it kind of when the hook comes in the layers come in together um so we have that and then we have this percussion Loop let's hear this so that's giving me some nice space let's play this [Music] together and again that just a little nudge here on some of this there's already some some saturation factor and and some some good stuff on the sample itself so I didn't need to do too much besides besides corrective stuff so a little bit here and then a little boost on that top end just to give it a little air especially with that that Reverb that it has and then after that R comp pretty low ratio doing about almost 3 DVS of reduction cool cool cool um then we have this percussion instrument which is this so that what I'd imagine I did is I probably yeah exactly I took out that right there so what I did here is I leveled it out a little more because if not that sound is like it's piery in that frequency so around 500 brought that out little compression again a very low ratio doing what a little more than 3 DB probably four DBS of reduction um and then last part of the drum section is this swell which I actually put a doubler on it and threw it to the side cuz I wanted some side information cuz a lot of the instruments in this record up until this point before the horns come in and everything is pretty mono um once I did that I cut a little bit of the top I'm even cutting top here on this um I'm not afraid to just sometimes the reductions can be really big I mean 1.73 1.25 and then over here on this side what do we have here does it show or am I not seeing it what is this yeah minus three on this on this shelf right here so I'm definitely not afraid to get rid of what I don't want and you should be too for sure all right cool so drums are all in this is what all the drum sound light together so all these drums are running to a drum bus which is here so I'm just I'm not limiting with this I'm just hitting it with this little Center knob here limiting Happening Here little bit of gold clip shout out my boy Schwab who uh makes great plugins um I'm not using this but I have that there just in case cuz a lot of times a lot of times what will happen is the cake will still still end up even through my limiting and compression my kick will end up sticking out so I can use this ozone um if I need it specifically in this song I didn't end up using it um and I don't use it too often unless I'm really having trouble with the kick let's jump into the 808 so this is the 808 on its own I don't usually use R base when I use R base I have it down to here and I just put a hair this is what came on the base so I worked after the pro after proq in the base uh this is my Pro Q so this is what I'm doing so starting from here a lot of times what I'll do with stuff is like I'll figure out what is useful and what is not and what keeps things sounding like the demo and what is not necessary so after the r base I came in with this Pro q and I took out a little bit more from what they had done here on this EQ boom lowii little bit of 0.1 Distortion mv2 is a really useful plugin in my eyes I feel like it just brings that low stuff closer to the high stuff um compression again I I love using this Neutron on Kick and base it's real smooth and transparent but on this one I'm definitely getting close to probably four DBS of reduction there and then after that half a DB of reduction with the with the C2 and there's two bases on this song There's the verse part which is more of live [Music] base so this is my EQ so I came in I came in with my AQ here the low five that I used on this base the MV again a little bit of compression this one's adjusted differently cuz this base is different than the uh than the other 808 and then 3db of reduction here and a little more resonan thing my ears are really sensitive to resonant stuff and things that sort of build up and resonate together so I'm always constantly eqing stuff like that out underneath it it's just like a little hidden under base that's underneath that one to give a little more body and on this one I'm really slamming it cuz I'm really just trying to get the feel more more than like having that provide low end for those sections cool so that's bass and drums let's play those things together so you can hear them played [Music] together I really like those percussion like voice things that come with it and this little like oot thing that is actually really dope when it plays let me play the bass and that together it's just really nice to hear that and then this section here cool so that's drums and bass playe together let's unmute let's unsolo these and we'll move right into the first piece of music music which is this main pad that goes across the entire song So this main pad again dealing with resonant frequencies right here you can see I'm I'm definitely getting in there and digging into those things silica is a great plugin to give a little bit of just flavor you know light saturation it's kind of like decapitator but it's a little bit different as well so but I use I use them in different in different ways I wouldn't use a decapitator for this cuz I feel like it might be too much um and then hitting it with a compression after about 2 DBS of compression at the most or almost there um and that's in the hook so let's move to the verse stuff there's actually some guitar which is those kind of like funky little um staccato Vibes [Music] here and I pan that to the right because I didn't want it to be with the vocal cuz the vocal and that guitar can sometimes be in the same frequency so I'm trying to move stuff out of the way definitely use soothe on this cuz I can tell this guitar definitely has a lot of of reson frequencies in it so I'm again I'm not afraid to get in there and just get rid of all that and a little bit of compression we're doing two and a half almost 3 DBS so that's just to set it in place cuz it's not supposed to be some especially as I pan it you don't want something sticking out of just one speaker so let's play it together right I just to in a fantasy I think we deserve it cool so that's the Guitar let's jump into this pad here which is on the horn break so let's play this section cuz I don't think you guys heard it it's the sample section oh my oh my I look I look Co touch my co I look I look so deep in perfect so this section has this sort of dramatic Crescendo pad and just a little bit of those frequencies getting it out and [Music] compression yeah really getting in there cuz I'm not trying to have that be something that's that's pushing out in the mix when all this other stuff is going on um another important part of the song is a sample so let's see I'm really crushing the sample I mean I'm treating as a sample instead of as a vocal in this particular situation um shaved off that's sort of I think this is the EQ I think this is what the EQ they sent me which is how they wanted how much low and they wanted in the vocal and then they had they had shaved off a bit of the top as well um after that fly I look talking about 8 10 8 n 10 DBS of reduction there um and then there is this is my EQ where I went and surgically got out all those frequencies that were bothering me and then I added another level of compression cuz it just it wasn't enough if I were to uh take this off oh my M oh my oh my mama you can kind of tell how the mama and stuff is all more flat and more more more flush against the record cuz again it's a sample and there's other vocals and horns that are here which are a little more Dynamic all right cool so jumping into the horns next which comes after most of the program music stuff these are Live recorded horns by a girl named Kyla mosovich shout out my Argentinian counterpart in this music in this song right here okay cool so I'm going to solo these horns there wasn't much I did to it I really really thought that they had done a great job of recording it um let's play this so I really just gave it some compression I didn't even EQ [Music] it you know almost three KNE be of reduction there um these are the sections that are in the horn break there's also I mean this song has tons of tracks you know because of the horns but let's start let's start minimizing some of this stuff so we can get that out of the way boom and let's unsolo these let's bring this smaller and then let's go to this horn section here so again same compression they had I left their compressor and I put some EQ here that I had done and then I just threw Soo on there CU there were some some frequencies in this area that were bothering me um so these horns and then we have this other section these are the hook horns so let's solo these and these are some eqs that I had done I just brought down the Shelf here and brought this down um it was just a bit resonant there um boom and that together with everything is I put that on my own Mama on my h i look f I good you can't tou my boom so they're very natural I mean there's not much happening to the horns they they cut them very well and again their team is is solid when it comes to this so I wasn't I wouldn't uh I wouldn't doubt that they had done some stuff on their own already and this is just like a a pickup line going into the hook that kind of goes with this I think it's harmonizing it let's solo these against the these ones here here cuz it looks oh no it's just stacking it's just stacking on top of that just to give it a little more ump um and then we're going to move to these n horns which are added horns that come in towards the end of the record um let's see solo these so these I believe are harmonizing or doing an octave to these so that section [Music] here and then after those horns we move down here and again this is pretty much the order that I mix the record in like when I have my assistant set everything up the drums come then the bass comes then the music comes and then live instruments like guitar and stuff like that will be after that before we jump into the vocals so that's the exact order I'm actually mixing the record in um let's see what these [Music] are so I think these are supporting and again I don't know if these were recorded because they are in Stereo which makes me think that they might be supporting VST horns to just give it some bite cuz they're thin you know you're not going to get that like full sound you get from from real horn so this is kind of a nice texture underneath it which is really nice just gives it that real brass bite that uh that you normally hear and again I think these are VST horns that support the other horns a lot of times this is a great idea to do because you get a little bit of texture difference between the different horns instead of it all being from the same Source this will actually give you a little more separation when you actually tuck stuff in like this um these are below there would be more of an issue if these were like the main horns and then the recorded horn horns were supporting then you might be like eh what's the point but with this it's great cuz you give it that support where you you you don't really hear these as much as you feel that bite coming from it um and then this is the last group of horns yeah so these are like the high really high horns and they're really tuck they're just there to sort of create feeling more than anything so now that we reach this part we reach where the demo is I usually have the demo separate between where my vocals are and where my music is so here's the demo and we're going to jump into the vocals now um so I'm just going to play through the verse so let's see what we did to Victoria's voice so let's get somewhere comfortable here let's just put it here um so Victoria's voice boom I did a cut here took out some resonant frequencies here and here um I added about 3 DBS of 10K and you can see when I take it off that gives it that crispy that crispy you know EQ on top so 10K boost about 3 DBS just a hair of limiting I love using this get a little gain the neutron which this is a plugin that the the the the pro q and the neutron I use very differently as you can see with like the pro Q this is more surgical type of stuff where I'm notching in specific places versus this is more like a shaping EQ for me so I'll go in and I'll do broad shapes and and cut things broadly and that combination sort of makes it so that the two plugins are not working in the same fashion but they are working hand in hand after that I threw a little limiter which I love using this little DMG audio Limitless um but again when I'm doing this stuff it's not like I'm blowing this down to minus 10 like I'm doing very minimal stuff minus one on the threshold so it's barely doing anything another plugin I put on there was this fresh air which I love when I need air on things when I need that really high air to sort of you know bring out the texture and stuff of the words and everything so I got 8% fresh air here Soo I use on pretty much all my vocals um I'll put this on two times high and I'll lower the mix down to like 75 or 60 wherever I need it get from m and that's just controlling that's just sort of controlling anything that I didn't catch with the eqs D occasionally the dser I'll use two one for this Zone up here which is like 6K and up and then sometimes the issue lies more in the you know one 2K to 4K so in this record particularly it was there that I was having issues with and finish it off with a C all just working hand in hand piece by piece and at the end I just have little of reduction um yeah so that's the that's the verse lead and most of it is sort of similar I do there are changes that need to happen between different sections whether she's changing key or whether whatever's happening um so yeah so this is pre hook hook I like to treat all my sections separately um it doesn't really make sense for me to to make changes for stuff that may relate to this section that have nothing to do with this section of the hook so I keep everything really really um really separated so let's jump [Music] in to the second verse so the second verse even though it is a second verse it's completely separate from the first verse I don't like anything being on the same track so I can treat everything exactly how it needs to be treated without compromising because another section that's okay on on this side might be fine so boom these meters are meters they left I didn't even touch them so I left them on there A lot of times I like to work from what where people are in this case the meter really doesn't make a difference um but I did leave it on there this section I this is this is a section where this vocal here I didn't I I needed a different treat something slightly different where I needed to make an adjustment just for this vocal so instead of uh keeping it on the same track and trying to just leave it I actually made a duplicate and I actually put an EQ here before it actually reaches the group bus and the reason why I did that is you can hear with her voice she's actually doing and she's going up there into like kind of a a sharp area with her voice so that's where I pulled this EQ just for this section as you can hear here that's not happening like a grandma with a peppermint they say she smell good that's just cuz I'm having sex game goes to [Music] so you can see why I needed to have a separate EQ there to like kind of compromise like just you know not compromise but take that down a little bit so boom we did that we have a background here on the hook what's this let's he this these are like some ad live backgrounds and I think there should be there's probably some crazy yeah the avox duo so this is kind of this is from anaras I love this plugin it's dope at making things kind of sound out of the center like a more of a wider image light EQ and this is the valhall verb they had on the vocals so again I didn't want to mess with what the verb sounded like too much cuz it actually does sound [Music] dope The Verve actually separates it a little bit and a lot of times it's like sometimes you have to ask yourself like if this is dope then why change it you know like everything doesn't have to be done with ego you could just be like that's dope let me work off of that and get it to where it needs to be cool so we got outro lead which let's hear [Music] this so that's a that's a a vocal that's kind of going with some other background vocals and the and the vocal sample which is up here in the music which we spoke about earlier which is right here boom so this vocal sample here goes into this goes into this section which is the outro so it all plays together and background wise let's jump into some backgrounds so the reason why you're seeing this stuff up here is cuz we were having trouble sometimes autotune going from one system to another so I had my assistant ignasio print down all the autotunes so that I wouldn't have any issues when I was mixing the record so here is real light deserve it they're just there to support the lead and give a little bit of imagery to be left and right so everything's pan hard left and right um and on this I think I left I just left what they had there was nothing that I didn't like so I came in with my EQ and I did this and then I hit it with a little compression but again I'm getting this stuff sometimes and it's like it sounds good already you just need to sort of touch it up you don't need to get in there and like change everything like don't fix things that aren't broken same thing up here you're going to see the committed tracks up here that Osio did and solo these increase that you can see that's a really dope little part right there so it's like you barely even hear it it's more of a feeling thing and and a lot of times these creative decisions are being made by the producer and the artist so I I'm respecting it like I could could have made that a lot louder and made it more prominent but there's already other things happening there there's other leads and and the samples playing and stuff like that so you got to kind of choose and in this case you know artistically this made sense to kind of have it be more of a feeling thing cool so we'll jump here we got a couple more takes of backgrounds and again these are groups that they had made so I kind of tried to keep it intact and these are just like little stacks that just kind of and the EQ is different on there you can hear it's more of like a radioed out type thing and that goes so you can hear the difference between those vocals as the lead is playing it sounds a little bit different but that's that's what creates a separation um here and this is sort of a section that was just supposed to be [Applause] like sort of just up there and then we're getting down here and this this song definitely had a lot of tracks I mean there's a lot of in here um but everything's sort of grouped because again I'm trying to keep things intact once you start separating the Blends and changing things that's when you start to get into issues with the artist and the producer M I like I look I look good you can't and this is all just supporting like you barely hear but it's there and it's there to create a little more width and imagery in inside of the the picture some outro stuff let's hear these together and a lot of this I'm just leaving what they gave me you know I probably adjusted this compressor a little bit dser so it's real light stuff it's so low too in the mid and then we come down here and again I left a lot of what they did on these cuz these are so in the back Ladi it's smooth it didn't need anything really I mean a lot of times stuff just doesn't need stuff when it comes from a good source and good Engineers what's this so that's a little section here and you can barely hear you can kind of hear that breathiness underneath the the horn outro [Music] there awesome and we're reaching here the end here soon of this song so let's go here and that section so these this and the horns I think those that's what's meant to be layering [Music] here with all these [Music] together couple more here and I put this compressor on here they were sticking out a little too much and then we got the last two here again a different EQ sort of uh thing going on this one let me see where they I think they did with the effects rack um but yeah the different filter just creates texture and separation between other vocals perfect so now let's run it all the way back back up to the top boom boom boom this is probably a 2 and 1/ half hour 3 hour possibly 4our mix I don't remember exactly how long it took me but it's definitely a lot to deal with with a lot of horns and stuff like that um once everything is done it runs out of my Sumi mixer it hits my uh vt5 com uh EQ and then what's on here just a little Ruby with the light on so the light on is just giving me a little Clarity I'm not actually boosting anything else I don't think yeah no not boosting anything else I'm cutting out bad frequencies overall like this and this and this so those are all frequencies that I just dug out of the entire mix together I hit it with a little fresh air after um not using this again this is for the same thing that we were talking about on the drum bus where if I feel like the low and is just a little too hot I can just multi band this down a little bit uh This Is My overall EQ that I use on my master which I love this EQ for just that Finishing Touch and bringing down bad stuff believe it or not like I'm doing 2 and a half DBS reduction there two DBS reduction there we're boosting a DB 6 6.7k and up and dropping here at nine so I'm like kind of boosting but still taking that out um and then from there hitting this which I'm getting a little bit of just squeezing the mix a little bit and then we jump into the the God particle 40% and doing maximum 3db reduction and then the limiter which the limiter that final this final limiter is not doing anything in this record but when I do need that extra push I can push a half a DB more here and push this uh enhanced curve up and that'll actually get me a little bit louder um if I need to be and yeah so that's the print and then from there it just hits this track and we record the pass and that's it it goes off to the artist so let's highlight three key plugins from this mix that I use a lot you guys can probably already start to guess Pro Q3 Pro C2 and the uh Neutron EQ which we'll grab off of a vocal really quick here so these plugins are probably my biggest go-tos they don't seem like they're special plugins cuz they're really not they're very basic plugins but it's just what you do with them that allows you to then make things sound special so those are my three top plugins that I probably use on on a on a daily basis for everything for having to go in and cut things out and compress things generally so yeah that was a mixed breakdown for on my mama for Victoria Monae and I appreciate you guys coming and watching

Channel: EngineEars

Views: 44,985

Keywords: MixedByAli, Engineears, engineering, recording engineer, music engineer, production, protools, logic pro x, LiveMix, Victoria Monet, On My Mama, Teezio, Chris Brown, Grammys, R&B, Jack Harlow, Grammy Winning, Grammy, chris brown

Id: QgLLGd6YjKk

Length: 34min 8sec (2048 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2024