Garageband for Songwriting and Music Production - Module 4

1. Introduction to Mixing and Mastering: Hello and welcome to module four of these skillshare series. This class is all about mixing and mastering your song. Assuming you watched all previous modules, you are now ready to take this last step in this course series. Here you get to know the nuts and bolts of mixing, mastering a song. You learn the essential components that will make your final work sounds professional and be ready to share with the world. We'll talk about how vital housekeeping can be. Before mixing your tracks. You'll learn how to use the volume faders. Had arrangement tracks, use tempo changes and panning knobs. We will discuss automations and how crucial they are to the mixing process. And you get to see and try out how to apply automation to your tracks. Next, we're going to reveal the 11 essential elements of mixing and mastering. After that, we will learn the basics of plugins and the effects that sound engineers use in professional projects. By the end of this class, you're going to master your song and be ready to share it with the world. The class project is to mix your song, share your song before and after the mixing process with the group. So I'm so excited to start this class with you. So let's begin. 3. Housekeeping before Mixing: Now it's the time to make sound. Project Mixing is essentially a process of blending all of your tracks in such a way that they sound good together without interfering with each other. Mixing and mastering process is also considered as art, like playing an instrument or painting A masterpiece on the canvas could be very subjective . It can change from person to person, so I will show you my best practices. But feel free to take them with a pinch of salt. If you think that your style of music requires a different kind of approach, a good practice before we start mixing our project is a bit of a housekeeping first. Renaming tracks condemn finitely. Help make things easier when we're looking for them in the tracks area. Then I would probably suggest a rearranged tracks that are similar to each other or if they relate to each other throughout the song. For instance, if I have two tracks with strings starting at the same time or very close to each other, what I personally do is placing them closer. We also delete a news tracks. If I had any, you could change the icon for each track by right clicking on the icon on the left so they're easily identifiable. Also, renaming regions can be very helpful. Everything that I just mentioned can be incredibly convenient. Especially if you are planning to hand your project over a professional will mix and master your song. Let's have a look at what we can do to improve our project here. The first thing they're gonna do I'm gonna delete the unused track. So I'm gonna just click on these tracks here and delinked, um just breaks back space. Ah, these here It's well known Delete that I'm gonna get that one as well on these 80 cents on die Think I deleted all of them? Perfect. Now I could rename this tracks. I can just make that Steinway piano this rename it by double clicking on the name that local that main piano And I couldn't actually retain with the Amazon as well. So I don't go that distance Dream voices synth and so on and so forth. Let's group our tracks together, So I'm gonna put all the strings together So these strings here can be drunk down some literally drag and drop the's strings together. So these are actually starting together here, so I will probably put them group them together. These are probably the same effect as the other ones. I could also rename regions by right clicking on them on the actual name. If they can remain regions. You can call that in true piano. Could be the lips. That could be the chorus piano. So I think you got the gist of it. Okay, Now I rearranged the tracks a little better. So another we clean up our tracks, we already to makes our song. The first things I do when I makes a song is to check the massive volume level up here. And it also add the master track at the bottom off the tracks area. So I'm gonna go into the tracks on top here and click on show must attract that shows up here at the bottom off my tracks. Notice that the master volume will determine the overall volume when it is time to bounce your project into a file. So if your song it's not loud enough, check the volume Fader Zoff each individual track before rising. The master volume and the master track up. If your levels are okay, and you still can't hear properly rise the volume of your speakers in system preferences. So you go into the apple manual here on top, you're going to seize the preferences and then you going to sound Make sure you check the box here at the bottom show volume in many of our. So you're gonna have the volume on the top here so you can move the volume up and down from here. Miklos System Preferences. I will be careful on rising this master volume up because it might result in distortions or , as they call it in the mixing world clipping. 4. Playing with the volume faders: Now we go through the whole song and I will only use volume failures and planning knobs right here. So go volume favors for the track and the knobs here for fund them left and right. I won't touch any mute solo button just yet. So let's play the song all together and see how it sounds. I'm going to stop just right here because I noticed that the meter here was just clipping on the Reds. So I would probably put the volume off the drummer slightly down just a little bit down slightly and just play it from here. Probably have more with volume or pretty much everything here. I just wanna make sure that there must volume here on top, doesn't it? Way levels are better. It definitely sounds better than before, so let's go to the next step 5. Arrangement track: now that our project sounds much better by playing a bit with the volume of failures and often renaming all our tracks. Another method that I used the terming certain sections of a composition is the arrangement track. Usually when we compose or write a song, we pretty much know where the intro, verse, chorus, bridge and other sections air plays in our song. The arrangement track allows you to determine thes sections and assigned them in your project. First things we do is to enable the arrangement track by going to track on the menu bar frankly can show arrangement track and you see these track on top Coal arrangement. Now what we do, we just click on the plus pattern here. The first things that appears is our interest. So I previously a sign the sections here on my project. So I'm gonna go for these, Will you? So you need to to extend Reduce this bar is by dragging the right inside and move it. So the first section here is my interest. I'm gonna leave it interest if I want to add another section which express the blast button again, and I'm gonna have my verse and this is going to stay as is the next one is gonna be my chorus and automatically switches into chorus. And I can choose what my choruses in this case here, my chorus is this part here and extend it by that just after 33 a glass bottle again. So the section Kerry play that this is sort of a interlude, so I'll probably just rename that if I don't find that interview that I can go to rename on a time interviewed Inter Ute groups on press return. So that is the way for you to rename your your arrangement track. Next, we have another interesting the blast pattern again on I'm gonna in the intra. And the intro is gonna be very short. In our case, only two bars and then we're gonna have another one for the verse is going to go up to the bar for roughly here. Yes, it is here and then we have our last section, which is our altro. She's actually here, and then that ends here. Now, when I usually do at the end, I always keep that slightly longer, just in case I want to have like an effect at the end of, like a re verbal echo for whatever instruments have got there. The ended this case I wanna have that nice piano fading with a nice affecting when I apply the effect later on. So I'm gonna just leave that let's say one beat longer. Another thing also that you should do before you bounce your track is by shortening your project. Because if I now bounce this project, my project will be exporting these empty sections here, which I don't want. So after two gold away at the end of the project, gold away on top near these zooms lighter also have a bracket over there on top that determines the end off my project. So I could work, Simply dragged that to the left so I can just decide. My song will finish at bar number 61 so I can shorten my track. So when I bounce, my project of the end is gonna bounce it right right here rather than leave any empty space . Now, the arrangement track and be very helpful for you just to determine where certain sections are but also allows you to move sections entirely for our your composition for at your song . So, for instance, if I decide I wanna have these verse moved somewhere else throughout my song, I can just go here on verse a move that you know, other sections. I wanna have the verse, Um, right before the inter Newt. I can just drive that and drop it right there. What it does it will cut off that section and moved it to that part. And I could just play that part. That would be and that actually, not bad. But if you decide you want to go back what you wear, you can either undo or just move that section by dragging it again. What? Waas? This is a good way for you to re arrange an experiment. You don't repeat a section or copy of section over by holding down the old key or option key on your keyboard and simply drag that and drop it somewhere else safe on a drug drug. After the interviewed can do that, I'm basically made a copy off that section, so that could be quite useful for you to move stuff around. But be careful when you record voice tracks or any other tracks there are not really loop, herbal or repeatable. Make sure that you re arranged this. So move the arrangement Track first. Before you record are the tracks that cannot be cut off like this. So just let me just don't do that. Let me go back to the section here also, by having distract distributing this way, it can make your life easier if you decide to have certain sections with some temple changes who feel the time. I wanna have tempo changes here between the verse and intro. Also on the interlude I want for Slow down my temple. I can do that here, for instance, because I know that that is my interlude so you can do the same thing on your songs. If you want to experiment certain sections with different keys, you can use these as a reference. So this is the arrangement track hope you'll find a useful and let's go to the next part of our mixing process. 6. Tempo changes: I want to talk about tempo changes to your mixing you're mixing. There are often sections with temple changes, sometimes, especially in pop music or rock music. It's very difficult to spot where song changes temple while listening to it. This is a real experiment. I suggest anyone to do take a metre, Um, if you have one. We use garish band measure, um, in play mode and set a temple that you think your favorite song as being recorded at now. Play the song and start imagining when you think is the right time. You will quickly realize that the temple it's not consistent. And this is because the song has been mixed using temple changes to make it sounds more interesting and dynamic. These are little tricks professionals use during mixing and mastering and garish. Ben allows you to do the same with your project as well. Now, in this mix, I will attend to make some tempo changes in the interlude section where the music changes dramatically. First, we need to enable the temple track on the track in the menu bar so that are going to track . We're going to show temple track. This will show me these section above here My tracks says Temple and I've got my 120 because my song has been set as under 20 and I'm gonna go into my interlude here and I want to change these section here. And I want to basically slow down the temple because the second section here is filled with , um, base and timpani on our instruments that I want to play slowly. I want to basically have these section until the until the end of these verse to be under them 20. So all I need to do is simply click on the line here to add these. It is not so that will determine the changes. So I want to move these down to under 18 and I want to make sure have, like, a slow temple change. I don't have an abrupt change. Thio was lower temple so But I want to play here at under then eight. So I'm gonna click that and I'm gonna drag that all the way down to under the night. I'm gonna slow let down until under the night. Well, let go there. But I want to have a fading effect in the middle, so I don't want to just drop from 100 and 20 suddenly 208. So I'm gonna go here and let's say right about here. Click again. I'm gonna drag that down to have a little bit off difference in Temple. Now, if I click and hold these dot in between this black dots here, I can just make sure that now I've got a certain a certain curve that occur in the area there. So it's more soft, and I can do the same thing here above under the Nate to, you know, basically click on that black dot and I'm gonna drag hopes, make sure that when you drag it you you have that transition as well with nice curve. So you have a slow transition two under the night, actually, can it rise there up slightly? And now I'm gonna play the song from here and see how it sound is going down Temple. Okay, cool. So I've done my temple change here, and my song changes slowly for 120 old away. 207 in this case. So it sounds good even 107. So I will leave it as it is. And this is the way to do your temple changes 7. Diving into Panning: Now let's talk about pending. When you listen to any music through at France or stereo speakers, especially orchestral sound type, you probably noticed that some instruments are not coming from both speakers. You may hear a guitar sound coming from the left or a bass sound more on the right or percussion on the right and acquire on the left. Or if you listening to electronic music or ambient music, you might have noticed sounds going from left to right and back, etcetera. These kind of mix allows you to experience that sense of space in the recording. If you close your eyes while listening, it almost feels like you were there in front of your band or symphony orchestra. This is because our years are capable, perceiving sounds in a 360 degree spectrum, and in some ways it's partly because of our years anatomy as well. This is gold panning in the mixing world. Many producers use panning in different ways, but as a general rule, when you pan our songs regardless of genera considered to emphasize drums, lead vocals and all low frequency sounds towards the center and backing vocals, percussions or other high frequency instruments, the chairs, setting guitars, strings would wings and similar in either direction. However, I can't stress this enough planning, like other things in mixing mastering is subjective. And it's up to your taste or your client taste. If you wear commission to makes music for them, I will now attempt to change the planning here in our song, I'm gonna close my temple track, going to track on top and hide, um, Temple trick to make a little space. I'm gonna play from the beginning. Uh, my piano is my main instrument here place throughout my song. And I've got also another synthesizer here as well. So what I would do it will probably keep the piano roughly in the center there. And the dream voice slightly on a site. Now, that is not rule. To be to put a left or right is up to you, but I usually just put a randomly in one side, and then I kind of adjust it. What? I'm listening. So and just move it slightly to minus 20 which is right on left. You can see your left and right here. And I'm gonna just play that again. I thought these flu tear his Chinese flute on. I want to put it probably on the other side because they already kind of occupied the left here. So I'm kind of going order Almost the first things that appears in my in my song our this and the drummer on top. So the drums are probably going to keep them in the centre. And I'm gonna just movies on the side. It's quite loud. I want to keep it loud, Aziz, for I'll probably just move us dressed Almost trusted Lee to the right side. So you get like, plus 63 or minus 64. This is a sort of thing, that sort of measurement you have and the zero which is the center. So you're listening to left and right here both sides of your speakers. I put on the side here. You only here on the right. If I go all the way to plus 63 you only hear it on the on the right hand side. So you only listening to that from the site. So if I want to partially put it on the right and just move it slightly, that's a plus 30 and least there again from here. I would probably say that since here can leave together with my flute. But again, it's really up to you. You. How would you mix this two out? Would you pan these two on the exercise file you you got in this class? You can change your mixing the way you like. So I'm just show you the way I would do it here. So let's carry on here. I've got another percussion here coming through. So probably put that percussion on the other side. Considering that I've got my synthesizer here, that is going to pretty much well the way through, up to bar number 18.4. So, yeah, that percussion will stop there, So probably mix that on the left on. Then I will play from here. Holt got these strings here. If I sold those to play, Okay, that's fine. Um, also another thing, when you see groups off instruments together like these three got these Chinese dicey that I've got these viola. And these are the second viola altogether. I could just solo them and then pan these three, but always make sure that you consider the other instrument as well I'm gonna give you an example. Here, Capon, these three instruments together. So if I place my play had here and I saw these three So another quick tip to solo your track quickly is by holding down the cursor on the first headphones and then drank. Ah, so you from here and didn't draw that down, and it will automatically. So you see, I'm just holding my mouse Click down and it will automatically click the others is very handy tool for you if you want to. Quickly. So something. You just click and hold on track. And it will highlight whatever you want. Like this. If I do with mute it with the same thing. You see, I'm just quickly clicking and holding down and dragging century. Let me just go back here. That's mute. That solo, actually, three tracks I'm gonna play from here. Press play. Ah, these two villas are the same. So I'll probably put make sure minus 30. The other one is plus 30 for instance, something like that. So it kind of compensate each other, and they are kind of spread throughout my stereo spectrum. So played up perfect, because now I've got only these viola and these other Chinese flute distributed either left and right, Perfect on. And they sounds get together these way. Now, those also other ways for you to pan you can use an automation gonna talk about automation the next class where basically you can change the position off planning or any elements. Really? Any parameters from volume two planning to either effect. If you have effects like a re verbal echo that you applied on each track, you can't automate those throughout the songs. For instance, if I want to have an effect like chorus effect off thes flute starting from this bar, Bartle 22.1. And I want to then fade that effect up to bar 26. I can do that using automation. I'm gonna talk about automation next class. But just for now, let's stick with planning. But just let you know that it is possible to do the automation as well. If you want to kind of make you music sounds more dynamic and to kind of give a sense of directions in a way on its carry on from here on the left. What I'm doing this kind of arbitrary now, but just to give me an idea and that sense of space as well, you can also notice that I've got three tracks here playing since simultaneously. If I put my might play had here I've got 1234567 play at the same time. So I need to kind of balance these panning in such a way that all play together and there are kind of even link spread in the stereo spectrum. Let me carry on here before the interlude. I'm gonna move the piano sliding on the right. Way too much way. Move. Timpani, scythe soul of these three drinks together Replay that back and see how they sound together . This is sort of a mix between high frequency sound and low frequency sounds instruments. So in this case, I have to kind of compromise and say What? Where should I put that in the centre towards one side to the other. And then I just make it on the side here. It doesn't have to be necessarily logical the way you plan your restaurants. It's just the way they sounds that its most important. So I'm gonna just unsold that and play that part sounds good. So far, three only thing Oh probably do is change. The volume of this transition here looks like is very abrupt here. I don't want that to be these abrupt. We'll have to probably change the volume to be, like, sort of a fade in volume on. I couldn't do that. Using the automation. I'm gonna show you in the next class. So basic it sounds like this now is a bit too much there. I want to have, like, a fading So in the next last gonna show you how to use the automation. But I hope these panning makes sense now. And if you have other tracks, will have the project. We multiple tracks plays at the same time. It's a good exercise for you to to use the pending. In this case, you have got maximum, like 45 tracks playing at the same time. Here. It's a two minutes. Track is not that long, but it gives you an idea on how the pounding works open, make sense. And I'll see you in the next class. What? I'm gonna talk about automation 8. Intro to Automations: As you progress with you mix, you may need to make some dynamic changes to your tracks for volume pan and effects levels . Rather your song with automation, you can record these changes and refine them later on if needed. As I mentioned the previous class, I wanted to change the volume levels for this transition here. So I move it slide young side. You can see it. There we go. So in order to do that, I would have to go into my automation bottom, which is on the top of my tracks. Harry here, next to the play head. I'm gonna click on that. That will reveal my automation. By the way, if you need to zoom in your tracks, you can always go on the top right hand corner here and assuming out you need to. So in this case here, I zoomed in just to see this region slightly wider. I want to make sure I do the right automation here. So I'm gonna click on that track. And as you can see, I've got thes pop up menu here. So when I click on that, it will reveal all the different effects that I can automate in this case, so in each track as different effect flight them. So let's say now I want to change the volume. I can just click on the volume char RTM. Click anywhere here on these area where the track is to enable it. And you can see this yellow line is my volume. And these effects are all color coded, so fit that is yellow. That's gonna be yellow. And you'll have other colors for punning, echo reverb, etcetera. In the music world, when you deal with volume, if I click and hold the fate they're here, I can see that one is at zero db which is the initial level for each track. So that is where I want to have my volume at the pick. I wouldn't go any further. Otherwise I'm my clip on my overall track here, So I make sure that I don't clip so you know, the to make your automation here one. If you simply click on the line to create your automation note. Now, I want that to go down. In this case, I don't have any other track before that. So it won't affect any of the track because That is the only region I've got in that track . I want to basically start. I'm gonna drug that dots just right at the beginning Here. I'm gonna drug dot Right about here. I'm gonna drive that daughter hop and up to see your GP. I want that to rise up here. Perfect on. I want to just play now the track from They're gonna just go here and let's see how it sounds from here. It's quite cool. Now I'm gonna drag their thoughts slightly to the right just to have a like, a little bit of move softer fade. In fact, I don't just play that again, okay? Probably was better. Wait was before. Let's try that again. Perfect. Another thing I can do I can also automate something like planning. So let's say I wanna have that effect to go from left to right. I can do that by using the automation. So you know that to apply the automation to my planning on introducing to go to volume again and shoes cunning. So the plan now is there, and as you can see is green. So if I click now on the track will be a Green Line. Now these Green line is not in the same level as my volume wasn't zero to be, but using the center because this represent the left and the right area. So I'm going to create an effect from left to right. So if I click on the line before the region starts, create my note, I'm gonna hold. So create another note at the end because I want to make sure that hands in the center. So I'm gonna go that click that, and then I'm gonna do my adjustment here in the middle. So I'm gonna click again to create another note. I'm gonna make sure that one goes, Let's say, on minus from left, his minus sort of all the way to minus 64. I'm gonna click next to it to create another transition, and I'm gonna go all the way down to to the right two plus 62. Let's see how it sound. And to hear this transition, you probably need to wear at friends who use stereo speakers. Let's play that back A Z. You notice your tracks went from left to right. So, Aiken, do the subtle adjustment by using the AutoNation's so you can have a lot, lot of fun here you can make tracks going from left to right, back and forwards and have that sort of ah must try dimensional effect on your sound. 9. Copy, Paste and Delete Automations: If you want to delete automation notes, you can just click on the dot and press backspace to delete them. You can see here I'm just the leading the pounding automation by using but clicking and deleting as the way to delete your automation. Instead, let me just undo that. Let's say I like that automation and I want to copy the automation somewhere else. I can highlight the whole lot by clicking and holding the cursor just the right outside their automation to highlight it. So as you can see now, that white not gonna do Come on, See? Well, I can go to edit copy and then I can pace that somewhere else with a place the play head somewhere he'll say one apply the automation to That's a my trend on top here. I could do the same. So I didn't go here. I can go to pan as well, and then I'm going to edit paste, and that will pace the same automation that I applied here. Now you can use this in the same track that would make more sense, but it is really up to use. It depends of your music. Depends on what you do. But this is the way to copy and paste you automation. And also, if you decide you want to change the arrangement, track from the top by dragging them in different areas of your of your project. The arrangement will also move the automation and all Pemper transitions that you applied in that specific area. And the next video I'm gonna show you further auto emissions. 10. Applying more Automations: Now I'm gonna ply another automation on the percussions on top here. So I noticed there quite loud these section, so I'm gonna just zoom out a bit. Just assume it's slightly smaller. They seems quite loud here. I'm going to play the track from here and play it just right when the piano starts. I would like to low down the volume off my Merak. It's so I'm gonna just click. Make sure that you got the volume automation on and they're all volumes. So is volume there. I'm gonna click anywhere here on the region to enable my yellow line. And I want to basically lower the volume from right about here. So I'm gonna play content to create my note, and then I'm gonna click right at the end, the one that actually the end off the piano here because I want to mute almost the Moroccan . Yes, I'm gonna drag the down. And by the way, if you want to have more automation later on in this track without affecting the volume off this line, you will have to click again after that note to maintain that level so I can now drug that dots down without affecting anything forward. So I'm gonna drug that down here to make it going down right about here and inoculate my track from year. Actually, I want to have the Moroccans going in here. I'm gonna click before that because I want to make sure that I've got a slow transition of volume transition. I'm gonna now try to play from here. Okay? That's cool. Gonna drug the other note in such a way that the Marcus will let me just click at the end, actually want to fade these at the end? So I'm gonna drug that down. Not at the very bottom somewhere here. So they're still there, And then I want to trade on the note to put them down at the very end. Let's see how it plays. Here is a crescendo. Here. You can see the levels here goes up automatically goes down slowly, wake a perfect. I'm gonna leave it like this, and I'm going to apply another automation on my main piano here. I'm gonna click on the main piano to highlight it in this case yet. I don't know. Gonna change your permission off the volume, but want to change the automation often effect off that piano. So if I click anywhere here on the pop up menu, I'm gonna go into my echo. So these four fact volume pan ECU in river are the four that you find in any tracks. Anything you find below unders, Mark controls. These are all effect related to the track itself. In this case here, the effect that are in bold letters like reverb are the one have bean automated, so frankly can't reverb there. I apply an automation before for these for this piano, but I want to see if I can change that slightly. As you can see now, these river is blue colored coded and the line is blue. So let's say I want to make these reverb going up on these parts of a press for play. These piano here, thief River B is not too strong is I'm gonna click before the track click after the track and gonna just to rise that volume up here while the review in this case, click the very end there, and I'm gonna drug that up just to have a little bit of effect there. Let's have a look. Okay. Perfect. I'm gonna also changed the echo When I go into echo My echo now used in pink When I click anywhere on the track to reveal the pink And then I'm going towards the end Actually the beginning their on going to rise up my echo Just a little bit on I'm going to make it slightly higher here and I'm gonna go down again I'm gonna just just clicking on the line to create this note These transitions when a gold way down here and then thief kind of finale off my piano or one that echo to be constantly on. So let's play that part. Makes quite interesting sound there. So this is the way for you to automate volumes Pan effects in garage band. 11. 11 Essential Elements of Mixing and Mastering: One of the main challenge in mixing and mastering is making sure that all our tracks are present and do not overlap each other. In the final mix. While we're mixing, we need to consider a few elements that will determine the best outcome for our song composition. And these are 11 Essential Elements for mixing and mastering. So let's have a look at them. So we have organized track's volume, arrangement, tempo changes, punning, and automations. So we've looked at this. First six elements are ready. And then we have a quantization, dynamics, harmonics, ambiance, and modulations. So basically naming tracks and regions and group them together in such a way that makes sense for our project. So we went through these already and we also tweak the volume failures of our tracks to make sure they're all roughly balanced so far. Then we also added the arrangement track that allows us to label certain section of our song. We also need to determine the tempo of our sound wave. Our project is going to have some temporal variations. And then of course, we tweak the panning for each track in order to kind of distribute them in the audio spectrum evenly and create that sense of dimension and space. And we also automate volumes panning and effect because you might have certain tracks that need to be boosted in certain area of the song of composition, you might have certain effects or you want to trigger a certain time. Then we have, of course, variation of audio frequencies that we're going to cover in the next class. By using the equalizer. Then we have dynamics. So the variation in level in the audio signal that ranges from soft to loud is called dynamic range. And we're going to have a look at how we can change this and how to make sounds better than we have harmonics and harmonics distortions can make your mix fuller, thicker, warmer, and we reached sound. We're going to also have a look at some plugins and we can use, then we have ambiance, which are reverb and delay are the two plugin we're going to look at. And also we have modulations which essentially for different plugins, chorus, flanger, phasing, and tremolo. And we also going to use in guitars and also in the master track as well. So I've listed them according to the videos you just went through, so they don't have to be in this order. And in this class though, we are going to focus mainly on these three equalization dynamics and harmonics. For those who want to get the best sound out of a mix, I suggest investing a little more time experimenting these tools. We're going to touch on ambiance and modulation as well later on. So let's have a look at the equalization. One of the way that we can change the sound of our instruments is by using an experimenting with the graphic EQ, short for equalizer. So this is how the garage band equalizer looks like. And in this instance, I split it in for frequency ranges, even though we have low mid range as well. I just thought these four would cover the whole frequency spectrum and it will be enough to explain how the EQ works. So let's have a look. What are these frequencies? So we have a full range which goes from 10 hertz all the way to 20 kilohertz, which is everything in what we are able to perceive. Then we have the low frequency ranges goes from 10 hertz, 220 hertz. Mid-range goes around and 20 hertz to 1.5 kilohertz. High meat goes from 800 hertz to four kilohertz. And then we have the high range. It goes from four kilohertz all the way to 20 kilohertz. Now, low-frequency instruments can easily be drum kicks, bass, guitar sounds, and similar. In the mid and high range, you can easily find strings, guitars, and any other high pitch sounds. However, this is just to give you an idea of what to expect when listening to your tracks and looking at the graph here, let's have a look at the layout of our equalizer. On top here we have our frequency switches, and here you can turn on and off certain frequency ranges. When you switch one of these icons, it will light up the correspondent dot that will appear on the red line in the center. Then we can drag the dot up to announce a frequency or down to suppress it. You can also drag it left or right to change the frequency. On the right, we have our gain fader where we are able to boost the overall frequency up and down. This failure can be very handy if we need to make our track more present. If the volume faded doesn't help, then we have the frequency editor. This is another way to change frequency. After clicking on the color dot on the red line, you can click and hold the frequency here to pull it up or down. We can use the slope or gain to change the gain and the Q allows us to widen or narrow frequency. And finally, we have the analyzer, which is essentially as which these play the shows frequency wave in play mode. Let's have a look at dynamics now. If we look at these wave form, we have the loudest peak level and the quietest level. The range in between is called dynamic range. And that can be changed if needed. Sometimes when the sound is causing distortion and clipping, lowering the volume is not enough, as we may lose other frequencies. We also have instances where the sound is not loud enough and that's because the dynamic range is too short and boosting the volume will help make it prominent in our mix. So there are two kinds of processors in GarageBand and in any other DAW software that we can use. So the ones that reduced dynamic range are called compressor and limiter. And the ones that increased dynamic range, our expander gate. So just to recap, compressor and limited will come very handy to reduce unwanted clipping, distortion and even up our sound mixing and mastering. The expander and the gate will do the opposite. So what is harmonic distortion? Music is a combination of fundamental and harmonic frequencies. These two elements gives musical instrument unique timbre and we are able to distinguish instruments among others. Now I will make more sense with these example. If you have a violin playing a middle, a note, it will produce a frequency of 440 hertz. And this frequency will also produce other frequency called harmonic distortion that will make the sound richer, warmer and with more characteristics, something like that. Now we are able to alter the sound by using one of these plugins. The exciter gives us the ability to announce frequencies and certain harmonics. However, third party software such as the hornet harmonics, will give us more flexibility in the harmonic spectrum. This is a free plugin that you can search on Google and download it. But in some cases it's not necessary. I just wanted to mention it as some of you might be interested in mixing and mastering beyond this course and in my font, these plugins, very interesting. So let's continue to make some master our songs. So I'll see you in the next video. 12. Using the Equalizer: Okay, let's open our graphic equalizer by selecting our track first and click on Smart Control on top left. Then we're going to enlarge this, just make it taller by dragging the border. Next two controls, we have EQ, so I'm going to click on EQ. So this is an eight band graphic equalizer and each track as one. So the EQ is an extremely powerful tool for shaping your frequency balance in your mix and also in your recording. You probably have used an equalizer before, like the one you see in car stereos with low, medium and high frequency levels. Think of an equalizer as a frequency mixer it for each of your track. If you want to find out more about the EQ, please watch the video about the 11 essential elements of mixing and mastering in this module. At the moment, dQ is not affecting the sound of the track as it is completely flat. The frequency range goes from low to high, going from left to right. Then we have our frequencies which is on top. Then we can turn on and off. When they're colored, they're on when the grayed-out thereof. And each of them will highlight the frequency down in our panel. Each colored dot is a frequency range that can be moved in any direction. So if I hover the cursor on any of these and I move it anywhere. I can move it anywhere. And as you can see down here also, it will tell me the frequency that I'm in. So I can drag that all the way to 20000 hertz, all the way to 20 hertz. And let's have a look how this works first. So I'm going to select the piano, and I'm going to play in solar mode first. And click on plane. And by the way, before you could comply, make sure that the analyzer is highlighted. The Height Analyzer allows you to then see the frequency or wave of our piano. When I press Play. Now I'm going to move one of these dots up and see what happens. Now I'm enhancing the mean range frequencies. I can move that all the way to the right to an answer, the high frequencies, all the way to the left to announce the low frequencies. Now if you're not sure which dots to move, but makes sure these are color-coded. So if you want to, for instance, announced these area here of your sounds, just move it around this area without moving too much with that yellow dots because you still have the other ones available anyway. So you're going to have to drag that necessarily go all the way here to experiment. But if you know that the frequency that you want to announce is around here, using these yellow. You can actually move the yellow back here and go where these other frequencies are. To announce this frequency by erasing that up or raising this up. So everything kind of stays distributed in the right order. There's not really a rule when you move these dots bar just to make you aware that you can choose any of these and move them around. This is just my method. And also to make your life much easier when you have to move them around. And you know where that frequency range is. Now below here we have frequency gain and q. Q stands for quality. And what that means is if I drag that up to an answer frequency, I can go down here into the queue and raise that up or down. To narrow my range scene, I can broaden the range or narrow the range. So I can now don't drag up and down and announce only a certain frequency range here without affecting the rest that is adjacent to it. So let me just give you a demonstration of it by looping. The piano would say right about here. The reason why I'm looping in these area is because I also have a drummer and other precautions as well that I can mix together. In this case, I'm going to just play the piano in solo and press Play. And I'm going to move that left and right. And say, I like this sound. I'm going to leave it like this. I'm going to go to Q and make a slightly broader. And also on the left-hand side, you have these switch be equalized on and off and compare between often on. Now is on, nose off, on, off. Now if you're not sure what dots to move, one of the things I always suggest to do is to experiment first and see what you like or the waste. You can go to the settings here and you can choose one of these presets. So there are various preset for each instrument. And you can even go to EQ tools here where you can change certain frequencies manually or reduce the harm if you have a hum frequency that you want to get rid of. Or if you want to, for instance, have a like a megaphone effect or telephone effect, you can try one of these EQs as well. Now, this is, in this case is a piano. So I'm going to go into settings and choose keyboards and trying one of these equalizer presets, I'm going to try with grand piano here. And when I click there, it's going to give me any Q preset for that. You can also use these as a starting point and then you can tweak the frequency around as you like. Let's play that part. And that's then switch on and off coupon path. Okay, fine. If I don't like the base, then I can just lower the frequency down, is moved down. And the rest can stay as it is. In other people for using the equalizer is also to compare. We'd have a tracks because when we use the advisor for the first time to practice is good to use the solo mode. But when we have to kind of mix all our tracks together is advisable to turn all the other tracks on and mix within the context. So in this case here I'm not going to turn all of them on, but I'm going to turn on the drums in this case, I'm going to turn the solar mutton on the drums and on the precautions. And I'm going to play these three tracks simultaneously with my equalizer. And I'm going to also switch between the tracks by clicking on them. So I'm going to see the equalizer for each tracks. So if I click on drums, I'm going to see the drums equalizer precautions is the percussion. And then the piano is here as the one we just tweaked now. So let's just play it now and play around with the EQ. And I turned the volume that piano down is my protections. When I get to read some high-frequency ice to still high for my liking. So I'm going to turn that on. I'm going to solo only the progressions. And I'm going to compare before and after. That's without. It's very high in frequency. Feminine. So I suppress some of the high frequency here. So that is balanced well with my piano. Let's listen to the piano as well. I'm going to switch the piano as well. You can also compare the frequency wave here on the piano and the frequency wave on a percussion here to the frequency on the precautions are around one kilohertz, all the way to 20 kilohertz. And on the piano, if I now Peele play the piano again. The piano are pretty much between the 50 hertz all the way to 10 K. So I have to kind of balance these out with the percussion here. It will take some practice in order for you to equalize all of your track in such a way that they don't interfere with each other. Let's enable the drums again and play it. And going to the drums now, quite Basie here. So what I'm gonna do, I'm going to enable my low cutoff frequency here. And I'm going to drag that up so I can just cut some low, kick them. Let's play that again. Very subtle adjustments. If I mute only the drums and I turn the equalizer off and on again, it will slightly further. And I can do the same thing on the other side, I'm going to cut some high-frequency as well because this is the kind of limit what we can perceive with our ears. So it's not need to go any further than here or then here as well in the low-frequency spectrum. And now I'm going to end the other ones. And we also have the gain fader here. And that allows us to announce the frequency output down. And as you can see, it will retain our equalization throughout the slider here. So I want to affect our adjustments. Now the gain fader can be very useful when you have to announce a track that you can't necessarily announced using the volume fader here on top. So you would use the Gain as an alternative to raise that up. So for instance, if I play these precautions now and I press play, I could raise the gain up and the volume that will go up. So this is just another way for you to announce tracks. Another alternative for you to use the equalizer is to go back to the smart controls and play around with low, mid, and high frequency. So if you play around with these knobs, you essentially affecting the frequency range here as well. But I suggest you use the equalizer to play around and experiment the sounds from here. So this is what you need to know to get started with the equalizer. 13. Equilizer Automation: this week, I'm gonna show you how to automate the equalizer. Now, I wanna have a frequency change at the very end of my track here when my piano place at the end. So, in order to apply in automation on my EQ, you have to go into the automation battle on the top here on my track area. And I'm gonna go to my piano, click on a pop up menu here, go to Channel Equalizer and these older, different parameters that we can change. You can go by experiment by clicking on one of them and move it around on the automation line on top. I'm gonna show you how to change for essence, these frequency here towards the high frequency range. So I'm gonna choose pick for frequency off Peak four gain. I'm gonna click on gain first. And this is the line that you see on the automation. If you can see the line, just click anywhere on the track to enable it. And I'm gonna go to the and here and create my note. Click a few times here and I'm gonna drug some dots here and see what happened by moving to play ahead we'll see what actually is moving. It's actually affecting these range here, 2.7 killers. So I'm going to then move the note down here on another note here to go back to the initial point and see how it sounds from here. Quite like it goes old way up. So I'm gonna probably stick all the way on top, going back towards the end. So let's see how it plays like this. Cool. And now I want to make another automation by going here, going to channel equalizer and change the peak four frequency. So now I'm going to create other notes on I make sure my play head is nearby. Oh, I see what I'm doing. So if a drug that down is moving that frequency to the low frequency, I'm gonna go up again. I'm gonna create another notes down here on another note here. Now, I can also drug the automation by highlighting it and moving it towards the end. And let's play that part pretty cool. So this is the way for you to automate your equalizer. Play around with the options you have here on the channel. It you 14. Audio Units Plugins: When you want to change the sounds or a fact of your tracks, you can simply go to the library top left and choose a different effect from him. Now dormant, we have our main piano. And if I want to change the effect from here, I can do that. Now. GarageBand gives you the option to tweak thes sounds by going to smart controls. So fucking smart controls on top. I'm gonna close the library just to have a little bit of room. And there's Marc controlling here. I can change the sound, but I can also change other effects on ADM. Or effect if I want to buy going to pliancy on the left hand side. So if I click on the triangle next to plug ins, it will reveal my piano. In this case is any X s 24 which is our digital piano. And these are all the effect have been applied to it. I've got channel equalizer of a compressor on tape delay. If I have the cursor over these three buttons, it gives me three options. The 1st 1 from the left allows me to turn the effect on an office. You can see here My smart control now is shadowed here. If I turned that on, it goes back. If I click on the one in the middle will enable my plug in in a separate window. In this case here I've got my channel equalizer But I could click on compressor and the compressible shop this way. Now the one on the right allows me to change the effect This case we have Equaliser But I can also add additional one by clicking on the empty pattern here at the bottom for click there can choose any of thes So you got plenty already in garish band are you also have an option to install additional like third party ones from other websites who at the bottom of got older units and you have got the option to choose any of my plug ins there purchased from other websites also have apple and these are the one that you have on your math now to enable old your units, you can go into preferences Gosh bent and going to rodeo meaty So here you need to make sure that enable all your units is sticked. So once you do that, you should be able to see that option down here. Call or your unit. Wait, you apple. Now, when you enable old your unit from preferences, make sure you quit garish band and you reopen it to. Once you've done that, you should be able to see all your unit with apple installed. If you want more plug ins, we're going to install a couple of plug ins from two different websites. If you look for black ins, you can go to any browser. In this case here I went into the browser and search on Google best free, garish bent plug ins and I found thes website here. But you can find any other website just typed is in free, garish band plug ins, and then you can choose whatever you like. So I choose the 1st 1 here that gives me a list off Different plug ins, actually, is the other one down below best free on. If you click on any of these, it will explain what the plug in does. So this is a package off different plug ins that you can download. I already don't know the couple, but this is the way to kind of search them, so you search them and then you can just follow the instruction here and download them. So I'm gonna close this. So I downloaded a couple one school Hornet harmonics, and that allows me to change the harmonics off our tracks. If you want to know more about harmonics, have a look at the 11 essential elements for mixing and mastering in this module. So when I double click there, you should be able to see a section for Mac or Windows. Otherwise, you should be able to see a list that looks like this now the one that are compatible with garish band or logic r dot component. So if you see these files dot component is the one that you have to use the majority of plug ins. So they come with an installation file to make your life easier. Now, in this case, yeah, we only have the component that we have to drag this component into our library, gonna show you where to drug this. So we're going to go into the finder on top. On the go, we're gonna hold down the old G o option key on your keyboard and click on library. So here we have a section called Rodeo Folder. We're gonna go into plug ins here we have our components section. We have to drag that file into it. So I'm gonna double click again into my hornet harmonics when I go to Max and I'm gonna literally drag and drop that into my folder. I can close this, make sure you quit, garnish bent and reopen it, and then a quick, garish bands on my dock and I'm gonna reopen it. And now, if I'm going to my plug in here and I choose all your units, I can see my Hornet is there so I can click on Hornet harmonics and all my plug in will show up here in a separate window and I can tweak the sounds from here now I'm not. The plight means that I've got here is Blue Cat free where this is another plug in that I downloaded from the Internet. You can just search it and is, ah, selection off flame Jer Cora's phasers and also wave analyzers. So if I double click there is going to unzip it got also here selection of components that I can drag and drop in that folder just showed you He is quite nice because it comes up already with a component short cut off your library. So if I double click there is going to show me my component and I can drag and drop that in . Now, I show you before you to go to go hold down option key, click on library and go into odio again. Plug ins components and you can drag these components in. I'm going to drag just one, just to show you how it looks when I go into, uh, this one here gonna drug that in. And now I'm gonna close these two windows, you know, there for me to see that If I go in now to the plug in down here is not gonna show me that yet because I have to quit. Garish meant when a quick, garish Ben now no need to save it. And I'm gonna reopen it again, and I can go down to my plug ins all the way down and I can see my blue get older, is there so I can click on the flag in there and the black It looks like this. So this is an analyzers. If I play my track in solo, you should be able to see the sound wave here eyes very similar to the equaliser. But you can do many other things here. So this is the way to download and install plug ins from third parties and to make your workstation more comprehensive. 15. Locking Tracks and Improving Performance: What if, after long hours of mixing, refining your sounds, something got moved around and your effects were altered by mistakes? This is a common problem during editing, and it can be a real tragedy if you don't remember all the steps you went through to get that desire set up that is now lost. Great way to lock your regions and tracks is by using the track lock feature. This lock into is also used to improve your project performance in case your computer struggles toe handle too many tracks and plug insert ones. Let's learn how to enable track lock. First, we're going to go into the track on top. I'm gonna go into configure track header. You can also right click in any track to enable that by going to configure track header here. Now here we go in to enable track lock by kicking it. And as soon as you do that another button appears on your tracks area. I'm gonna click away, too. Close it. No, I'm going to my piano here and click on the lock is going to lock that track. So if are now trying to move any of these regions around it's gonna tell me the track is locked. It cannot be moved. But this lock feature works in two steps once you have to lock your tracks. So I'm going to lock all these tracks. But I'm gonna just click and hold and all my tracks. Now I fight the play button. Now girls Band will bounce off my tracks into audio files, so there will be easier for the computer to process that during playback. I'm gonna click on play now and look what happened now. Garish band is freezing all my tracks into audio files, so it's gonna be much easier for the computer to handle them while I'm playing them back the knife. I play it back. What you're hearing is the actual bounced track. Now these bounds tracks are stored under your project file are going to my finder here. This is my project file. If I right click on it and go to show package content, I'm going to media here. Found this folder called Freeze Files got all my audio files here. When you click the play button on top, Garish, Ban actually plays thes instead off the actual effect and plug ins just to make your tracks much lighter. If you want to unlock some tracks, you just need to click on it and then you'll be able to alter them and change them around. So this is a good way for you to lock your tracks and improve the performance off your back . 16. Basics of Compressor and Limiter: The compressor and limiter are used to control how much level of the signal changes. If you have a quiet part in your drums, for instance, does now, the compressor will help to bring these area up in levels, maintaining the loudest level the same. I will touch on the limiter a bit later as it will make more sense after understanding their compressor. So let's open the compressor here. So first of all, I solo my piano here, and I'm in the smart controls. And on the left-hand side, I've got my effects, including the compressor. In this case here, this was a preset for my piano. So these effects have been already applied by if I have to add an effect such as the compressor, I would have to just to click on the button down below and choose the compressor and the dynamics compressor. Now bear in mind the plugins are distributed as the signal flow from top to bottom. So the signal flow is the audio signal that goes in from the top and goes out from the bottom for the speakers or add funds for the top piece here, my channel equalizer, the bottom is the tape delay. Now if you already have an equalizer on top of our signal flow, we need to decide where to place the compressor either before or after the equalizer. If you use the equalizer to enhance certain frequencies, placing the compressor after, we'll squash those sounds, you work so R to bring into life. If you decide to have the compressor before the equalizer, these will affect your frequencies that much, but it may results in distortion since the compressor can not take them as it placed before the equalizer. If you tweaked your equalizer previously in the track, make sure to change it again if you place the compressor after. So let's open the compressor here. So we're going to click on the compressor now. These are the four parameters that we have available. Well, let's have a look at these parameters in depth. So the compressor as these four parameters in GarageBand, threshold attack ratio, again, the threshold is the level in which the dynamic processor will take effect. So when the level reaches the threshold, the other parameters will kick in as well. The attack is how quick the processor will take effect once the signal crosses the threshold. The ratio is how much the processor will do once the attack is kicked in. So for instance, if the signal is higher than the threshold of 40 dB and you set the ratio as two-to-one, the compressor will only allow two dB above the threshold. The gain increases the level of dynamic signal. And you may notice that the quietest areas of your instruments or voice will increase in volume. Delimiter is essentially a compressor where the higher ratio that can vary from ten to one or 20 to one or even more. The limiter is used also in mastering as IT teams the signal and will avoid distortion. So if you said the limited to, let's say, minus 20 dB, your signal one crossed that threshold, any one clip and sound distorted. But let's have a look how to use the compressor first. If this sounds too overwhelming to you, do not worry, you can still access to the presets here on a pop-up menu and choose one of these parameters here. So for instance, if I'm dealing with piano, I can go to keyboard and change the keyboard sound from here. So let's see how it sounds without any compressor. So I'm going to adjust, click that button to turn the plugin on and off. As you can see, I can turn them on and off and now is grayed out. I can also do adapt from the plugin area by turning it on and off. So if I play my piano solo and I say, Look, honestly, the first bar, and you just looked at the first part here and play it. Like turning these now is off. And I'm pulling it up. Well, I hardly hear any compression here. So what I'm gonna do now I'm going to play the piano again and then go into, increase the threshold and go into also increase the ratio of two to one. I'm going to go towards eight or more and see how they sound changes. And also going to change the attack. I'm going to play with again that very last stage. So let's play the piano again. Now I'm going to move the threshold from minus 20, minus 10, minus 35. If you hear the difference between NOW minus 20, I'm ready hearing some changes that, but now I'm going to go to the ratio. I'm going to be kind of more heavy on the compression. So as you can see here, by going from two to one to six to one, the sounds changed completely. So it's much more compressed here because I went to kinda hard on the ratio. If phi also change the attack and shorten it. Faster. I'm compressing a lot and get talking super fast. And you put it as you know, meet milliseconds is just applies the compressor straight away. If anybody had a bit of a space making the attack slower. I can actually hear more transient going from the threshold, more sounds going through the threshold. If you want to play a little bit with the factory settings, you can go here and go to keyboard. And let's try pop piano. Let's see how the pop piano looks like. It looks like it's around 22 dB. If I play that, again. The compressor enough signal compression actually, because it gives me an attack time. So of course, lower TAC, I've got minus one dB and gain. I can actually play with the gain and make it a little bit better. Already sounds better. And the compression nationalist minus 22, which I could actually tweak as well. I could actually leave a here. And this is the compression. We doubt. It is within, is without. And I talked to kind of very subtle, but it's there. And he made the change that we wanted. So there is also another technique when used the compressor, and these technique is called parallel compression. What you basically do, you double up your track and then you likely compress one channel and you heavily compressed the other one. And then you will increase the volume slowly on the second channel to hear the difference. I'm going to show you how this works. First of all, I'm going to hold down the Alt key or Option key on my keyboard, and I'm going to drag the piano down to duplicate that. So I've got duplication here. I've got the same regions. And what I'm gonna do, I'm going to solo the first piano, and I'm going to, I'm going to sort all the second piano. And then on the first Bian, I'm going to apply very light compression. So I'm going to go to my compressor here. And I'm going to go into factory settings. And by the way, to reset the presets Eagle two more. And that the pop-up menu, and you're going to recall default. And it goes back to the original default settings. So I'm going to play that back. I'm going to play just the light, light compression. Live a little bit of a space on the attack. And apply one dB. Five would be enough. Perfect. Going to close this, I'm going to go to my second triangle here. Duplication. I'm going to backtrack and I'm going to open the compressor as well. In this case, Yang gonna go a little bit heavier and the ADA will want to play that again. Let me increase the threshold. Say 35. Go into the ratio here. Would be kind of hard in compression. You have to make it very fast. Whatever you see too much. For the piano when you play with the acoustic instruments, you've got to be careful how you can press. The other difference. Now, if I leave it as is, and I know un-solo it, solo the other one. I'm going to decrease the volume of the second one, and I'm gonna play this and then I'm going to slowly increase the volume of the heavy compressed piano and see how it sounds. I can hear the second monkey king. So I would probably kind of pun the two in opposite direction just to give a little bit of space and see how it sounds. If I mute the second piano, heavy compressed one. Equilibrium bit high end here and volume. So this is Barlett compression, and this is a technique that many mixers use during mixing and mastering. And also if you want to make your instrument thicker and warmer, it will be a good idea to double up your tracks. So this is very subjective, so it's really up to you if you want to double up your tracks. But I usually use this technique with my main instrument, in this case the piano, and also with the drums as well. So you use the same sort of technique for drums or four precautions if you want to make them more present the more prominent in your tracks. We're going to talk about the limited later on in the mastering section. Play around the decompressor. Practice your craft, make sure you get the right sound. And I'll see you in the next year. We're not going to talk about the reverb and delay. 17. Exploring the Reverb: Reverb is an effect that gives space and depth. It is what we hear when a sound as multiple reflections building up and decay in space. We hear reverb in rooms, concert halls, cathedrals, or chambers. And we can create these facts easily in workstations like GarageBand. We are going to use a piano for this example. Here in the smart controls, we already have a reverb knob that we can tweak. Let's have a look at that. So I'm going to just look these piano. Now, going to turn the knob. Can you hear something now? There's no bad. Now GarageBand comes with other reverb plugins, then we can apply to our tracks. So in this case, you're going to just turn the knob all the way down and go into my plugins area here I'm going to add a reverb from the menu. You can see I've got four types of reverbs. I've got EN verb, platinum, verb, silver verb, and Space Designer. Now, the main component of a reverb plugins are wet and dry ratio and reverb time. Now if I click on any of these, and I show you the plugins, as you can see, as soon as I added the plug-in, the Smart Controls added these other panel here on the right-hand side. If I tried to turn on and off my switch, I can see which one I grayed out. So these on here. So sometimes you might find other parameters in the reverb plugins such as this, like attack, sustain, hold, and density. But you also find it dry and wet down here. So dry is the dry signal without reverb and wet is the signal where the reverb. So if I now please track and play with dry and wet for now, change the WACC. Say that all the way to the right. I can hear more reverb. I want to reduce the dry. I can go Just all the way to blend from one to two. And now I can just hear the reverb signal. Now also have some presets up here. I can choose, for instance, fast, reversible and others. Let's have a look at the other river we have available to plug in and work on the platinum verb games you pre-delay. Let me just note that it gives you a pre-delay reverb time. Hi Cat, spread and it will dry and wet. The main ones, again are wet and dry. And remember time in platinum verb here we have a regular time. So sometimes I change the reverb time too. Make it last a little bit longer. So if you play the piano now, I can change the, dry it down and put the dry up a little to make like what sounds when reverb. And of course I've got a preset. He had gone big room, bright, long verb, church is going to affect the mean. And we also have the other verbs that we have, the silver verb or the one that I use the most is the Space Designer. And Space Designer just gives me three parameters. Very simple. The length of the reverb, the dry output, and the reverb output, which is the same as dry and wet essentially. So if I now play, can now push the Riemann output, be more present. So it gives you such a beautiful effect. And you can also have plenty of presets here. You have large spaces, medium spaces, and so on and so forth. And you can actually go to sub manual here and Europe like a huge list of plug-in the UN experiment and find the one that you like. And you can tweak around that. You can go to the, say, large warehouse. And if I play that, and then you just play around with dry and wet signal. And we don't like this well. So play around with the reverb plugins and I'll see you in the next video. And we're going to talk about delay. 18. Exploring the Delay: So let's have a look at delay. Delay is a copy of a signal that is then repeated back in time. And the original signal, it is usually measured in milliseconds for some delay plugins use other measurements like eighth notes or 16th notes. The key components of a delay are wet and dry ratio, like the ones in the previous class on reverb. And another key elements that you find on the plugins is feedback. And these controls are many times a delay repeats. And like in the reverb, you'll also find other parameters that can be triggered as well. Let's have a look at the ones available here. So I'm gonna go to my plugins area here, and I'm going to click on delay. Here. I've got five kind of delay of God Delay Designer, echo, simple delay, stereo delay, and take LE. Now if I go into Delay Designer, it's very similar to the one that we saw before on the Space Designer and reverb. But this has an additional parameter which is the feedback amount, and also has a feedback switches well, so I can decide to have my delay repeated. And here I can control the repetition. So let's play the piano again. And I'm going to turn off the reverb for now just to show you what the delay does. And at the moment, the dry and wet faders are all, all the way to 0 dB. I'm going to just done the wet signal slightly down and just put the dry signal up to make it more prominent. It's quite nice. Now if I check the box next to feedback enable, it gives me a nice effect of repetition. But of course, I wouldn't play that all the way throughout the song. I probably would choose to have that enabled at the certain time or the very end of the song. I can also automate this feedback at a certain time of my track. So let's explore some of the presets available here. I'm going to play the track, and I'm going to change this presets up here. So let's go into the pop-up menu. As I was saying before, the main components of a delay are also 8-note and 16 nodes. So I can actually choose one of these and try it. Let's try 118, slow pan. It's not bad. Let's try something slower than that. 1 fourth, 1 16th is going to be faster. Now when you find the one that you like, try to unfold again and apply the reverb as well. Be careful. So how you position these plug-ins? Because now we having the river before and the delay after, we might want to have perhaps a delay before the reverb. So then the receiver will produce and create that reverberation out of the delay. It's really up to you how you want to play this. But if we play that back now, think it feels more organic this way. But it's really up to you, of course. So this is what the space designer does, but we can go back here and the DLA and choose another one. You can go to Echo, which is another kind of delay. And now we have different parameters here on the right-hand side of ours, Mark controls. And I can go here on my echo, play the track again. So I've gotten here time, repeat, collar, dry and wet again. So I can go here and the time and change that to be, let's say 1 fourth. It's quite nice. If I believe in the old context. And the delay is an effect that you don't want to necessarily apply for the entire song. It really depends on what instrument is going to be using, the delay and how are you going to apply? That is also very nice to have the delay. For instance, some vocals, such as this Vogel down here, I can now actually have a delayed at 70. So if I want to apply the delay there, I can go to my vocal here. I can go to my Delay Designer. I don't see why not? And let's play that vocal at the end there. So that's what it does. It just repeats the last part. I want to use the feedback. I can just tick on the feedback and see how it sounds with feedback on repeats itself until it decays at the very end. So this is the way to use the delay, play around with the delay and reverb. Now that you know where to find an a, how to use them, practice a lot, use them in your tracks. And we also can apply some of these plugins in the mastering as well. I'll see you in the next video. 19. Ambience effects Chorus: Now let's talk about ambiance. The ambiance effects available are many, but the one that I use the most are chorus, flanger, phaser, and tremolo. And that's what we're going to cover in the following classes. Chorus is an effect that converts a sound into many, creating the illusion of multiple instruments or voices playing together. It is not considered an acoustic simulation, but rather a special electronic effect. You can apply chorus to anything you think appropriate. And in this example, we are going to use it on a vocal track. So I'm going to play this track just on these area here, on this range, you're going to look that zack, you're going to listen to all the tracks together. And then we're going to solo the vocal. And we're going to apply a chorus effect in it. So let's listen to it first. Okay, now the voice is just compress a little Scala bit of quantization and nothing else is just the light reverb here, but is not a fact in terms of chorus or anything else. So we're going to apply now the chorus, I'm going to solo the track. And I'm going to play that without any effect. Going back with painted was great. Okay, Now I'm going to apply the chorus. I'm going to go to my plugins here on the left-hand side, and I'll go into my modulation chorus. Now the chorus look like this, is you got a little bit of mix here. Intensive 10 percent and the rate is 500 hertz. So let's listen to it with these off first and I'm going to turn it on while I'm listening to it. Going back in time with painted wolves, increase the mix slightly. Carlos pay intensity. Nothin that GSA be for. It's quite dramatic here. Goal him back. Can psi just be the effect painted walls of grace without Carlos fade but nothing that juicy. Be four. Okay, it looks like that applying the chorus compromises the volumes likely. So the voice went quieter. Bar. There is a technique that we can use which is called doubling. And many engineers use this to make the tracks more prominent into the mix. So what we can do is this, essentially what I'm going to do. I'm going to remove the chorus from this track. And I'm going to doubling distract by holding down the Option key or Alt key on the keyboard and drag that down. So we'll make a duplication of a track including the regions. And then I'm going to play this again by going apply the chorus on the second track here. So I'm gonna go to my, make sure that you highlight the second track. And down here on the plugins. And of course I'm going to my chorus again. And I'm going to apply the same sort of makes it it before I just increase the Mexican also increase the mics on the Smart Controls here. The intensity I was quite into the ages here, 80% or so. And the rate I will just leave it as it is. And I'm going to replay the track. I'm going to slowly increase the volume of the second track with the chorus to see what's the difference. Going back with painted was Carlos failure? Nothing that you say? Okay, I made the track a little bit more prominent. There is also another technique that we can use to make the track more interesting is by moving the second region that duplicated region slightly to the right. So it makes a little bit of delay effect. And it will make our voice more interesting. But I'll just zoom in on the secret is by zooming in, let's say roughly there, roughly in the middle. And then going to move the second track slightly. And I'm going to play this again and see what sort of effect I've got now. Go with the painted Carlos Faith. Nothing. Choose B. Okay, definitely sounds better than before. Let's play with the whole context and let's see how it sound. I'm going to just un-solo these tracks and play that part without the loop and just before the verse starts. So this is the chorus effect of fun user in your mix wisely and also consider to doubling your tracks if they need a little bit more boost. See you in the next video and we're going to talk about the other ambience effects. 20. Flanger and Phaser: Okay, Let's talk about flanger and phaser. Flanger is a single short delay, the cut certain frequencies and doubles others and work entirely on time-based. There are many types of flangers where you can tweak feedback, filtering, polarity, and modulation. We hear these sounds usually in guitar tracks and also in albums from the sixties where the sound was introduced. Phasor is similar to the flangers facts, but it affects frequencies rather than the time. Like the flanger. The flanger, the phaser are also called time delay effects, as they allow the original signal to go through unaltered and generate a second identical signal with the effect, but offset a little bit from the original signal, does time delay. Let's have a look at how we can apply these effects to our guitars here. So I'm going to play the guitar solo. And I just looked at I also disable the paddle board and the, um, designer because they already have some effect here. It's going to want to blend these effects with the flaneur as well. Well, that's babies track without the effect and see how it sounds. Okay, let's now apply the flanger. I'm going to go down here, the bottom, I'm going to put flamed her on, by the way, is under Modulation flangers. How the flangers it here. And I'm going up play the track again. I'm gonna do a and B. Turning on and off the effect. This is without I can play around with a mix, I don't go, please the percentage. So this is a sort of effects that we can achieve with the flanger. Let's apply now the phaser going to remove the flangers and put the phasor instead. And this is how the phaser sounds like. The feedbacks like me. The phasor affects the frequencies and the flangers effect the time. So they're very similar as facts, but they produce different kinds of sounds and color to your mix. Feel free to experiment the flanger, the phaser, not just on guitars, but also on other tracks and other instruments. This will give an interesting color to your tracks. Now I'm going to close these plug-in, going to just enable the pedal board than the amp designer on the pellet board, we have the option to go to modulation here on the right-hand side and choose one of these battles. So you can see here, we got chorus, we have phasor, we have flangers, tremolo, et cetera. So if I go into phasor, for instance, I can apply that phasor it to my track and I can turn the phaser down here because this is just an additional effect. And then I'll just turn it off and play the track again. I can turn that off. And again it gives me rate data and feedback that I can tweak around. So sometimes you also find effects like this in ampere designers. So if I go into my amp designer now and I show you how the amp designer looks like. This, where you'll find additional effects that you can apply to your track. Now, you have here tremolo and vibrato for instance, that what we're going to talk about in the next class. And you can apply some of the use of fact without adding any other plug-in. But if you want to have more control of your flanger, phaser or any other effects. Feel free to add that in because it's going to give you, of course, more parameters to tweak your sounds. In the next class, I'm going to talk about tremolo. 21. Tremolo and Vibrato: Tremolo is an effect that fluctuates the volume. And it's easily confused with vibrato effect, which fluctuate the pitch. The so-called tremolo on an electric guitar, the bands, the strings is actually a vibrato as you are affecting the pitch of the strings and not the volume. Let's take a look at this using our guitar track here. So I'm going to add the tremolo. And I'm going to turn the tremble off first. I'm going to begin to listen to the track without the treble and gone and then apply the tremolo while Willis into it. Now with the tremolo, which affects the volume, we can change the rate here to be, let's say faster or slower. So let's try it with alpha of the time. We're gonna increase the volume slightly. When I go to 1 fourth, 1 eighth, 1 16th. So it makes the guitar more interesting here. Of course, I will probably go down to 1 eighth or 1 fourth for this guitar because it's not very fast track. And then I can also double the track and do the same technique that I used before with a voice. So now you know how to use the ambiance of facts at fine, make sure your experiment this facts with your mics if it requires it. And I'll see you in the next video when we gonna talk about mustering. 22. Mastering your Project: Let's talk about mastering. One of the many features in GarageBand is to be able to control an automate the overall volume and effects of the entire project. This is achievable by enabling the master track. So you're gonna go into track on top and click on show master track. Now master track will show up here at the bottom of our tracks. And when we click on Smart Controls, we're going to see a preset here, plugins on the left-hand side and all the different knobs that we can tweak. Here. You can easily apply fade in and fade out. And also you're able to properly must see your track by using presets of facts and third-party plug-ins as well. Now, to apply, fade in and fade out, I could just need to go into mix on the menu bar on top and click on fade out. You can also apply fade in manually. So if I click on fade out now is going to enable the fade out here at the very end. So I can see all my automation here. And I can drag that to all the way to the right if I want to and change one of these nodes as my liking. And then you find out, play the track here. So I can apply fading by doing the same thing at the beginning, by just clicking on the line and do the automation as you learned in automations. Same thing. To delete the automation, going to highlight them all here. And press backspace. I can do the same thing at the end loops. And do the same here. If I double-click on the note, it will delete it as well. So let's go back to our normal view. Bye, pressing a on your keyboard to hide the automations. We're mixing a song. We're balancing all the different elements so that they sound well together without interfering with each other. Mustering is all about optimizing your mix. We also need to make sure your song as a quality consistency throughout different speakers and environments. It has to sound good on at firms, on speakers, in car stereos, and in other devices as well. If you're mastering multiple songs, we need to make sure that there is continuity in the sound quality. Achieving this quality takes time and practice, so don't get discouraged as GarageBand can help you greatly when it comes to mastering, assuming that you have gone through the mixing process and all of your levels, volume faders, panning knobs and no automations are finalized. The process of mastering is done mainly on the master track and the overall sound. After all, this is a crucial point as what comes out from the master track is your final work that you can then share with the world. And it'll tip is to listen to your favorite musicians and listen to their songs and music and tried to imitate that sound and you mix them mustering. Also, make sure that if your song is very similar to one of your favorite artists are your favorite music, make sure you can compare that with your mix. As much as I can teach you about mixing and mastering your project. Overall sound will be up to you and your taste. When you make some muster, you need to live in the green. And what that means is make sure that all of your track meters do not go to red. Yellow meters are okay as long as it will make the overall master track read. A common mistake is to raise the volume of certain tracks to make them louder. And when you export your song, GarageBand will try to fix those levels by lowering down the volumes and that might result in thinner sounds and low volume. One of my suggestion is go to Girish man on a menu bar on the top. Go to Preferences and go to advance and make sure that auto normalize is untyped. Orthonormalize is essentially a limiter on top of the limiter that you are ready to apply in your mastering track. I will probably turn these off and trusting your mix and mastering skills rather than than this. But if you feel uncomfortable in mastering and you think that your song require a bit more boost? Well, feel free to try this out and see how your song sounds like at the end. In this case, you are going to just leave it unchecked. And I'm going to close it. If you mix a few songs to make an album, it's best to export each project with no plug-ins or effect in the master track. So make sure all these plugins on the left-hand side on the master track are all grayed out. Also go into EQ and make sure that one is grayed out as well and under effect. So make sure that switch is off and nothing is applied, not even the echo. Then you're ready to export your track. To export your track, you just go into share and click on export song to disk. You also have other option to export. You can export to SoundCloud or to iTunes if you want to. I in this case, if you do export song to disk and you export into a desktop, create a folder where you're going to export all of your projects and exported either in AIFF or waveform, which are uncompressed. And you can then re-import them into an empty project and then muster them. We're going to close this because in this case here, we're going to master our track directly in the project here. Ideally, you want to use a set of plug-ins on a mass subtract, there will be suitable for all of your songs to keep consistency. But in this case, we're going to work only on this project. So I'm going to have to export any mix. I don't work directly a master, my song down here on the master track. If you're still not familiar with the plugins for mixing and mastering, just go back to the videos when I'm talking about the 11 essential elements of mixing, mastering. And also all the videos about the plug-ins that I explained and went through. But if you want to be quick, try some of the mastering presets available in GarageBand. Just go on top-left here on the library. Make sure that you must attract is enabled and highlighted, and choose one of these preset here. Now I'm going to play these presets, and I'm going to play my song at the same time. So I'm going to just press play and go through these preset here. Let's press play. So let's try classic. I'm going to go back to ballad. Because now the plugins are enabled. Let's go to events. Also need to make sure that this volume is up to 0. Going to hold down the Alt key and click on the volume to go back to 0 db. Go back to the top. Jazz. Jazz preset emphasize high frequencies. The presets emphasize bass frequencies. Okay, there are definitely some preset that we can use an experiment. But the main rule in mastering is essentially using three fundamental plugins. And these are gain, compressor, and limiter. So the one that I use the most of these three. And I'm going to basically now remove all these plugins here. I'm going to close the library. And I'm going to remove all these plugins by clicking on no plug-ins. So I've got just an empty slot here and I can start from scratch. So I'm going to add first of all, the gain. And I'm going to just move that on the top. The second one is going to be my compressor. In this case I'm mastering. So I'm going to be using a multiprocessor. Now the difference between compressor and multiprocessor is that multiprocessor is a multiband compressor which allows you to apply compression to different range of frequencies. But this does not mean that you cannot use compressor as well. And really depends on the kind of music that you must have. And then at the very end here, I'm going to apply my limiter. So I'm going to go to dynamics and click on limiter. Now I'm going to go to the gain, and I'm going to put the gain here. And we're going to start to master our song by listening to it from beginning. First of all, going to press play. And I think the song require a little bit of gain, so I'm going to increase the gain. Always keep an eye on the volume on top. And in the master track here, make sure there is always in green and yellow but not read. Another preset that I use in multiprocessor here. I'm going to the presets. Faster track for the trach change dramatically. Now the song sounds much louder, but I'm actually hitting the rads here, so I have to go into the limiter. And that's where the limited is sort of comes as a savior. Because I actually go back here and make sure that my output level do not exceed minus one dB. And let's play the song from roughly here, where my drums starts to kick in and press play. So I probably need to go back again and go lowering down the gain. Since I'm not in red and yellow that okay, It sounds much better. It doesn't clip. And also the song is not even two minutes long. But when you must be your song, make sure that you catch the loudest part, where you need to tame the levels using the limiter. And then you can go to gain a multiprocessor if you want to recompress a signal and you just had another compressor, you can take all the sounds, you can make your music louder and thicker. Also make sure that the ortho normalized and the GarageBand preferences is ticked off. So GarageBand will not limit your sound again and reprocess your levels again. These are the three that I use the most and many mixers and mastering engineers use as well. But feel free to experiment on the library here with a different preset that you have available and then you can tweak around. So if I decide I want to go back to ballad, but still use the principle that you learn in this class. I can still go back here and add my gain at the top, at my multi-processor, which already have and the limited down here. And now if I play my song again and go back to gain again and increase the DB, go to the loudest part of my song, ever. Make sure it doesn't clip since what your multiprocessor. Too fast attack for bands. And you can change the color of the mixing. From here. We're back to limits out. So it's clipping now. So I have to go back here into the limiter and make sure I'm kind of minus one dB. Play that back again. And lowering that again has to match with that. Jesus was the baby for. The exciter is one of the fields that we can apply to enhance certain harmonics in our mix. So if I play the song from here, and I enable the exciter, and I opened the excited track here. You see I've got frequency and I've got harmonics. So I can choose a frequency from 20 hertz all the way to 20 kilohertz and announce that. So let's play the track again. Let's say I want to go into the 200 Hertz, which is a low frequency and increase the harmonics. And also AB tests this as well, so we fail to choose. So these are the basics of mastering. You can definitely experiment and export your track using this principle. Always remember to use gain, compressor and limited in your mastering track. So use these plugins and your song will sound louder, warmer, thicker, and with a little bit of character as well when you export it. Thank you so much and I'll see you in the next video. 23. Sharing your song: After mixing and mastering, the last stage would be exporting your song into your desk or share it on the Internet. So let's have a look here on top. And the share on a menu bar, we have several options. The first option is to export your song into iTunes. So when you click there is going to give me an option too tightly to put name of the composer or the artist, the album name, the iTunes playlist if phase 1. And also I've got the option to choose what quality I want to export it as. The other options go here, H is grayed out at the moment is Export Cycle area only. This will only work. We'd only be available if you highlight an area here on your project. For instance, if I now enabled the cycle region and I select a specific area here, say I want to export only these part here. When I go in to share song to iTunes, is going to now give me the option to take that and to export only select part. Let's cancel it for now. And let's go into share again. The other options is to export your song as a ringtone to iTunes. I will suggest to use a separate project to create ringtones by if you really want to export your project as Harrington, you can do that and click on it. Be aware that when you do that, GarageBand will only allow 40 seconds of your project to be exported. Me just close the cycle region here, and that's called the share again. The third option here on top is song to media browser. This will bounce your project into a file and you can access from any other applications such as iMovie, Final Cut Pro I photo or any other third party software. So the media browser essentially is this button here on the top right-hand corner in GarageBand, you'll find these media browser anywhere else in your Mac. The other options below here is a song to Soundcloud. Soundcloud is a free sharing platform that will let you share your sound file on the internet. Then we have add drop and with our drop Eigen send these project to my iPad. If I want to carry on working on my project there, I want to share it as a file. I can also do that as well. I can send these also to my iMac or any other Apple device and carry on working. This is a brilliant way and very fast way for you to send something to any other devices. You also have male and male will let you just e-mail your project or sung somewhere else. You will have the option here to send as a project or as a finalized file. Then we have export song to disk. This will bounce your track and it will let you choose what quality you want to export your project. So if I click on that, going to give me these four options down below, I've got AAC, which is an Apple format. And we have MP3, AIFF, and wave. The AIF and wave are uncompressed formats, and I can choose between 16 beats, which is a CD quality, or 24-bit. This is really up to you how you want to export it by usually use AF or wave if I want to keep it as record for my future reference. The other option is grayed out is birdsong to disk. Now, if you're the CD burner or DVD burner connect to your Mac, that option will be available, but you will have to put an empty CD inside your CD burner in order for that to work. Then we have project to GarageBand for iOS. This works only if you have an iCloud account. So when I click on that, it's gonna give me the option to save it to my iCloud Drive so I can access that to any other Apple devices. Let me cancel that. But for this exercise, I'm going to export the song to disk. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to choose AIFF. And I'm going to leave the track name as it is, and click on desktop here on the left-hand side, and click on Export. Now GarageBand is going to bounce all my tracks into one file, onto my desktop. I'm going to minimize the Irish bend and go to my desktop. And this is my finalized track. Then I can play now. So now you know all the options that are available to you for sharing your projects from GarageBand. 24. Congratulations and What's Next?: Congratulations, you made it. Now you should be able to create, record, edit, mix, and master, use song with GarageBand. And I would love to hear your creations in the project section. Keep on creating music because this is just the start of a fantastic journey to music creation. See you soon.