Why Your Mixes Don't Sound As Good As Nickelback

foreign [Music] doesn't give an L1 about your plugins and that's why he's worked with some of the most massive rock bands on the planet listen to him explain exactly how his process directly leads to results and I'm going to be talking less about the what's and a lot more about the wise and then that's going to lead to the house because ultimately the plug-in doesn't really matter that much the frequency really doesn't matter that much it's it's why you're doing something and then everybody's going to have 10 different ways to answer that why try not to focus so much on like which plugins I'm using or the exact frequency I'm boosting we're going to be talking a lot about more about the why and ultimately at the end of this there should be a lot more questions than there are answers so I hope to provoke some thought and to make anybody who's watching this once this is done basically rethink everything they've done up to this point and it might be coming to the conclusion that everything they've been doing up to this point is right and they're on the right track keep going but I want this to provoke kind of like why am I doing things a certain way why am I using that plug-in why do I like that why is that a problem in every single mix I do and if you can think about that why I think ultimately you're going to be able to figure out how to solve it that's kind of my that's kind of my my thought process behind pretty much everything I do in life and so I wanted to preface this with that so that way people are like what is this guy going on about here's a direct example of this process in motion SSL channel on every single one why do you do that Chris well I already told you why because if it needs anything it's really quick and easy to just you know if I need to add some top end boom there's top end oh by the way just for somebody who's wondering like what just happened there I've got a uh a little like plug-in controller here it's a basically like an SSL Channel strip that matches up so I can control on a knob which is awesome so yeah I just I'll just go through my channels and I need to roll some some low end off boom like it's really fast if I had to go and instantiate a plug-in here's what's going to happen for most people Boomer truck it's got a big boom you guys know what that is on the downbeats right if I'm like ah man that's got some way too much low end I got a little I don't know is there such a thing as that on a boom track hell no but anyways the boom track needs way more low end what's going to happen for most people if they don't already have a channel strip set up is they're going to click on their plug-in and they're gonna think to themselves man what plug-in should I put on the Boomer track to give it I hear the need is good on bottom end but it might be here because because somebody told me that right yes got it actually I actually haven't come to that determination on my own like somebody told me the Neve's good who cares it's the Boomer track it needs some low end yes or no and it but even even just that thought process that just pulled like if if you have a meter of like energy or attention like on a video game and every time you make a decision you pull a little like thing off of that meter having to make that decision and having to do this process just pulled one little tick of energy out of your meter like that's a waste you don't want to pull that off so most people you know if they go what are you cue to use I've got like a thousand eqs here no Boomer needs more low end done go that way the frequency that you use it doesn't matter because like I said what's the decision-making tree low end yes or no open the plug-in yes did that cause more problems is it the right frequency not the right frequency okay now I go to the frequency who cares what frequency did I end up on I don't know I fixed the problem move on okay I love what you think I better take that low end off or I'm gonna blow up everybody's speakers how long are you taking to address problems while mixing are you getting stuck picking plug-ins are you losing yourself while picking frequencies what if you just can't work as fast as Chris does well you can and you're gonna see results immediately with these simple tips I'm gonna solo the kick drum really quickly here so you can kind of get an idea of what's what here's the live Kick Drum right so it's it's a good sounding Kick Drum but it's obviously not like the cartoon kicked around that everybody wants from Nickelback and basically what I every time I go to mix a big rock song What I'm trying to go for so that's when I'll start bringing in the samples and I'll turn on something like this where I'll show you kind of how we we build up into what we're building into so it says here kickstamp CB1 kickstamp CB2 kickstand cb3 kickstamp CB4 now is that a sample that I've been using for 20 years no no this this is basically from the production session where I had my program drums this is two kick samples that I basically just printed of what we were hearing from the program stuff mixed the way we had been hearing it while the song was being produced and I did two of them so I had a little bit of control over each one so I'll just give you a taste of like what each one of these is so lots of attack right kind of Pokey kind of Slappy and then here's here's the money maker right here yeah but that's not one kick sample I mean it is a kicks it is one kick sample now but that was made up of probably three or four kick samples that were treated and processed specifically for this song while we were producing this song like it kind of evolved into that and then when it's time to move on from program drums I just print that kick sounding the way we've been listening to it and now that's a new kick sample so if somebody said to me give me the Nickelback sample I'd be like which one every song it's different literally every song it's different now when I say it's different yes do I use similar ones in every song yes but the balances are different this might have had been eq'd differently it might have been one might be compressed obviously this song at some point in time I was like ah missing a little bit of slap and I wanted to leave that as is and I wanted to fill in that frequency right so during the production process at some point I was like I'm missing a little bit of slap on the kick I added a Slappy sample into it and then that became what we were listening to and then the other thing I like to do and you'll see a couple other samples loaded in here but I like big like ambient samples that are like super long this song the kick actually needed to shorten it down a little bit but I'll always at least load a few big roomy samples in so that way I have the option of lengthening kicks and snares and toms and I'll just kind of give you a taste of what that sounds like so it sounds a little bit and these are these are samples that me and Andrew Cruz actually recorded and and produced these that you'll probably be hearing about in Solo they sound funny but when you mix them in like you can kind of hear right so it kind of gives this realistic space now the kick drum's not super dry and I mean it still sounds kind of it still sounds sampled but it gives it a realism and it gives it a width and it gives it a length that I think a lot of people don't really think about when they're when they're thinking about drums or drum samples and and for me I focus a lot like just sonically one of the things I gravitate towards a lot is I like drums to sustain the length of the beat that they're until the next thing comes in so if it's a snare like I almost want the snare to sustain until the next snare or until the next kick or if it's four on the floor I want to sustain to the next Kick Drum so having options to make things longer and then you always have the option of chopping things down or gating them down but that's always a big thing for me but basically like I just want to kind of give some insight as to how the samples get built because it's not me just using the same three samples every time and it's not a ton of different layers by the time I get to this point those decisions have already been made Aid those balances have been have evolved over the course of the production to fit the song So this balance that kick sample CB4 might not work in the next Nickelback song it might need to be something different and I think that's something again you got to have intent and you got to use your ears and you got to listen to see what works and what doesn't work once that was balanced out I ended up I print that down and you end up with here's the blend of all kicks together so there is dry kick in there obviously this sample is very loud that's what we do right I'll pop open some of the plugins here I mean this kind of go this goes back to a little bit of kind of what I was saying from the beginning of like like my decision making when I'm doing stuff like this is very kind of go go go I know a lot of you right now are looking at they're like oh how much top end is he boosting oh how what's what's the Frequency at it's like I don't think I touched that frequency I think I added more top end and 8K just happens to be the default I'm like yeah I needed some top end so I added top end done moving on I added some bottom end some bottom end like it's it's not it's actually not precious at all and it's very broad stroke stuff I absolutely love how you think though is it's it's so important and let me just like clarify something so that everybody knows this is something I have been working on for years I still have to work on this I still find myself doing what everybody else does and if I have to put a plug-in on something I'm like man I really a compressor which compressor should I use which 1176 compressor should I use I heard the bomb factories the best it is the best yeah it is the best we all we knew that a long time ago right but the purple 76 though I mean but again like I have to work very hard mentally this is something that doesn't doesn't come naturally and I know it's not natural for a lot of people like we want that magic thing we want something to do the heavy lifting for us and we hope that if we pick the right plug-in that it's just gonna like instantly do what we wanted to do sometimes it does most of the time it doesn't ultimately I've I try to take as much of that out of the mix process as possible by thinking about that ahead of time and then just setting it up and I found that this particular Channel strip makes it the easiest for me to do exactly what I just showed you need more bottom end yes boom did I cause any other problems well yeah now it's the wrong frequency it's too it's too low I need to go a little higher okay boom did that cause that fix the problem yes moving on done right and I picked this EQ for a variety of reasons for somebody else it might be Fab filter maybe Fab filter lets them make that process that that decision making really quick and lets them do the move really fast actually physically virtually obviously but pick your tools to help you don't pick your tools just on on a whim or that work against you pick what's going to help you get through that process as quickly and efficiently as possible because that's going to let you focus on the good even best of the best aren't perfect but Chris spent his valuable time developing processes to continue to improve himself and his work here's one of his most valuable pieces of advice that you can apply right now I think focusing a lot of the detail work at the beginning prepping your tracks prepping your workflow always thinking about it always improving it try stuff then when you're mixing just mix and then when you get to the end that's when again you need to be objective you need to be clear you need to be worrying about the details to finish it off that shouldn't be when you obliterate it because you're not super pumped with maybe what the results were because you were focusing on the wrong things thanks for watching guys I'm Ryan wolanski from urm Academy and I hope you're able to take this advice and really make some awesome music I would absolutely recommend checking out the complete live stream on nail2mix.com Chris is absolutely firing on all cylinders the entire time and it's just knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb and if you want to learn more about the full production process we finally announced the massive how it's done course with Jens bogren and esan where you get to see the entire process from pre-production to mastering from the genius behind some of dimu Borgia Opeth and Amana marth's Greatest Hits before I go I'll leave you with this last bit of philosophy from Chris see you next time and Happy producing if a hundred people got speeding tickets while this song was playing like my job as a producer is fulfilled like that's the goal that's a great quote Yeah so it like that everything we were doing was to serve that purpose I think of speeding tickets because I I always find myself driving like way too fast to songs like this if you're driving in your car and you're doing the speed limit and this song's playing it's like or the production's not done the mix isn't right like something's not happening so everything about the mix is leading up to that it's trying to fulfill that it's serving that purpose and so if the kick drum if the low end pumping serves that purpose so be it if it's too much and so and now you're I'm The Listener is like oh something's weird in the low end I don't want them think that I want them thinking about like speeding I want them thinking about like the cops chasing them I don't want them thinking about the low end pumping so you kind of have to do all this stuff and it's and make the compromises of yeah I want lots of low end but I don't want it so big that it's obnoxious and annoying I don't want somebody's ear pulled to that that's not what I want people focused on I can't remember who told me this but it was the best quote ever uh how do you get a better snare sound and you know somebody's like how do you get a better snare sound write a better song it's like you shouldn't be listening to the snare you should be listening to the song and it's like I don't necessarily agree with that because obviously we want to make the snare sound awesome but it's kind of like that with you know you're talking about like the low end pumping does it pump the low end well if you're hearing it then it's too much if that's pulling your focus it's too much and then dial it back and that's just a compromise and you gotta either figure out how to get the kick bigger a different way or move on

Channel: URM Academy

Views: 120,223

Keywords: joey sturgis, eyal levi, joel wanasek, urm academy, nail the mix, mixing metal

Id: N-g_F_JqPKc

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2023