Upgrading the Mix: Masterclass with Nic Hard and Snarky Puppy

[Music] hi this is Justin kety of Sonic scoop and welcome back for some more mixcon in today's mix walkthrough we've got a special treat the producer engineer mixer Nick hard is going to be taking us under the hood of a real commercial release for a Grammy winning artist snarky Puppy this is actually a revisiting and a remix of one of their earlier albums where they're improving both the stereo mix and Surround Atmos mix for this project really excited to hear what Nick does with this one this one is free to the public thanks to our friends over at sonar works and Nick is a big fan of sonar Works he uses their solutions to correct both his speakers and his headphones so he can be confident of what they're telling him so he can make his best mixing decisions he'll tell us a little bit about them and a whole lot about his process and approach when it comes to mixing if you want to learn more about sonarworks just go over to sonar works.com and check out sound ID reference which is the tool that Nick uses to improve his monitoring situation if you want to ask questions of Nick you can if you're here for the Live premiere just type in any questions that come into your head into the chat box you'll see on your screen as a presentation goes along and we'll be saving the best ones for a live Q&A that we're going to be doing with Nick right after this main presentation concludes we've also got more mixcon coming at you so go over to mix- con.com where you can RSVP for upcoming mixcon master classes to make sure you don't miss the live premieres of any of those and while you're there we've also got the mixcon mega giveaway going we are giving away thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of free Gear with three chances to win so good luck to you big thanks to Nick hard for doing this mix walkthrough for us big thanks to snarky Puppy for letting us go under the hood of their track and big thanks to sonar works for making this one free to the public without any further Ado from me let's get right into it Nick take it away hi I'm Nick har a mixing engineer I'm here at my home studio in Spain for mixcon 2023 with Sonic scoop today we're going to take a look at a track by snarky Puppy off their album Silva before we do that I just want to give a quick rundown of the gear that I'm using I'm mixing entirely within the box so I just have a MacBook Pro M1 I have an avid S1 I have Adam audio s3x H's as my main stereo pair and then I have atam audio a7s as surrounds and then I'm using this merging Anubis interface the reason I'm using this interface it allows me to run my Sonar work sound ID reference calibration directly within the interface so I don't have to worry about running it as a Plugin or anything like that it also does the calibration for the stereo as well as for the Dolby Atmos as well as running a calibration for my headphones so we're going to take a look at a track called the curtain of snarky puppy's 2015 release of an album called Silva it was originally mixed by somebody else and earlier this year the band decided they wanted to mix it again so they could improve the sound but also so they could mix in Dolby Atmos the first thing that that I need to look at is I need to look at the original mix and kind of establish how it can be improved and and what I can make better about it the only instruction that I was given was basically keep the same Vibe but make it better so let's take a listen and let me see if I can identify some things that that can help improve the mix so this is the original mix I'm just going to take a quick listen I might skip through a little bit because the song is 15 and 1 12 minutes long and just for the sake of this video I'm going to try to try to keep it short [Music] cool so one of the things that I'm kind of noticing right away when the band comes in is there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of lowend and this seems to be like a really dense area in the mid-range especially with with the drums and the base it feels like everything's kind of like crammed into higher low mids so that's definitely something I'll I'll kind of look at is like widening the Spectrum and seeing if I can get you know more lowend out of the bass and the kick drum and things like that let's keep [Music] listening [Music] cool so in this section same kind of thing in terms of like the low end and the low mid but I'm also hearing this this's kind of a a messiness that's going on so I'm going to have to kind of figure out where that's coming from so I just feel like there's there's kind of this like Haze thing that's happening so I'm going to try to look at like cleaning that up so you can kind of hear the individual elements a little bit more and also it feel it feels a little flat in terms of the [Music] highend [Music] [Applause] [Music] h so another thing that I'm noticing is seems to be a little bit of size missing or like grandios missing it feels a little small in places this is a band with an orchestra so to me it should be kind of like big and grandiose and and have this like really kind of like a huge Vibe but it it feels a little a little flat and a little a little tame so I'm going to take a look at the amount of Reverb and stuff like that and see if I can kind of get it to be to feel a bit more massive so now let's look at the Final Mix where I ended up uh versus the original mix to do this I'm going to use metric ab and just kind of flip back and forth so the new mix is blue and the old mix is yellow [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah [Music] I'm [Music] w [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] cool so hopefully you guys can see the the kind of the difference between those two approaches you know n nether is wrong and one's not good or bad but the kind of the things that I set out to get was was that richer low end and as well as this sort of like more sense of grandios and and you know a bigger space especially for the orchestral instruments um and generally just to have it a little less nasal and pinched so let's take a look at some of the things that I did that that that gotd us there cool so the first thing we'll look at is the drums in the original mix I found I found them very very like Punchy in the mid-range and kind of lacking in low end a little bit and so I kind of want to identify where that's coming from and also like have less of that mid-range so there's more room for other stuff to happen one of the things I need to consider with all of the instruments on this song is how much bleed there is um this is really important for that sort of like messiness that I was talking about before so any opportunity I have I want to kind of shave off any any open mic and and trim everything back so in in the drum set I've I've done it to the toms and to the snares this drum kit has two snares and four four Toms so the first thing I do is go through and and edit out anytime the toms aren't being played in this song it's it's fairly a lot uh it looks like [Music] this I tend to do this by hand I don't use strip silence for this and I I will I'll put in batch Fades but I'll I'll do it with a nice long fade so that you don't hear the the symbol ring disappear abruptly in in the mix so in addition to the four Toms I've also trimmed all the excess off of the snare mics on this song he has two snare drums one is is for one section of the song is treated like a Tom and then at some point in the song he turns on the snares and it's a a second snare drum so there are two snare sounds to deal with and five Toms basically so I've gone and trimmed all of that stuff so it's it's nice and tidy and looks like [Music] this and this is it's not just like the ringing of the TS but you can you can kind of hear the rest of the band because it's live everybody's in the same room you have an entire Orchestra so getting getting rid of that will just make the actual instruments clearer if there isn't bleed coming through these mics um I know it seems like it's not hugely significant but it all kind of like adds up in some cases I would even do the same with a kick the next thing I want to deal with is the kick drum sound so I'll quickly check out what was recorded which was a kick in mic a kickout mic and kick sub mic here's the kick [Music] in here's the sub and here's the [Music] out all of these mics to me have kind of this the same thing happening which is that they're all kind of like midrangey and Slappy even even the kick sub isn't particularly subie when I was mixing this I kind of played around with EQ and other things and I I couldn't really get the result that I wanted so I decided that I would trigger uh the way that I do this is with slate trigger and I'll generate a midi trigger and then I'll use contact so if you see here on this track here I have an instance of contact and I'm triggering this kick drum with this kind of music it's really important that it doesn't sound artificial and that it's mimicking the the drummer's intensity and playing like perfectly so I went I went through almost section by section and made triggers and adapted the velocity so that it really followed the Contour of his playing so for example in this section it's it's super quiet this is one of the reasons that I use contact is because it's not the same sample triggering over and over again it's it's multi-layered samples so the the sample that's being triggered when it's a low velocity is a softer sounding Kick Drum as it is in real life so when he gets more intense the kick drum sound [Music] changes let's take a listen to the drum kit in Solo I'll add and take away the the original mic uh along with the trigger in this case I decided to go with just the sample because it's more open it has more low end and it and it is missing that mid-range slapp that I'm trying to get rid of so as far as EQ and compression the sound that's within contact is pretty good so I'm I'm doing a little bit of compression and this is just to sort of compensate for for how the the big Dynamics and in the velocities and stuff you know it's not it's not a huge amount it's just a couple DB here and there and then as far as EQ I'm just carving out a little bit of the low mids and giving a little a little boost to the hbds so let's take a look at the first snare drum from section to section he's changing between snare and Sid stick so what I've done is I've separated it out so that the snare is on one track and when he's playing side side stick it's on a second one and so the eqs are kind of different so when he's playing the snare I have this EQ on and the low midband is made Dynamic so that when he hits the drum you're getting a little a little punch in the low mids I'm doing this because I don't want to just add low mid to the whole track because that means any of the bleed that's coming through on that mic would also like have more low end so this way it's just when he hits the snare drum we get just like a little push of that low end [Music] you'll notice I'm also cutting some some mids and some some of the low mids as well or the higher low mids this is again it you know listening to the original I felt like there was too much information happening in that mid-range so I'm looking for places where I can kind of cut that out and one place where we can do that is in is in the drum set because a lot of the other instrumentation needs that space because we've got an entire Orchestra as well as guitars and horns and all kinds of stuff so I kind of want to reserve that mid-range area for those instruments rather than for the drum set when the drummer is playing the side stick I have this EQ happening um so you see it's is is very different taking off a lot of top end and a lot of low end and really just just focusing on that that mid-range of the you know the wood sound on the edge of the snare so you see in Solo it doesn't sound particularly good but in context of the rest of the drums I'm pushing the frequencies that allows it to to pop out of the mix a little [Music] bit now we get to a chorus uh I guess I wasn't quite getting enough excitement From The Snare so I decided to add a sample in underneath I did this in the same way that I did the kick drum I used slate trigger and then I've made a you know midi track from it and I'm triggering contact ordinarily I would try to find a sample that the suits the song but in this instance I really I really just want a snare that kind of sounds like his original which is a little bit better because I'm not I'm not looking to change the vibe or anything here I'm I'm just trying to sort of improve the thing and so one of the things I'm missing in the original scenar is a little bit of like topend and crispiness so I've sort of gone through my sample libraries and I found one that I think is relatively similar and just adds those those few things that I'm kind of missing [Music] the next part of the snare is the the bottom mic a lot of the times I I really like this because it adds some of that crispiness that's missing from the top snare mic again super super simple so I've I've trimmed it out when he's not playing it uh I've also trimmed it out when he's playing the side stick because you don't need it then so it's only only when he's hitting the snare drum that that I'm using the bottom mic this is the Q that's on it so sort of sim similar to the top I'm cutting out the mid-range you'll see here I have two two bands that are actually Dynamic the same one in the low mid where I've actually found the frequency of the of the drum itself so it's boosting that frequency and then the top as well and this is just to add again crispiness just when he's hitting the snare and not when he's [Music] not so you see a very very minor minor bit of compression this is probably just will really only be catching it when he's really hitting it hard so the last thing on the snare bottom mic is this Neutron transient designer I like this because it's well it's less artificial than gating but it allows me to kind of control the information in between the snare hits and this makes it more rhythmic and kind of opens up a little bit more space for things to happen in between the snare Heads next we have the second snare drum so as I mentioned before in different sections of the song he's using it differently in this section of the song he's using it as a Tom so he's taking the snares [Music] off so you see I have this this really kind of like ugly EQ on it and in Solo it kind of it doesn't sound very good that's because this is sort of made to go in conjunction with the overheads and so I've taken off the top end because I don't want to hear the symbol bleed that's on this Tom mic disappearing I've also cut out a lot of the mid-range and I just have boosted that low mid yeah again in Solo it's not particularly pretty but in context of the rest of the drum mics it works [Music] and then later in the song on the same snare mic he puts the snares back on and it's a a deep [Music] snare so here's top and bottom and so on the this SN top mic I have more or less that same EQ probably carving out a little more of that of that higher low mid and on this one the high band is also made Dynamic so that when he's hitting the snare it gets a little bit brighter and a very very similar EQ for the bottom mic in this section of the song as well I decided to add another layer of sample so I've gone through same same process slate trigger made a midi track and then using contact again this time it's a different sample it's it's one that's another deep snare I found one that's kind of similar to the original again I'm not looking to radically change anything I just kind of want to reinforce what was there and this also allows me to EQ in a little bit bit of brightness without bringing up things like the high hat or the symbols and things like that I'll play a little bit of the section and I'll mute and unmute the track so you can kind of hear what the sample is adding to it so this is with and without so you see it sounds quite a lot larger with the sample in um this is partially because of the way that it's treated and also because I've added a Reverb to just the trigger cool so for the high hat it's just it's just one track for the whole song again super simple on the processing really not a lot happening I'm just doing this low cut again that's just I don't really want kick drum or any low frequency stuff in addition to the stuff that's already in there so next we have the tomx again super simple processing just an EQ in fact it's the same EQ on all of them and you'll see that the the low shelf is actually quite wide um this is to catch the different fundamentals of the toms I could go in and be more specific about the fundamental frequency of the Tom but this low shelf kind of catches it all for each of the different [Music] Toms I'm also sending the toms to the same Reverb as our snare trigger next we have the overheads on this EQ I basically have a a low cut really Steep and I'm I'm basically just trying to get rid of anything below that again I'm not really trying to be gentle with it because I just I don't want any of that information in [Music] there so I have a distressor on each of the overheads the purpose of this is not really to change the the sound drastically but basically just to sort of control and push back the snare drum in the overheads [Music] then we have the Reverb that's on the snare in the toms this happens to be like the default in elter verb but it it it suited I probably went through and looked at a few different ones but this one just kind of had the right Vibe so all of these tracks are a bust to a drum bus let's take a look at the processing that's on there the first thing thing is this back CQ so I'm controlling basically a little bit of the low end and I'm cutting off everything above 18K the next thing I have on the drum bus is this BX townhouse bus compressor I've found it it kind of works well for drums I've got an attack of 10 super fast release and just you know 2:1 ratio next is this drum strip from SSL the parts of this that I'm using in this song is the low frequency enhance this is again to like add in more more of that low frequency that I was missing from the original from the original mix let me just show you what it's like with and without that so this is [Music] with [Music] without cool so it's just giving like a nice little Goose at 63 Herz the other component of the drum strip that I'm using is the transient shaper uh this is basically just to sort of push the kick and the snare a little bit forward in the mix next is the Slate digital virtual tape machine this just adds a little little bit of color it I like the way it brings the mid-range forward lastly I have this API 550a and you'll see I'm basically just knocking out 2db at 400 htz next in the session are a bunch of percussion tracks uh there's a percussionist in the band and then there's also a percussionist in the orchestra one of the big challenges here is dealing with the bleed so I've gone through all of the tracks and figured out what's being played and then tried to figure out which microphone best suits that instrument so in a lot of cases I'm not using all of the tracks that were recorded yeah basically just made the decision which mics to use and which not to so I'll give you an example I'll play these percussion tracks and solo them and we can just take a listen and see what's [Music] there [Music] [Music] [Music] obviously the one that's labeled perk Tom has the best Tom information so I'm definitely going to use that the one above that that's labeled perk toys is cool but feels a little unfocused the one above that per overhead gong feels very washy to me so I'm probably not going to use that one this one here that's labeled perk overhead symbol seems to have the best uh information for all of the different elements and it feels relatively tight and I'm not getting a lot of bleed so I'm going to use the perk Tom mic and then the perk overhead symbol mic and I'm going to mute the other two also there's this other sound uh on another mic I'm I'm not sure what it is I think it's like a brush uh metal brush on something and you kind of hear it in this track up here but I want to bring it out a little bit more so I've found it on another track and then I've edited out everything in between so I can really focus and EQ on that specific sound so it sounds like [Music] this so it's pretty it's pretty harsh editing wise but when you add the other percussion mics back in or in context of the mix it it sounds totally normal [Music] a lot of the eqs on the percussion track will be just a lot of low-end control probably not doing a whole lot else like on this track yeah just the low cut everything below 56 uh on this this Tom track down here it's more like a Tom EQ this looks pretty extreme um let's take a listen to it without it actually [Music] I've quite severely cut out like 12 DB of mid-range this is probably so fits more with the toms on the drum kit and again reduces some of that mid-range information that we were kind of trying to to slim down originally so there's a few other percussion tracks and it's all more or less the same thing I'm just choosing the mics that kind of work best for the sound um the only other thing that's kind of special is on this orchestral percussion I'm adding uh this Shep's up mix uh this is basically so that it turns it from a mono signal into a stereo signal and just makes a little bit grander so at this like at this moment of the song it just gets a little bit wider and a little bit bigger than it would be if it was a mono [Music] source so also as part of the orchest percussion there's a marimo and there's a section of the song where it's almost by itself in the original I really didn't like uh how close this felt it felt very sort of yeah really upfront and and I felt like it was kind of out of context in a [Music] way cool and so basically for me I wanted to give it a little bit more personality so the the main way that I'm doing that is by adding a Reverb uh I've decided to go with this Fab filter Pro R nothing super special going on here 3 seconds of Reverb as far as the EQ it's it's pretty sever so I'm cutting off a lot of low end and also a lot of top in the original recording I didn't really like how sort of clicky it was and I really just want to focus on the the tone of the instrument I'll put the top back in just so you can hear what it was like but for me having more of a focus on the the body of the instrument rather than the attack of the mallets was sort of more appropriate and and with the Reverb it feels sort of further away rather than being up close you see it's quite it's quite clicky with that top end um I feel like it's better without next in the tune we have the bass in this song There's an electric guitar base and there's also a key base on the synth base I'm not really doing a whole lot I'm cutting out a little bit of low mids but more or less leaving it as it was for the guitar base there was a Di and there was also a a cab in this instance I decided to just use the DI and use uh reamping software in this case again just to reduce the bleed if we listen to the the base cab mic you're going to hear a lot of the other instruments and if I try to EQ it at all it's just going to get [Music] muddier so you hear there's really there's there's quite a lot of other stuff that's coming in that mic so so for me it's better just to turn it off and then just use the DI and then use an amp simulator to to recreate the amp effect to do this I'm using the brainworks SVT plugin I'm also using the original di so it's a blend of the DI and then the amped signal as well and then everything runs into a bass bus on the base bus there's an LA 2A there's probably not a whole lot of compression happening after to that I have a little radiator and then after that I have this Pro Q3 later in the tune there's a Bas solo so I've added an extra EQ and extra compression that get automated on for that section and this is basically just to allow the Bas solo to come forward and and step out in front of everything else the EQ you can see I'm boosting a lot of mid and high mid um again this is just so it's heard and then I'm also increasing the compression um so it allows it to sit on top a little bit [Music] [Music] [Music] so in this section you can really hear the difference between the old mix and the new mix so the next thing is a roads uh for this we have a left and right amp signal so there is a little bit of bleed so on the EQ I've gone I've gone pretty hard on the low cut because I don't want to hear any lowend from the drums or anything else coming through um and just basically bringing that low cut up to the lowest frequency that you hear in the roads I've also cut some of the top end off and so this roads is basically just kind kind of existing in the mid-range and this is one of the instruments that we've kind of made that space for in the drums so the roads can kind of live in that in that area after I have the EQ I have an la2a this is just to sort of control the Dynamics a little bit again nothing nothing super crazy happening when I was mixing this I also noticed they were having some kind of technical issue during the tracking so there was this kind of like popping and clicking thing that was happening um I don't think it was a digital error but just something with the instrument itself I'll play a little bit for you and then I'll show you how I took care of [Music] it so you can kind of see uh here it's yeah it sounds like a mechanical issue with the instrument itself so to do this I'll export the files uh out to isotope RX I'll just do a little snippet of it just to show you so I'll open isoto is a standalone plugin and then use the monitor plugin to listen to what's happening within our X I'll use the spectral repair replace function uh with the instant process if I just click instant process down here and then use this selection tool I can kind of dial in and find the sounds and then it will replace those parts where there noise okay so in in this little section of the file we can kind of see those clicks so all of this very bright and information down here is the body of the instrument and then these little guys here are these clicks so I'm just going to highlight just just the high frequency part so you can see it's it's a lot better so basically do that for the whole song next to the piano tracks on these there's definitely a little bit more bleed than I would have liked so the the EQ is is a little bit severe and it it isn't like the best sounding piano in Solo because of the EQ but again it doesn't really matter what it sounds like in Solo it matters more what it's like in context so I'm really just trying to focus on the important part of the sound and cut away anything extra that's that's coming [Music] in cool so you see that when when I bypass the EQ there's definitely more rumbly stuff happening even with the EQ in there still a little bit more than I'd like but I was trying to kind of keep some of the body of the piano or the bottom end of the piano in uh I'm also taking off a little bit of top and that's just for symbol bleed and things like that again the piano would sound better if that stuff was in but it's kind of a matter of controlling the bleed and trying to keep keep the mess down a little bit later in the song There's a a solo piano section so the band isn't in at that point so what I've done is I've taken the piano tracks and put them on a different set of tracks with a different EQ and I've also added a [Music] Reverb cool so you see the EQ here there's more of the bottom end in I've left the top alone and I've just boosted a little bit of high mids just to make it a little bit brighter so a much more natural sounding thing and I can do that because it's out in the open and there's not a drummer playing and not a full orchestra playing in the same room I've used also another instance of ALB and the same the same room that I have the snare going into in the Toms but it's on a different bus I like to give each instrument its own Reverb bus so on this section I've added that Reverb because I kind of wanted to to make it sound a bit more like we were talking about earlier a bit more grandiose and have have a bit more of this this sort of vibe of being kind of bigger uh if we take a listen back to the back to the original mix and well ab and just see the difference between with and without the [Music] Reverb cool so the the in the original mix it was much drier and much closer closer and in my mix I've you know added this Reverb and to me it feels a little bit more emotional and really at the end of the day that's kind of what we're trying to get here next we have a B3 uh so we've got a left and a right and a low mic again any anytime he's not playing this has been trimmed out I don't want open mics kind of hanging out and again I'm keeping kind of the processing super simple in fact it's just just low low cuts on the mics relatively aggressive relatively steep slightly different on the low um I I would have looked for the lowest frequency that he plays and just brought it up to there I'm not looking to change the sound I'm basically just looking to get rid of anything that's Superfluous on the B3 bus I have a distressor let's see what that's up [Music] to so there's really not a lot going on there I'm basically just looking to bring the louder Parts down a couple of DB next is a clavinet this was recorded just di which is good because it means there isn't another open mic to deal with but it's bad because I kind of miss the sound of an amped clavinet so what I've done is I've added a Fender Deluxe amp simulation [Music] after the amp simulator I've added a compressor pedal which is which is pretty aggressive and I've done this because on the clav there's a w pedal and so when he's at the bottom of the sweep of the W it's a lot quieter than at the top so this way it kind of makes it more even and you can kind of hear the full sweep of the W pedal [Applause] [Music] so that's really like leveling the whole thing out after that I have a stereo delay and the purpose of this delay is basically to take the mono clav and make it stereo so on one side of the delay I have 0o milliseconds and on the other side I have 20 milliseconds and all this does is just take it out of the middle and puts it in the left and the right and a lot of the times when I do this if it's an instrument with some low-end information you kind of lose a little bit of that but in in this context I feel like it's worth it because it gives you the space in the [Music] middle if we go back and listen to the original mix you actually don't hear the cloud very well so by panning it left and right and making it stereo it kind of brings it out and allows us to hear it along with the basins after the clav we have a basin uh I decided to do the same faux stereo effect on this so it has the stereo delay 0 milliseconds on one side 20 on the other again this just takes it out of the middle which creates more space you know I really want to make sure that I'm using the stereo field to my advantage here because we have so much instrumentation and so much information to get across that having everything stacked up in the middle is we're just G to be like banging our heads against the wall the whole day also on the Bas synth I'm boosting 90b at 12K um this I want to hear the buzz kind of sticking out above the mix as well as the you know the base of the [Music] instrument also on the track that had the Bas synth is Cory Henry solo so what I've done is I've pulled this down onto a different track so I can affect it differently so on on the solo I still have the same boost at 12K I'm ducking a little bit down in the low mids I have this compressor on again because I want to hear like every single note that he plays uh this this particular compressor is super aggressive um it's definitely not not gentle and it's not subtle um and then after that I'm actually adding a little bit of a little bit of gain a little bit of distortion with a little radiator you'll see that the the bias switches on which makes it a little like fuzzier for the solo I've added a delay I've used the soundtoys echoboy uh it looks pretty much like the stock setting when you open it up except that I've added a little bit of low cut in addition uh leading into the solo section I've kind of created this delay throw effect that happened so I've automated some of the parameters within the echo [Music] Boy Next we have another Bas synth uh I've also opted to kind of do a stereo effect this time I've decided to use uh the dimension D emulator again is kind of get it out of the middle and leave space for the [Music] base so there's yet another Bas synth uh I wanted to make this one stereo as well this time I used the dimension D emulator and the reason I did this is again to get it out of the middle because we have the bass guitar playing this part and we have two base sents that play this part and then we also have the clav which is playing a similar part so what I've done is basically put all of these keyboards in the left and the right so that there's space for the bass guitar in the middle so we can hear it and later in this section is where the bass solo happens so basically I'm opening up the middle so that the bass guitar can kind of be [Music] featured [Music] [Music] in this band there are three guitarists so I've panned Bob lanetti to the left Chris McQueen to the right and on Mark ler I've actually made him stereo again with that with that faux stereo delay as far as EQ relatively simple again just trying to control the low end first then adding a little bit of compression and after the compression doing a little bit more EQ and that's just to kind of like stylize the sound once it's under control so on you'll see on Bob here I'm just cutting a little bit of 220 on down on Mark you'll see it's a little different I'm adding a bit of 10K and a little bit of 4.8 and leaving the bottom end alone and on Chris same thing just 220 on down just losing a little bit of that [Music] [Music] so the processing on the guitars is relatively simple there's not a whole a whole lot going on it's mostly those panning choices that kind of that kind of count here finally before going to the orchestra we'll talk about the horn section that's in snarky Puppy so in this song There are two trumpets a SA saxophone and the saxophonist also plays bass clarinet later in the song with the horn bikes there's a lot of bleed on these uh so I'm cutting the low end a little bit but there's really not too much I can do with it so I kind of have to live with it uh in addition to this little bit of EQ um using soothe and this is just to tame some some of the frequencies that kind of build up so it'll it'll adapt to Whatever frequency is sticking out and push it back a little bit this makes them sound a little bit softer and less [Music] abrasive uh you'll see here that on J's trumpet track I have this extra EQ this is automated uh on for his solo so during his solo I just want it to be a little bit brighter so I've boosted here actually quite a lot of the top end [Music] [Music] so for the snarky horn section I've added Reverb again I've used alter verb um it's the same Tex patch um the purpose of adding Reverb to these horns is is also to like set them back in the mix a little bit so they're not completely right up front and and dry and kind of impersonal so this makes it sound you know like they're in a space okay so now we get into the orchestral elements a lot of tracks here and and a lot of things to to kind of go through generally overall the processing is is pretty light the the main purpose is really just I'm just trying to control the bleed as best I can so again the EQ is is relatively severe I'm cutting off a lot of the low frequency and I'm cutting off top frequency there's a lot of bleed on these tracks and I really just want to focus on the fundamental of the notes that are being [Music] played so you can see there's a lot of a lot of stuff going on down below that that all that's going to do is just sort of create mud and and take up space that could be taken up by the instrument itself after the fluts we have a section of clarinets there are three clarinets and two base clarinets uh you'll see here that I've actually muted one of them uh this was because the track uh it sounded like the microphone wasn't even really on the instrument so it it really served no purpose so rather than leaving it in and adding to the noise I just made the decision to turn turn it off you can still hear the other clarinet in one of the other microphones uh because they're all standing right next to each other but yeah I had to kind of make the decision to cut this track as far as EQ goes same same kind of thing really just trying to take care of that low-end stuff and the high-end bleed situation with the Bas clarinets I've cut off a little bit more of the top end because you have this sort of Buzzy thing which in in some songs I would want to leave on but in this context because it's orchestral I want to take it off the clarinets and the flutes share Reverb I elected not to put the base clarinet in there cuz I didn't want to kind of add more mud to the thing and in this instance I decided to use the Fab filter Pro R I did this because I feel like it's a bit more transparent and it has in the way I have it set is a little bit less character therefore you kind of it doesn't occupy as much space in the mix but still gives kind of the size and and the vibe next we have the horn section for the Metropole in there there are two french horns a tuba three trombones and a Bas trombone I've treated these relatively similar to the way I've treated the snarky horns in that I've just used a little bit of EQ and the sooth on every channel these also have their own Reverb so on the Metropol horns I have yet another instance of alter verb and it's the same setting again so all of the Metropole horns and the Reverb are sent to a bus and on that bus I have the virtual tape machine for the most part it's just adding a little bit of mid-range but in this section here it's actually going into the red and adding a decent amount of saturation as well and this I think just sort of adds an aggressive Edge to it that kind of Suits the section of the [Music] [Music] song [Music] [Music] so next we have the the string section for the Metropole um so there's a bunch of violins violas cellos and bases uh I did notice when I was kind of looking through the tracks that there's duplicates uh of some of them and basically they were overhead mics and then the were also clip-on mics generally the overhead mics sound better um the clip-on mics are you know not as good but they have less bleed so on some of the songs not as much in this one but on some of the songs I opted just to use the clipon mics except for the sections where the strings were by themselves because the amount of the amount of drum bleed that that gets added from those overhead mics is is pretty significant and it changes the the drum sound quite a lot so it's less to do with the sound of the strings more to do with the sound of the drums the EQ on the strings is also relatively simple not doing a whole hell of a lot just cutting the low end and shaving off a little bit of the top end in this song I've decided just to use the clipon mics for the violas and the cellos and not to use the overheads uh so also on each of these close mics uh I've also added a Reverb uh ordinarily with an orchestra and a string section it's really nice to have a decry or you know a big wide sound that's kind of far away um this isn't really possible in this situation because because you've got a drum set in the room so I'm with the Reverb here I'm kind of trying to recreate that effect of the strings not being like super up close and but but more like they are in an orchestra Hall um so I've sent each of these close mics down to a bus with another instance of ALB this time I'm finally using a different Reverb um this Disney Hall and you'll see in the the beginning of the song here I have automated the level of that up so when the strings are out and exposed by themselves I have more Reverb happening and then when the band enters I'm bringing it back and that's basically because once once the band enters um that Reverb isn't really heard and it's and it's more just sort of creating a little bit more mess but so out front in the intro I really want to have more of that big like Orchestra Hall kind of vibe [Music] so again if we AB with the original mix to me having this Reverb on the strings is kind of is is adding a little bit of emotion to the thing and also in the original mix you know the strings are are kind of brighter um and I've actually sort of Lo purposefully withheld a little bit of the top end one for the bleed situation and two just to make them a little bit more like you're listening from a distance and so it's not like they're right in front of you but that you're sitting back in the concert hall as you kind of would listen to an orchestra the last attracts in the session is audience mics or ambient mics I had kind of have no idea where these were placed uh in the venue but I I listened through some there were a couple of tracks that were labeled 119 and 120 I didn't know what they were but I felt like they had good audience on them and so there's you know a section in the song where where there's some Applause so I wanted to make sure they were on there after Cory solo the audience applauds so I wanted to make sure that that really comes [Music] out [Music] and and also at the end of the [Applause] [Music] song then we get to the mix bus uh I tend to do a decent amount of processing on the mix bus and usually I'll do that after I've gotten the eqs and balances for everything else then I'll add the plugins to the mix bus and then I'll go back and do the automation but on my mix bus I have an instance of this dangerous back CQ nothing too crazy just the super low-end being cut and the super top end being cut then I have an instance of the SSL bus compressor again super light compression I'm probably not never seeing more than 4 DB of of gain reduction I have an instance of the virtual tape machine same thing here this this is probably not being used in the same way it was being used on the horns this is probably gentle and and not really getting much saturation but it's just bringing a bringing a little bit of presence then I have an instance of gfos to me really the the main thing it's doing it's it's actually adding a little bit of clarity so it's it's brightening things up it's a pretty it's a pretty deep plugin in terms of what it's doing and I don't know that I fully understand everything that it's doing other than I like the way it sounds next I have Oxford inflator and the brain works true Peak limiter the Oxford inflator is to me it just adds a little bit of of girth to the thing and then the limiter I'm just using it to bring the level up to the level of the master of the original so basically a lot of the stuff I'm doing in in this mix is really just about controlling the bleed and just allowing instruments to be heard and really sort of positioning things so that you can hear all of the different layers and that's really the challenge with with stuff that's this dense so if I if I push P harder into the the realm of of adding effects and things like that it can create like more more muddiness where normally I'd kind of you know push that stuff a little harder in this in this context really the goal is to to create space and allow you to hear everything that's going on so that's you know keeping it relatively light on the processing um I think I think helps deal with that okay so that was the basic stereo mix obviously there was a lot more that we didn't cover as it's a a 15 and 1/2 minute song but I want to take a little bit of time and talk about the atmos version of the mix as well and how I adapted the stereo mix into Atmos the audio that you're going to be hearing is the binaural render uh so hopefully you'll get some of the effects and I'll I'll when I do some of the panning stuff you'll kind of hear it um I'll start with the session that we just were working on uh kind of pick up where we left off when I'm doing an Atmos mix I love having the original s session and working from that rather than working from stems and I'll show you why there's a couple of things that I like to do um and I feel like it allows me to take more advantage of the of the the fun spatial elements the first thing I'll do is import my mix bus and object bed tracks which I have in a template and they have all of the routing and busing information that I'll need to get started so here's my surround mix bus it's a 7.0.4 bus and then beneath it I have an LF bus you you'll see that the plugins are on these buses are copies of what was on my stereo bus and I do this because I want the sound to be more or less the same so I'm going to use the same processing chains The Only Exception is the virtual tape machine which doesn't have a multi- Channel version yet so I can't do that below those tracks you'll see I have a copy of the stereo master I have that there because I basically want to be able to AB between the atmos mix and the stereo mix I want to make sure that the kind of the vibe doesn't change too drastically because I'm working from the full mix session and I did it um I stand kind of like a better chance of doing that than if I was working from stereo stems that somebody else had mixed so because I have the original session here and all of the plugins it's it's kind of easy to get to a similar place but I still want to be able to check it so the first thing I'm going to do is is go back to the beginning and address the drums and again I'm not looking to like reinvent anything here I'm just looking to to place things um in the space audio field so to do that I'm going to select all of my drum tracks that were in the stereo bus folder and I'm going to assign them to a new folder but instead of being a stereo bus it's going to be a 7.0.4 bus uh this is also including the Reverb so now I'm just going to copy the plugins that were on the stereo bus down to the surround bus again I kind of have to skip the virtual Tye machine because it it doesn't do multi- Channel yet so if it hit play it's going to sound more or less like it did just in the stereo version because I haven't I haven't pushed anything out yet so one of the first things I'm going to do is just add a little bit of uh Kick Drum to the LF send uh so that the we get a bit of a bit of extra bottom out of [Music] [Applause] [Music] it the next thing that I like to do is is Pan the toms around a little bit um you know normally we have you know the toms going from left to right or right to left and uh here I want to make that a little bit whiter I kind of want to put the listener almost almost in the drummer's position so I'm basically I'm going to I'm going to have the toms wrap around and we also have four or five of them um so we can kind of really take advantage of of this [Music] opportunity so I'm going to take this first rack uh and I'm going to pan it not just all the way to the left but I'm going to take it I'm going to take it all the way all the way to the side on the left and then the second Tom I'm going to leave that yeah in the front corner in the front left corner this next Tom I'm going to leave in the front right corner and then this fourth one I'm going to put it all the way opposite the first one so now these are going to going to wrap around [Music] so the next thing that I like to do with the drum kit is to add a bit of height to the overheads and put them in the front the front left and right also for the drums uh I want to take the Reverb that we had which was this instance of alter verb so right now it's still just stereo so that's just going to be firing in the front left and right speaker so what I want to do is basically use the same thing I don't want to change the Reverb but I want to I want it to be a surround Reverb so the easiest way I found to do this is with with a plugin called Halo and this is going to take that Reverb information and basically spread it all around including the the height channels as [Music] well let's let's listen to the just the solo of the [Music] reeverb this is the stereo without the Halo and that's with a Halo so it's spreading information around so I hope you guys can hear [Music] it so now I'll open up the actual Atmos mix session and we can take a look at some of the other busing and panning choices so with a lot of these things um I'm not changing much in the way of EQ I'm keeping what we had from the stereo mix and I'm literally just sort of adapting it to a surround bus and then and then panning things out so let's take a look at some of this percussion stuff and we'll just look at the panning so here I'm utilizing putting something a little bit further back where it was somewhere else in the original on on this track I decided to add an instance of Halo so let's take a listen to that with and [Music] without [Music] [Music] uh it looks like I decided to take these percussion elements and give them a little bit of height and put them directly [Music] overhead so again it's really uh at this point it's really just about panning and and creating a spatial sensation so with the Basse I decided not to turn it into a 704 bus cuz I don't I didn't really feel like I wanted um anything in the Heights or anything really behind me um but what I did do was basically take this sort of stereo base which was in left and right and and bring it bring it in a little bit so that instead of it being sort of pinned against the front two speakers um it does exist a little bit further out and this increases the volume makes the base a bit more present um but does also you know in a way make use of some of the spatial audio also on the base bus I've added a little bit of send to the LF so basically now in the LF we have the kick drum and this bass guitar and bass syn now we get into the keyboards um it looks looks like I've left the roads more or less the same and then with the piano I've taken it out a little bit wider so it comes back into these s surrounds a little bit and then for the solo section I've put it back so actually gets less wide for when the piano is by itself and that's kind of to keep it more realistic and and sort of to bring your focus in so that when the rest of the band comes back in it kind of explodes out a little bit again so kind of narrowing narrowing the spatial audio sensation so that there can be this kind of like release [Music] later [Music] now we get down to the clav and I've left it with the stereo delay on it and what I've done is basically just pan it even wider than it was in Stereo so it as well as going uh further out to the left and the right so for me right now the clav is all the you know all the way out here sort of matching where the toms [Music] are this Bas syn I've left exactly as it was in the stereo mix so with the stereo DeLay So it's just in the left and the right um it's kind of funny how small it sounds now in comparison to the stuff that's been panned even wider in Corey solo I've taken it in the center but I've decided to give it a little bit of height and this this sort of takes your attention up a little bit um and sort of really features The Soloist so on across this record anytime somebody takes a solo or most of the time somebody takes a solo I'll add a little bit of height to it um and this to me just like helps it stand out a little bit as for the delay that was on the solo just added an instance of the Newen Halo and this just gives it a little bit wider of an [Music] effect [Music] for the next synth that was on there the one that added the chorus to that stayed exactly the same as it did in the stereo mix so just just left and right with a stereo chorus effect so now the guitars um the guitars that were left and right are now extreme left and right so all the way out in the side surrounds and the one that with stereo with our stereo delay again that is just normal left and [Music] right so this is one of the things I really love about Atmos is just how much separation you can get now instead of the guitars kind of being piled on top of each other even though they were panned like hard left and right in the stereo mix they were still kind of occupying similar spaces now you really feel each of the three guys in like a completely different place so for the snarky horn section I've changed the stereo bus to a 7.0.4 bus um this is basically so that I can add the Halo to the Reverb that's on them and make it a spatial Reverb I've left the panning more or less the same except for a couple instances one of those being uh on Jay's trumpet solo so I did the same thing that I did with Cory's solo I just added a little bit of height so he's in the center channel but just a little bit above the listener I kind of feel like this helps give a little bit of [Music] focus [Music] so now we got back into the orchestral world and for this you know part of me was was thinking that I should keep it like super realistic but then another part of me was like well it why don't I just make the most of the spatial audio thing and and Pen things where I like so I went that route um so I did things like this where I'm basically again using using some of the hype um this is again for sort of separation and really just to give this sort of sensation of of things being all around you um you know I figure it's better to go this way than to be super safe and yeah we might as well make the most out of it so the F flutes are kind of panned as they were in the stereo mix but with the added height base clarinets I've put left and right I can't remember how they were in the stereo mix but they are left and right here with the clarinets again I I've added height and these ones I've even put um extra wide so I brought them back a little bit and once again I've just used the the same Reverb that was on them the same bus and I've just added an instance of Halo um again just to sort of take the stereo Reverb and make it a spatial audio one now we get to the Metropole horn section um same kind of thing all all I'm really changing here is just the panning and the placement so if we have a look we've got French horns which are now French horns are starting to get like behind us a little bit so it's at minus 25 and so I have them left and right and starting to kind of reach reach around for the back next is tuba I guess whatever mood I was in that day I felt like the tuba should be behind me and then for the trombones I kind of I kind of have them on the right but again they're kind of like wrapping around and and going wider than they would in the stereo um except for the Bas bone which is over in the left speaker now we get to the the string section again same thing um really only just changing paining I've turned the string bus into a 704 string bus and I'm basically yeah giving a little bit of height to the violins I'm also panning them wider than I would have done in the stereo cellos have kind of left the ground level and then for the es I've panned them all to the back so they're kind of stereo but behind [Music] you [Music] the only thing left is the the audience mics um which there were a bunch so I took the opportunity and and panned them around a little bit so the first four I panned one to the front left one to the front right one to the rear left and one to the rear right MH and then the last two tracks I used an instance of Halo on each one so this should hopefully create a nice surround audience uh let's check it [Applause] [Music] out in in addition to the panning on those ambient mics I've also added uh an additional Reverb and this is just for the atos so this wasn't reflected in the stereo and this this Reverb is a quad Reverb and it goes just just to the heights so only only into the four speakers that are above [Applause] me cool so that's the basis for the for the atmos mix um next in the process is kind of a being with the stereo master and just just making sure that it represents exactly the same thing again because I'm starting from the the point of the stereo mix it's going to be relatively close I just need to try to match a little bit of EQ um similar to what the mastering engineer did in in this case it's it's it's pretty close I'll do a little AB for you between the Ceramics and the stereo [Music] [Music] a [Music] to me I really love the way that this album and this song sounds in Atmos I think I think this kind of a song with this much instrumentation in it and the orchestral elements really benefit from from the extra space and and and The Sensation of Music happening behind you and all around you um I actually way prefer to the stereo mix um you know I know everybody kind listening with a full setup but hopefully the binormal render is doing a good job and you guys are kind of getting a sense of a sense of the space in the spatial audio so I hope this has been helpful and I'll see you around all right I hope you enjoyed that mixing master class and walkthrough from Nick hard so great to get under the hood of a snarky Puppy track tremendous artist and some tremendous playing big thanks again also to sonar works for making this one free to the public check out sound ID reference if you haven't already it will dramatically improve the sound and more importantly the accuracy of your monitors and headphones so you can make more confident mixing decisions without second guessing yourself if you've got questions for Nick remember that we have a live Q&A coming up right after this main Master Class concludes and we've got a whole bunch more mixcon master classes and workshops coming up so make sure you go to mix- con.com to RSVP for upcoming mixcon premieres while you're there remember that we've got the mixcon mega giveaway going where we are giving away thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of free Gear with three chances to win so good luck to you and I hope to see you in the live Q&A see you there

Channel: SonicScoop

Views: 54,197

Keywords: MixCon, Masterclass, Snarky Puppy, Mixing Engineer, audio mixing, music mixing, mixing music, music production, mixing, audio engineer, mixing masterclass

Id: bNQkbY7A9XY

Length: 83min 40sec (5020 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023