Learn Mixing in Studio One

1. 01 Introduction: Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm Gary Hiebner and welcome to my class on Mixing in Studio One. In this class, I'm gonna show you how you can take your mixes to the next level by taking advantage of the tools and features and tricks within Studio One. This is going to take a look at different routing options and organization tips and techniques. For example, how to pack your tracks into Folders and map those two buses and VCA is and just have much better overall control of your mix. I'll expand on Compression and give you a much better understanding on How Compression Works and heart, it can really benefit your mixes. Also, we'll touch on multi-stage compression, different types of EQ-ing that you can use in your tracks to get them to submit it and the mix. And then also other processes that you can use to help excites and saturates and get that mixed to really punch through. So now that you know where we're headed with this class, Let's jump in and see how to mix and Studio One 2. Top Down vs Bottom Up Mixing Styles: In this video, I want to talk about the two types of different Mixing approaches that you can use in your Productions. The One is the Top-Down Approach or the Bottom-Up approach. And this is determines what type of direction you're going with consideration to the tops of tracks that you using in your production. For example, if the song you're working on and the style is predominately vocal focused, which is like a lot of RMB, some pop, and maybe some country music. Then you start working with the vocal and you mix the vocal to where you get that way once it, and then you move on down through the other types of instrumentation. We're with a Bottom-Up approach. You start off with the more rhythmic based elements like the drums and the base. And you build these app and start mixing these in and then move up through all the other types of instrumentation like the keyboard, the guitars. And then finally you finish off with the Vocals on top that you just sit on top of the mix and you get everything balanced. Now, that is the approach that I'm going to be taking in this class. I've got a predominantly rock focused song. So I'm going to work from the drums and the base and in, up through the other instrumentation. And then finally with the Vocals. So just make sure you know which type of style that you want to use if it's other Top-Down or the Bottom-Up approach. Because it gives you a good focus on what you want to focus in on. For example, on my song, on a focus on getting a good solid rhythmic Bass with the drums and the base, where maybe you would have focused more on the Vocals. Then you'll start off with the Vocals, start mixing those, and then move through, through the other tracks. So that's just the two styles that you can work from. But you really don't have to stick to these, but I just wanted to clear this up and just give you an idea on where you could start with your mixing. Now let's jump in and see what steps we can take 3. Organizing and Routing Tracks: In this video, I want to talk about a type of organizational technique that you can use to Organize your tracks into Folders so that you have more control with them. And you're going to have more control because the similar type of tracks are packed into a folder. And in these folders are routed out to Bus. So you've got these buses that can give you sort of sub Mixing control of your mix. This is a song that we're going to be working with for this video series. As you can see, there's roughly about 32 tracks here, and it's a combination of audio tracks and virtual instruments. But further on in this course, you are going to see how I'm going to bounce a lot of the virtual instruments, dance audio because I just find it's better working with audio. We can see the waveform and have a bit more control. And overall, we just want more control over our song said we can make it better. Like I mentioned in the last video, we're going to be doing a bottom-up approach with Mixing. So we're going to mix the instruments from the drums up to the base, then guitars. And we're going to finish up the instrumentation. And then finally, we're going to be focusing in on the Vocals. And that gives you an idea on what you want to pack everything together. I want to pack all the instruments into instrument folder and in the Vocals into a vocal folder. So I can separate these two entities within the mix. I can get all the instrumentation rights and then just sit those Vocals on top. And if I don't want the Vocals, I just want to have an instrumental mix. I can just mute those Vocals. My instrumental section is completely mixed perfectly. So let's take a look. Alice has done. So I've got these drums all over here. And it's a combination of electronic drums and acoustic drums using virtual instruments. Now, if I want to take all these tracks and pack them into a folder, I'll just select them. So I'm going to select the first track. And then I'm gonna hold down Shift and select this last track over here. Then I can just right-click on any of these tracks and then say pack folder. So that packs it into this folder here. Just neaten this up the whole arrangement and I can rename this to drums. Now there is one catcher. This has got the electronic drums and acoustic drums. But I want to have control over both. So for example, let's say the electron trumpets are signing ever to live now and to bring those down, then what I'd have to do is I'd have to expand this, go into those two tracks, maybe open up my mixer and then adjust the levels of those tracks. There's a much better way of doing this. So I'm going to undo that pack folder that I did. And instead, I first want to pack similar elements together. So I'm going to take these tracks here, which are the virtual instruments for Steven Slate drums. It's using an acoustic kit. I'm going to select all the tracks down to room B. Then I'm going to right-click on it and say packs of older call this acoustic drums. And then more importantly, I just wanted to expand this so that I can see the area over here where I can wrap this to a Bus channels. So now this has given it a Bus channel with the name of acoustic drums, which means I've got volume control over these acoustic drums. Then I can take these electronic drums, which is an instance of impacts though, and I can pack those into a folder, name it as well. So electronic drums. And the same thing. I just want to drop this down and add the best channel for that. Separate, independent control of the electronic drums and the disk trumps. Now here is another important step. I can take both those. So select the electronic drums and then select the acoustic drums. Right-click and say packed subfolder. And now all the drums are housed within here. And I can expand this and rat that to a Drums Bus channel. So can you follow me here? I've got the drums all going into Ostrom's folder where I've got volume control over the drums. And then for unpack that, I've got the electronic drums. We have got control over the electronic drums there. Expand that and adjust the volumes of the different elements within there, as well as the acoustic drums with total volume control over the electronic drums or going into the respective tracks and changing those. And like I said, those are all routed to the drums. So if we just move over to the mixer quickly, you can see I've got, let's say these acoustic drums over here. They all going out to the acoustic drums bass channel over there. Then that Bus channel is going add to the drums. And the same with the electronic drums. I've got the two tracks here. They're going out to the electronic drums verse channel, and that is being routed out to the main drums bass. That gives you an idea on what we're doing here. And obviously, another nice thing is you can minimize things to take them out of the views. They can focus on specific things within the arrangement. So there are my drums done. Now. I've got three Bass Tracks here. Could pack all this synthetic base instruments into a folder and in acoustic basis into another one. But really there's only three tracks. So for here, instead, I'm deciding just to pack these into Folders and calling it Bass. And adding a to the base Bus channels. These are synth elements or pads or whatever you want to call them. I'm going to select them and pack them into a folder. I'll call those since. So obviously you just name it something that makes sense to you that you'll know where to go when you're looking for it within your song. Now, here, I've got the tars, I've got to Guitars to electric guitars and lead guitar. Now, the lead guitar you can think of as an electric guitar instrument. So I'm going to first take these acoustic guitars, pack them into a folder. I'll call that acoustic impact. These all into electric guitars folder. I'll just call it an electric guitar for short. And don't forget to map these add to a Bus channel. And in like you saw with the drums, I'm going to take both these Guitar best tracks and pack them into folder and Bus them to a guitarist track. So now I've got total control over my guitars. And another thing I haven't quite pointed out yet is that on each Bus channel, you can add different processing. So for example, and then on electric guitars, I could add specific types of EQs and compressors onto this track. Then on electric guitar bass channel, I could add a different set of Processing on Etsy process that Bus. And then that's going into the guitar bass. And I can add even further processing. So as you can see, you've got multi stages of processing that you can play with the new mix when you get very deep into the mix process. I'm just going to minimize those. Then lastly, we've got the Vocals, so I'll take all of those and then pack them into a Vocals folder. So that's Vocals and send that to a Vocals best channel. Now the important thing that I mentioned in the beginning is I want to leave the instrumentation separate, so I've got control over the instrumentation and in the Vocals by themselves. So if we just take a look at the guitars in the mix console, you've got all the guitars coming into this guitars bass channel. And then that is going to the Main Output. And the same with the Vocals. The Vocals is going to the Main Output. Now what I want to do is I want to select all these instruments, Bass Tracks, pack them into a folder. So now I've got a instrument folder that contains all the instruments. I'll just label it instruments and send that to a Bass tau. So as you can see, we've really minimized everything here. We've got all the instrumentation has within all these different folders where we've got different control over the different tracks, the different best channel, and that different Bus subchannels. And in all of that goes into the instrument Bus. So if we take a look here, let's just take a look at this electric guitars. Again. We've got these three electric guitars going to the electric guitar bass channel. Then the electric guitar bass channel is going to the guitars bass channel. And then the goods has Bus channel is going to the instrument Bus channel, and in the instrument Bus channel is going to the Main Output. Now, I know this sounds like quite a bit, but as you go through this course, you'll see how this is a really important step of having control over your mix and really fine tuning things, and being able to process things differently and have total volume control of all sections. For example, if I just play this back, let's say I want to meet the Vocals. I can meet them. And they say, I find that the acoustic guitars us to lab. I can just jump here and drop there. So I don't have to jump to the mix console and do change there. Then let's say I want the base of the ladder. I can just jump there and use the Bass volume fader. And the same with the drums, just drop the drums. So I've quickly and easily got access to total volume control over all these packed Folders because they'd been routed to Bus channels. And then I can separate the instrumentation from the Vocals. So the Vocals is going straight to the main Bus, but all the instruments are housed within here. So that is my idea of how to pack your instrument tracks into Folders and in Bus them out to Bus channels to have much better control. And because I'm doing the Bottom-Up approach to mixing, we got the Vocals last and then they're going out straight to the Main Output. So I'm gonna keep the Vocals muted for now while we worked through the rest of the instrumentation. Now, in the next video, let me show you one more step that I like to do with some VCA faders catch in the next video. 4. Creating a SubMaster VCA Fader: In the last video, you saw how we routed all our Instron tracks into sub-folders and then into this instrument folder where they are being sent to other the instrument Bus or the Main Output, like the Vocals. Now there's one extra step that I liked supply that might not quite make sense now. But when we get down the line to where we sending everything to the Main Output and we wanna do some Bus Processing to the Main Output. You'll see how it's important over there. And what this is, is that I want to create a SubMaster VCA. And it's pretty easy to do. First, what I wanna do is go to my Mixing Console. And then just in the blank area over here, I'm just going to right-click and say add VCA channel, and then adds a VCA channel over here, right on an, on the right. If you're not seeing it here, maybe seeing it on the left, just go into the Settings icon over here, and then just choose to keep VCA channels to the right. And I want to name this SubMaster VCA. Now what I can do is I can rats tracks to this VCA. If you just click on these areas over here, you can choose for these to go to a VCA. So I want the Vocals to go to the SubMaster VCA. And I'm basically going to do the same for all these other folders. But do I really have to do that? Probably not all have to do it for as the instrument channel and the Vocals. Now, what's gonna happen is all these tracks are going to be passed through the SubMaster VCA. And in the SubMaster VCA is going to the Main Output. And the reason I want to do this is because I don't want to touch this master control. I want to leave this at unity gain. Then when I add my mastering Processing or Main Bus Processing, this is where I want the master fader, it's B. And if I need to adjust any of the levels, I'm going to do it on the SubMaster VCA. So look what happens here. If I drop this down, you can see that that is dropping the level for the Vocals and the instruments. So that's what I really need. Let's say that the levels that's going into the Main Output is just a Bud Light. Then I can just take this Master VCA and just pull it down. And it's immediately sending a lower level to the master output. But it's not adjusting this Master Fader. Pretty simple. So just to be clear, if you notice sure, what a VCA is, all it's doing is it's acting as a volume fader for any audio that passes through it. There's no processing that's being applied. So basically what we weren't is just total volume control, like I've mentioned a couple of times going add to this Main Output. And this is just to make sure that we not clipping anything or the signal that's going to the Main Output isn't too loud. So that's really at all is for now. But it's going to make a bit more sense when we get down later into the video series. So just keep this in mind, added to your song and you'll see how it's used a bit later. Now let's move on and start talking about some Mixing 5. Using a Master Bus Compressor on your Main Output: Now before getting into any Mixing, what I like to do a strep, a Compressor onto the main Bus. So this is going to act like a Master Bus Compressor. And what this does is it just helps Jill everything together before you give them to mixing. So I'm gonna get into compressors and the next video. But basically, what a Compressor is doing is it's taking the softest and ladder spurts and just narrowing that dynamic range so that you got a smoother dynamic range across your song. Isn't it what you want? You don't want weird things to be jumping out and pumping out new mix. You want everything to sound smooth and balanced and are putting a Compressor on the Main Output. It's going to do exactly that. What are we going to do is use a very subtle settings. So it's not drastically changing the tonality, but it is just helping contain the dynamic range. So on this Main Output Bus, I'm going to be adding the stock Compressor within Studio One. And what I want to dial in is a ratio of about two to one, so a very low ratio. And then with the attack, we don't want a very short attack because it's going to cut off those transients. We went to retain that initial transient of the sand. So setting a slower attack is gonna be much better. So somewhere around about, let's say, 50 milliseconds is going to Work. And the release, I'm just going to leave at this default value of 120 milliseconds. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to play back and pull down this threshold. And I'm just going to keep an eye on this meter here to get a bad minus two dB of gain reduction. And then we can use the makeup gain to make up for that gain-loss. So when you bar parsing the Compressor, you're not noticing this drop in volume because that is one of the biggest problems with compressors. You use a Compressor and then use some makeup gain. And your idea is that if you hear something ladder, it sounds better and we want to avoid that pitfall. So let me show you how to Stan the playback that audio from the start and then tweak this threshold. Keeping an eye over here, roundabout halfway there. And then threshold at about -25 dB, we got about 2 db of gain reduction. Now let's makeup for that with 2 db of gain makeup. So take a listen here. So that's really all we're doing. Just a simple adjustments like that with a Compressor to help jill everything together on the Main Output Bus. Now I'm going to play back and I'm going to bypass the compressor and take a listen, how just really does help jelly everything together. Let's bypass at first and then playback. I don't know if you heard that, but I could definitely feel hot was tightening up things and just squashing the dynamic range ever so slightly and giving a smoother dynamic range across that song. Now, when I'm mixing, I'm going to be mixing into this main Bus Compressor. So I've got an idea on the end results on what I want it to be with regards to the Main Output Bus. And I can jump into my Tracks now and do the necessary processing to get where I want to get with my Mixing. Now another thing to mention on the Main Output Bus, some do like to Master within their song as opposed to using the project section. So you can have a mastering chain going over here and load up different plugins. But if you send in your song to a mastering engineer or a separate person to do the mastering, your going to have to bypass these effects and incented to him. And I think if you've got a subtle Compression like this on your Main Output Bus, and you do add some mastering Effects in the mastering chain over here by bypassing them a leaving this Compressor and sending that to a mastering engineer is going to be satisfactory and is still going to have a good mix that can be used to be mastered. For the remainder of this course, I'm going to leave as Compressor on here, and then we're going to move over onto the tracks and do Mixing on they're not in the next video. Let's get into some more detail on Compression and how greedy works. 6. How a Compressor Works: Now I've got to say one of the most confusing things when alpha is going to mixing was understanding how a Compressor Works. Normally, I'd just strap a Compressor onto a track for the with the settings. Not really know what I was doing with it, and then just move on. But understanding exactly how Compressor Works and in what case scenarios to use it really can make a huge difference to mix. If you look at E queuing, That's fairly easy to understand. You've got your bands or your different frequency areas and the other boosted, or you cut it. And you find areas that you want to not want and take them out. So that does make a lot of sense, but obviously, getting into finer detail on EQ takes time as well. But I definitely find if you can understand Compression a bit more, it can really make a huge difference to your mixing. So what I want to show you is a Compressor on this Bass track over here. And how it's going to change the shape and a tone of the sound. So this is the bass part by itself. So as you can see from the waveform, there is definitely very degrees of dynamics in this audio. And that's because it was me playing on the base and the plane was slightly sloppy. But I did that on purpose just so I could show you what's happening over here. So there's just zoom up and get a better look of this waveform. As you can see, you've got software, birds and ladder births and some peaks going on as well. So what I wanna do is strapped Compressor on here, Dallin quiet a hectic sitting, and then we're going to Band set down to a new track so you can see the change in the waveform. So let's just go for the stock Compressor. And what I'm gonna do is quite an extreme sitting like I said. So let's do a ratio of about, let's say six to one. And we want to have a super short attack and release time. So let's play back and move over until a threshold and pull it down till we get some extreme gain reduction happening. We're getting at about -12 dB of gain reduction. So let's do a makeup of, let's say maybe 12 to be, see if that works. My bosses. I'm just going to pull it down slightly so we don't notice such a big difference in the volume when we turn it on an off. That's working for me. Now, what I wanna do is select this part and we're going to bounce us to a new audio track. You can see if you go to events, you've got this option over here where you can bounce to a new track suit on the Mac side, it's using Option Command B. I'm going to use that as my shortcut Summer Option client beat. And that is going to bounce down to a new track. So take a look here. Let's just minimize those actually at bypasses original tracks. So if you see here, you can see the difference that's happening with the audio lessee. So it's taken the most quiet experts, it's brought them up. And then it has taken the lattice, but also just increase that level. So between the quietest and louder signal, you've got less range. That's probably the best way of saying it. So it's actually flattened out, giving you a smoother dynamic range. Now let's do that again and maybe do even something more extreme. So I'm gonna go back here and let's squash this ridiculously. So a super high ratio in a super low threshold. That is pretty extreme. So let's bounce that down as well. So what you can see here is a way more drastic measure with the Compression. They just zoom up over here and bypass that. So obviously there's been a drop in level. So let me just take this clip gain envelope and increase. It. Looks similar. There's some slack sparks that got through. But what you can notice is that it's sort of squared off this waveform. There isn't a very big dynamic range between the softest and ladder signals. Now this is obviously not what you're trying to shoot for. So what he's shooting for is a good level of dynamic range, but not too much, so that you have to ride the fate of the volume and attract to make ladder bit softer and softer bits ladder. So it's controlling that volume, but you still one retains some dynamics that actually add to the performance. That is, in a nutshell, what we're trying to achieve with Compression. Now, the next important thing to understand How Compression is the envelope and the attack and release times. So if you've got a very slow attack, it's going to allow those transients in. So if you just take a look at this audio, you've got transients here. And if I've got a long attack, it's going to allow those transients in and then the Compression is going to kick in. But if you've got a short attack, it's going to cut out some of those transients. So you might lose that initial attack that you have with some sounds. For example, sounds that have high transients, drums, you generally want to adjust this attack so you're not losing that initial transient. And in the same with the release, you can have either a short or foster Elise depending on how you want that Compression to come out of the Compression As it goes past that threshold. So these are just sitting, be tweaking depending on the source material that's coming into the Compression. You can determine how much Compression you want to add. So what the ratio is going to be? How much you want to apply that. So with the threshold and then also shaping the envelope to determine how it's shaping the transients and the tails of the source audio that's coming in. And then obviously like you've seen the makeup gain to make up for any gain-loss, because like you saw that last example, with heavy Compression, there's going to be a drastic amounts of gain-loss that you're going to have to make up for. So I hope that's clearing up what Compression is. Obviously by giving you a visual example, showing you what's happening to the waveform is a good idea to see how they're Compression is being applied to audio. So what I recommend you to do is if you compressing a track and you not to show how the Compression is working, do what I did over here, banter down to a new track and then zoom in to the original waveform. And then the waveform offer the Compression and see what it's doing to Audio, you'll get a really much better idea on how compressions working with their track. And as you start using Compression more and more, you're going to develop an ear on how a Compressor Works. And when you jump to different tracks, you can have settings that you jumped to. And you're just going to know how much ratio and threshold you're going to use and what type of attack and release 7. Gain Staging Crash Course: In this video, I'm gonna go over Gain staging again just to refresh you on it. I didn't go over this in my mixing and mastering course. So this is gonna be a very quick crash course going through it. Basically with Gain staging, you taking all your faders and you dropping them down. And then you're going to slowly start increasing them until you get a good balance across your tracks. So you've got a good balanced mix before you start adding any Processing. Another thing is to make sure that you're not pushing up the fetus too much. Therefore, we're not giving you enough headroom on the Main Output. But the BD with the setup, how we've set everything up here with the instrument Bus and the vocal bursts. And in that going to a SubMaster, all I can do is just pull down the SubMaster if I don't have enough headroom on this Main Output. So starting off, let's take a look at how to gain stage the drums. So I'm gonna go across to my drums trachea, then I've got the electronic drums and then the acoustic drums. What I want do is just drop the levels for everything. So I want to solo the drums. Then I want to drop the levels of the electronic instruments. Just makes sure that this is at unity gain, these subgroup Folders, and then pull everything else down. This is just my instrument. I don't really need this. Here are the individual Drum tracks, so I'm just going to select the first track I think are the end. So I've got the overheads and remarks over here and pull these down. Now I'm going to start playback and I'm going to slowly increase these as it goes through. So starting off with a kick, sounding good at zero dB. Now for the snare. And I'm going to pan the snare slightly to the left. So I'm doing this from the Drum of perspective. I like to mix as if I was sitting in the drummers stool. And that's how our pan the drums across. The other perspective is from the audience perspective. And if you're doing it from this way, then your snare and your Tom's, for example, would be reversed on how they pad. Now this is entirely a personal preference, but I like from the dramas perspective, if you like from the audience perspective, then for example, you'd be taking the snare and pushing across sloppy to the other side. It's here, the hats. Then I've got some Tom's over here and write about both 15 to 17. This just loop that It's time to. That's just one time too, but I'm just gonna do a rough estimate with the other faders and with the toms. These guys are gonna be panned from left to right. Tom, one sitting rant about somewhere over here. Some to just offset from the middle, some three a little bit on the other side. And then Tom for all the way on the other side. Now, I'm just going to move over onto the section over here after Bio 17 because I've got some of the other elements, they spool the overhead and so this has got the symbols. And it's also a tambourine. Yeah. Anna clap. I don't think I've got a ride anywhere. We do. So I'm to bring that in. So I'm obviously using the stephen, say drums over here. So if you using the drums within Studio One or another third party Drum instrument, that's an acoustic bass instrument, you'd be doing the same thing. Now I don't have a cowbell. Some leave that at the bottom. What am I missing here? What I'm missing is actually probably two of the most important elements of an acoustic kit, and that is the remarks. Now, I totally used to ignore how important remarks were. So I'm gonna show you how well they work now. So I've got two remarks over here. What I'm gonna do is slowly bring them in. But here, how much character these remarks add into a drum performance? That's what that tiny bit dry and flat. All obviously changed level of these. But I think that's good roundabout over there. So just an important thing to note when we get into mixing drums and start adding some extra processing onto the elements, that's going to affect the Main Output of the drums that's going out to the main Master Bus. But for now, I think this is pretty good for the acoustic drums. Now let's move over onto the electronic drums, which is basically a kick and snare. That's put louder. You just want this to complement the kick. So it's layering of electronic KYC worth and acoustic kick and snare patterns for suicide. So those rooms are a little bit loud, so I'm gonna pull down this Main Output. I'm just looking at this Main Output over here. And it just needs to come down a bit. Because as I start adding the other instruments, it's going to get a bit overloaded on this Main Output. So that's the drums for you. That's just a very quick run-through on gain Staging. I didn't use a V meter. It is really good practice to use that. So if I just go to my plugins over here, there isn't extension that you can add, which is the VU meter. And you can just use this to make sure that you'll levels aren't getting overloaded. And this is really low, sitting around about -20 dB. So that's pretty good. So I'm using mainly my ears now because I'm used to what I want to do, but definitely uses VU meter to make sure you're getting good amounts of level or enough level and not too much that's overloading the Bus channels and then into the Main Output. Another thing I want to point out now is because we made all these sub Bus channels, it's really easy to gain stage and bring these in. So for example, I'm just going to minimize the Bass and I just want to bring in all these other elements. I'll leave the Vocals may be at. But for now, let's just do everything else. So I'm going to bring down the Bass, bring down these, since, bring down these acoustic guitars, electric guitars. I'll leave the main guitar bass channel over there. Just meet the tracks that we're not going to be needing. And let's start adding the base. In a sense. Then the acoustic guitars, the electric guitars that consider Butler. This is obviously going all through to the guitar Master Bus channels. And these guitars Bus to this Master Bus. And if I find the guitars are too loud, I can just simply drop it over. Yeah. There you go. That is a very quick run-through on gain Staging. I focused a lot on the drums that because I'm forming the basis with my drums and they next I'm gonna move over onto the base, but I just wanted a gain stage the other tracks as well. So I've got a good ballpark figure of where everything's going to sit. So that is a quick catch-up on Gain staging. Now, the next video, let's take a look at some Drum Processing and more specifically, some Parallel Drum Processing. 8. Using Parallel Drum Bus Compression: Okay, So in the last video you saw how we did some Gain staging to these tracks. We mainly focused in on the drums. And then I quickly went through these other Bus channels here and did a rough gain Staging on them. Now, in this video, I just want to show you how we can do some mild Drum Bus Processing before we move over onto the other instruments. And that's going to be a form of Bus Compression on the drums. And more specifically, a form of Parallel Bus Compression. We're going to be using a Compressor with a very hard Compression setting and then in a mix between the heavy Compression and uncompress. And so it will retain the dynamics but have a really nice pushed effect, but the Compressor. Another thing I just forgot to point out and do in the last video was these ride symbols. If you've got symbols, you also need to pan them around on how they are in the stereo field with a drama plays and how they're kipp is setup. And this rod then because I'm mixing from a Dramas perspective, I need to push this right over to the rats. I just forgot to mention that and do that in the last video. I just want to let you know now. Okay, so I'm going to solo these drums. All of the drums, that's Main Bus channel. And Anya, I'm going to add a Compressor, just the stock Compressor from Studio One. And I'm a dial-in, a super heavy Compression setting, so a ratio of about a tenth one. A very fast attack, a very fast release. And I'm going to playback from just this section over here from Bus 17 to, let's say 27. And I'm gonna pull down this threshold. And you can see there is a lot of Compression that's going to be happening. But -12 dB of gain reduction. So I'll make up for that. Start from Bio 17. Now obviously this is a very drastic amounts of Compression. But I really liked the field that you get when you using a heavy Compressor on the drums. It gives us sort of pushed feel and brings out their tech in them. But as the one retained the dynamics. So what I'm gonna do is pull back this mix. So this is what the drum sounded like before. Very nice and mild. And then now let's mix it in before and after with some heavy Compression, Parallel Compression. And it's sort of game. Again. And with it on, I like to mix my drums into a form of Parallel Compression. On day Master Drum Bus. I just feel it gives a nice Bob to Nashville and you've got energy that's pumping to the drums. And then you can go in and start adding your EQs and your compressors, and you'll other types of processing that you want to plot on the individual Drum tracks. But you working in towards the strum channel with a Compressor and you're going to have a Nashville from the start. So I'm gonna get into Mixing the drums a bit later and what type of processing. But for now, I think that's fine. We've got a good overall Drum level. And this Parallel Compression with a heavy Compression mixed with the natural dynamics is giving us feel to it. So next, I want to move over onto the base and I want to show you a nice technique that you can use on any type of instrument within the mix, but it really works well on bass heavy instruments. I'll catch you in the next video. 9. Split Bass Techniques: In the last video, you saw how we could add some Drum Bus Parallel Compression on their Drum Bus and just really give it a vibe and feel with a lot of energy. Now, I don't want to touch anything more on the drums for now. I just want to move over onto the base and show you a technique that I like using with the base to really make it stand out within the mix. But you can actually do it on other types of instruments as well. For example, on your sons, so your guitars or pianos and keys, or even Vocals. But I find it really works well on bass heavy instruments. So I've got this base part over here which is a finger pick Bass. I'm just going to solo it and play it for you. I've got two effects on here that I'm actually going to bypass and not use. Basically, I've got a base M modelling plugin. This is the modeling plugin by brainwaves of the SVT, but there's actually a modelling of the M Peg in empire that comes with Studio One. So our such using this when I was composing, but I don't really need it now. So I'm going to bypass this and bypass the compressor. So this is now the Rodia of the base. Not really sounding too exciting. So let's do something to really give this some more character. First, what I want to add is an instance of prey Q. Now, what I'm going to be doing is doing different Processing on two different bands. Once a low band and then a high band is pretty simple. That's all I want to do. Now, how do you go about doing this? Well, you can use it with the split a tool. But first, I need to create the first band that I want to work with, the pro EQ. I'm going to take the hacker and I'm going to cut this old way to run about 100 hz. Basically what I wanna do is just be working with the subs of the base. So this is what you hear. Nothing much there, but you'll find when you mix and processed at Bass sand with a heavy processed, how Band based sound, it really comes together. So now what do we do? Well, I'm going to click on the split tool over here. And it's basically going to open the split a window for me. And what you can do here is split your signal chain into different things. So what I wanna do is take the splitter and just added before the break, you now remember our bar pass these plugins. So our once one chain over here with a set of Processing and other over here. So I'm going to take this pretty cute and edit over here. And basically I've got another chain that I can use. So I've got separate volumes, so each one so I can pull this down. That go down, yes. And I can play back. And that is the prey Cubase with Dade, hi, lows, one coming through. Now if I pull this down and pull this up, That's smart. Rodia. Now, I want to do some different Processing to this. When I first wanna do is add an instance of pretty cute. So I'm gonna go to the inserts and find pretty Q. Now what did that is by default, it just checks it at the end of the chain you're signing to drag that over here. And I want to do the opposite over here. I want to take a low cut and cut away all the frequencies below 100 hz. Now another thing to do because I'm going to be adding some Saturation tab Plug-ins after this. And this is going to be in the form of empire using an AMP Bass Model and a distortion effect. Now, what I want to do before I apply any Effects is fine. Any resonant frequencies and the base and pulled out. So what I'm do is do a boost with a narrow Q and then just sweep this around until I hear some harsh frequencies poking out. Narrowed that Q even more. And boosted and sweep around. Definitely roundabout the 600 hz region. So I'm just going to cut that out. Let's do another boost. Normally ran about 500 hz and 1,000 hz. You're going to find some things. So like you saw the previous one, just narrow Q with a boost and sweep it around. Maybe go, type it out. So I don't want those in my mix. Now with these Bass, I want to solve, accentuate the picking of it and the higher modes. So I'm going to do a boost of he had to bring that out. So that's a good starting points. Basically, if you go back to this splitter plug-in, we've got this With the subs and in this with the other. Now let's do some exciting out. Add an instance of empire. Pull this off the effects on the side of the chain. Open up the plug-in and add an instance of this MOSFET, which is basically an emulation of an MPA SVT. I want to use this bright mode on the second channel. And then on the second channel, I'm going to boost the highs. And then I want to turn up the treble. But also don't forget you need a cabinet, so I've got an AMP. And for the cabinet, I want to send this to a type of base speaker cab. Much the Hausa. Then I want to gritty the setup even more. So I'm going to jump down. So stump boxes here. And this is an emulation of a pro quo rats distortion pedal that was made in the '70s, I think, I think it's actually the first assertion parallels ever made. So we're going to pull this in, just gritty up that sound. This filter, if you pull it all the way to the left, opens up all the frequencies, acts as a sort of cut. As you go higher up, it cuts out the high frequencies. So I'm going to open up all the frequencies and just dial in the distortion. Give it some more level. Okay? So as simple as that. So now if I go back to the splitter, I'm going to make sure this is all let zero dB for that one there. I'm going to pull this down. Watch how we can mix two types of sounds together to get this gritty mass. Full Bass, sad for the mix. Santa, good. Maybe going back to this EQ, I can do a slot boost, boosting the lows even more on the subs. And then just everything out. Let's just enable this Compressor that was above everything. And this is going to act very similar to how I add this Compressor on the Main Output. It's just going to be a very simple Compressor. Ran about two to one, just to even out any dynamics with both these signal chains that are gonna be summing together with a faster attack. Before. It's a very subtle. But just helping even everything else. Listening back again, I just want to pull this side down a bit. So now if you take listened to the space on itself, let me give it a bit more level. And then pulling these drums, drums can actually come down now. So just to give you an idea on where we've come, this was the base before with just the dry signal. And now what that split chain signal with the low Serbs. And then the other side of the chain with the sort of guitar Saturation and Bass and modelling. And it's Compressor. A very nice, warmer, sad. So for example, you could do the same technique on a synth. They've got a lovely synth that's got some nice lows and some nice upper harmonics and the sand as well. You could use the splitter, split the chain up and on the low side do a low cut, add some heavy Compression on there to give a good square waveform of dynamics on the lows and highs, you can add some modulation or Saturation Effects and just give some extra character to the higher areas on the meds and hammered. I just showed you one way of working with it with a base. But as you can see, you could go completely wild with us. But it really does work and giving your sounds more character and the mix 10. Editing Techniques for Mixing: In this video, I just wanted to talk about something which is a bit of a step back from Mixing. And that's actually you recorded performances into Studio One. So this is, for example, if you're recording some audio takes into the application. Now, if you using midi, it's a bit of a different story because you can write in your midi data, recording midi data in quite easily quantized and move your midi notes around. But what I'm more talking about in this video is where you record in audio parts. And we're some of the parts maybe a bit sloppy and you want to tighten it up or you actually going for a more loose feel. To show you what I'm talking about. I'm going to first take a look at these acoustic guitars. So as you can see, There's this beginning, let's call it the verse section, where there's audio parts that have been cut up all looped, which I will show you in the SEC. And then the second parts of a here, which is the sort of Course idea where I've recorded the part in one take. Now, what you're gonna do is analyze what you want out of your song, and then you can determine what the benefit is of each of these. Obviously, your lats are called the part in one take as a very type performance that fits with all song. But actually, the most honest answer about that is sometimes your recording apart and you just not nailing it or you're not getting it quite right. Or maybe you're recording the part and the slight inaccuracies that you get from this real recorded performance from a real person. What you want. That is definitely what takes into account in this part over here. It's a strummed acoustic part. I'm going to solo it. So it's not exactly perfect, but basically I've recorded two takes here and each time it's slightly different. And if you take a look on each guitar, one is pan to the left, one is pants the rats. And these slight differences actually add to the performance. It's just so strum part with some basics, Drums and since over it and this acoustic isn't really forming the main part of that section. So it can be a slight bit loose, but more importantly, on jump across to the section over here. And as you can see, I've loop the pot. It's a finger pick part. And basically I couldn't get it as Tatas. I want, I didn't have the dexterity to play through the whole way. But that doesn't mean it has to be like this. This is a song that I'm recording for a student performance. I'm not going to be playing it live. So with regards to what I mentioned the beginning, where you need to take into account what you want achieve from the song. With this song, I want to achieve the tightest performance. And what that required was me cutting apart and looping it. If I just remove these parts over here and just drag them out, you'll see what I mean. So I recorded one part over here and here are quarterly or twice. Take a listen to the second part and you'll hear heart actually mess it up. I don't get the pod Ras. It's really not that creative here. There's a note that learnt like, so what I chose to do was instead to cut up the pot like this and lipid across. So I'm just going to select these and drag them across or copy them across. So that forms a loop going across these bars. So now I've got this. And that sounds perfect for me. How I want the song. If you just zoom up, you just need to make sure that when you cutting parts that it is on zero silence. So if I just look over here, it's not cutting anything off the zero songs. Yeah, there's that can be any clipping and it's going to loop or playback perfectly. So that is one scenario I've chosen for the n-bit to be a loose one. Take where the beginning, I wanted a tata and I cut out the best part and looked at across. And that goes the same for this space part over here. This is a bass part where I've used my fingers to play, as opposed to the course section where I've used to pick. But for the space part, you can see I've looped it across, so I'm gonna play it back. And that is the loop over there. Now with a bass part, it's a very dynamic instruments. So there's a tendency for somebody to poke out and other bids to be lost in the performance. So if I just show you the original performance are accorded half that section and it's not as tight as I'd like it to be. I really don't like that part over here. I could have just kinda out and just use their section, but instead, I want to loop it like that. But if you zoom up, you'll see that here it's not on a zero crossing points. But I don't really hear a bad clicker anything. But what you can do just to even out things and make it safe such you not getting any clicks and pops and audio is just selecting them all. And I'm going to go to the end of this one and do a slight crossfade at an, in a very tiny cross fading. Now, this is going to sound much smoother Works for me. So basically, what I'm trying to point out is choose what's best for the recording. You might have a very good performance, but that might not be what you want for the recording. Maybe you want something a lot tata, where you cut up parts and use the best section of each part. So just remember that recording is not the same as a live performance. You may want it's B, but it is actually a different thing. You might want the performance to be a good reflection of how you are as a performer. You want there according to be super tight with no mistakes. That's what I've shown you here. I've taken parts, chosen the best of each part, then looped it across. It's suited the scenario in the song over here, we're, other times it required a one-tailed performance to get that selection down. So that's just some little info on some audio editing. And now we're going to continue with some mixing. But basically throughout this course I'm going to drop some little hints on some audio editing because recording the right audio N actually helps improve your mix. And we're this part, I wanted to make sure that my Takes were as solid and as tight as possible for the performance. So now let's continue with some more mixing 11. EQ-ing Instruments: In this video on a focus on high, you can EQ and compress your guitars. Now, if you're looking at the tires, the most predominant thing that you can say about them is that they a mid focused instruments, meaning that they mainly focus in on your mix at the mid-range. It's important to know exactly where things sit in your mix with regards to the frequency spectrum, so that you don't have Instruments battling for the same frequency space. For example, your kick annual base. They like to sit in the lower areas or the frequency range of around 60 to 150 hz. But they also might battle for the frequency area. And there's things that you can do to get them to sit well together. But we will focus in on that in a bit later in this course. But for now on a focus on things like the tires and maybe also since can be bundled in this things that's a very nasty within the mid-range of mix. Over here, I've got some acoustic guitars. I've got to record a guitar tracks when panned left and one pound rat. And in both of these have been packed into folder and set up to Bus channel called acoustic. Now I could go on to each track and add different EQs and Processing, but I actually want these to sound the same. So what I'm gonna do is do all the processing on this acoustic Bus channels. Now, I've learned a few things about guitar and good things on how to get that to San are much better than the mix then I have in some previous courses. So let me show you some more advanced things that you can do with guitars. Starting off with this acoustic, let's add to the chain a pro EQ. Now, like I said, it's a mid-range instrument. So what you can do straight off the bat is do a low cut, cutting out any of those lows with quite a sharp slope of about 24 dB. I'll play back over here and you can hear how much been cut out. Basically, I'm going to sweep until you start hearing the loads going a bit too far, cut out, and then bring it back slightly. I'll have it playing back with the rest of the instruments that mixes well. That's kind of at Fiverr there. So we can pull this back to around about maybe 150 hz, maybe pushing 120. So from now on through this course, I'm going to start playing a lot of the tracks in conjunction with the rest of the mix because you can't really Mixing oscillation. So it's good to check how the things sounds within the context of the mix. Now, the same with the Hockett. I can cut out a lot of these hearts. Also with the 20 dB slope. It's playback and start cutting until we hear too much that's cut out. That's been far somewhere around 6 khz. So there we've carved out quite a lot of areas that we don't want in this mix on acoustic. So many, the guitars are sitting predominantly around 150 hz all the way to 6 khz. Now the next thing is to look for some resonance, or rather say nasty prison and peaks. Often they found at 2 khz and 1 khz on the guitar. So I'm going to jump for this over here, activated. I'm going to do a boost with a very font EQ. And I'm going to sweep this around until I hear that resonant peak. So definitely they RTK. So I can bring that down and maybe make that cute, even finer. Take it down around about eight dB. Then the other one that I said is normally at 1 khz. So I'm going to change this to 1 khz. Have a narrow Q boosted up and sweep around. It's very close to about 1 khz. I'll bring it down by cutting out the lows and the has and removing these resonant peaks is really just going to help the audio going straight in through the rest of the mix. Now I'm going to solo acoustic so you can hear what it sounded like before. And now that EQ adjustments, you'd be surprised how different it sounds in our session today, you can definitely hear the lows and the highest cutouts. And in also these resonant peaks. Let's check it out before Gain and then add them back in February. Slight adjustment, but the readers make a big difference. Then offers would I like to do is add a Compressor? This is just to even out the dynamics, just to smooth everything off with the guitar. We're going to go for quite a high ratio of about seven to one. Worth a shorter attack, a shorter release. And let's pull back this threshold as we play back. And I just want to see some gain reduction that's happening on this meter. Sackbut of gain reduction of about four dB. Before And they didn't the context with the mix. Now with this very cute and Compressor says before and with us. So if you think about this, actually just some fine adjustments here, just to locate a hacker. Some resonant peak cuts, and then some Compression. And that's ready-made a huge difference with getting these guitarist to sit much better in the mix. So that's the acoustics. Now let's take a look at dielectrics. With Electric's. I've done the same thing. I've got two electric guitars, one panned left, one parent rat. And then these are being passed to the electric guitar bass Zhao. I'm just meeting the lead guitar because I will come back to that in later video. Now, I'm gonna do the same thing on this. I want to find some resin peaks, remove them, and then do a low cut and Hockett. So I'm going to add an instance of the prey Q. I'll also play back in isolation and look at of a slope of 24 dB and cuvette. It's actually quite hard to hear those electric guitars because for this track, I've decided to bury them a bit in the mix soap for now. I'm just going to solo it. And then we'll here within the context of the mix, when you've done the Processing, too many lows, lifts about 150 hz. Same with the hackett, with a 24 decibel slope and cut those out. As you get here, there was still leave Qatar. So I'm going to mute that. And what I noticed is worth this loca. Actually don't want to capitalize that. I prefer to shelve it. So take a look here. There's a shelf with a 12 dB slope. Now, if you look at the shape of a shelf, it's cutting out the lows but not all of them. It's shoving off and just retaining them. But so if you look here, there's very hard cut. There's no has after that. Whereas with the shelf, it's a bit more of a delicate EQ where you losing those hires, but you still retaining some of the shape of that sad sounding good today at about 7 khz. Now, these three spots I like to look for, for resonant peaks with electric guitar. One of them is at 4,000 khz. So I'm just going to move that around 4,000 khz. Boost with a narrow EQ. Let's take a listen. There we go. Cut that out. There's another one at 2,000 khz. That adds, and another at 1,000 khz. So you can hear what that recent peak is is when EQ-ing as sharp tone as you move cross onto that area. And I'm going to minimize that as well. So three things that we've done, a, a locates a high shelf, attenuation and in three resonant peak cuts. So this is the guitars before. Definitely, but too much low, isn't it? Giving it a purple focus now, the lowest cut out, the hash of its innervation. And in the resonant peak cuts. So that pro EQ or that EQ has been a corrective EQ. Now I'm going to add another EQ after this. So this is going to be a multi-stage of E queuing. So I'm going to load up another instance of the prey Q. In basically, I'm going to be using this S tonal shaping. I'm going to play this back within the context of the mix. And I'm left here if maybe some areas needs and boosting about 2.7 khz. And then maybe a high shelf as well. Change that to a 12 dB of gain with no tunnel shaping with the CQ. And they now with the CQ in isolation. This is before. Very subtle. Basically, all I wanted to do is just give a slap more boost and the hominids. And instead of using it on this EQ, I've used a multi-stage EQ, meaning one EQ into the next. So that is the thing to think about within your Mixing. You don't have to use one plug-in to doodle. You can have one EQ that's doing one thing, then into another AQ that's doing another thing. It's all about the incremental changes that you do as audio moves from one plug-in to the next. If I had to do, for example, one huge boost shared will be way too drastic. So for instance, I could do a boost over here and then maybe add a, another EQ over this, doing another boost over here. And those small little changes add up to lot bigger changes within the end of the mix. So that some ideas on what's do with some guitars, or maybe even some sense where they are primarily instruments that sit in the mid-range. You're going to do some cuts to cut out the lows and highs. And in some reason peak cuts to do some corrective EQ and then maybe some tonal shaping with another EQ 12. How to Use Saturation: In this video, I want to talk about saturation and how this can help jump up some elements in your mix and get them to push through. This is really a great effect that just helps to give some extra excitation to some of the harmonics. The frequency range oven instruments, and just gives it a much better place within the mix. When you think of saturation, you might think of distortion and taking a clean sand and adding some heavy distortion to it. But it's really not that it's quite different. So I've got the synth part over here. I'm just going to take off the effects that I've got on and I'm going to talk you through what we can do and how are we going to add some saturation. You'll notice the difference how it changes it put in the mix. So this is the synth. So it's just an instance of my tie playing through an arpeggiation. Now, I want to open up this EQ over here. I'm not really using it. But what I'm using is the spectrum frequency analyzer over here. If I turn it on and playback, you can see the shape of that sand, sand with regards to its frequency response. And as you can see, it's predominantly sitting in the low mids and some in the hominids. So what I wanna do is do the same that I did with the guitars in some previous videos. Where first off, I start off with an EQ and I cut out some of the lows and cut out some of the highs. So I had this before. Now with this located at 120 hz and the high cut at 6.8 khz. Just got rid of some of those low frequencies that we don't need and just some of the sharpness and the highest. Then like Esau, are the electric guitars added a multi-stage EQ. I've done the same here. I've added another instance of pro EQ, and I've just ducked at some of the frequencies at around 315 hz in another cut at 1.2 khz, and then a slight boost at 4.5 khz. And a bit of a boost on the high shelf at 12 khz or so. You don't really need to know too much what's happening. But basically what you're seeing is how you cutting out the lows and highs and needing some tonal shaping with another EQ. But more importantly, I want to show you some saturation. So there's an extension for studio one, which is the saturation of which is a free plugin that you can add to your arsenal of tools, effects. And it's a really simple effect. You can basically choose the saturation top and then just move this knob here to increase the amount of saturation. This yellow knob over here just depicts witness distorting. So let's take a look and see what this is doing. First off, I'm just going to move this over here and pin it so it stays open. And I want to move the saturation before this last EQ. And then I want to open up this EQ and this is already pinned. And you can see the frequency curve shape. So let's leave this on low and playback. That's the waveform shape. Now I'm going to slowly increase the saturation. It's distorting quite a bit, so I'm going to pull it back. But take a look at this waveform as I'm users. So there's a slight boost across the frequencies, which is adding some excitation to the harmonics. And if I jump up to neutral, it's just going to be a bit more of a heavy Saturation. And in heart is the highest type of saturation. You can push it to where it really distorts. But that's not really what I'm trying to achieve. I may keep the sit on neutral and I'm going to play this synth back within the context of the mix. And then I'm going to increase the saturation. And you're going to hear how just pushes that add to the mix. So here it's a bit low. Now let's increase the saturation. So very subtle. But if I bypasses, disappears, add some saturation. All I can say is it's a very simple tool that really works. Maybe you're not quite firing. Eq is helping you with getting an instrument or partner sit well in the mix. Trust, slap on some saturation, choose a saturation top face starting with maybe keep low, they're neutral. And in adding some saturation and hearing that assigning within the mix. And you can really use this across so many different types of instruments. So that's on a synth. I could go to these electric guitars and add some extra saturation. So even though there's some distortion and amp muddling on electric guitars, I could go here and add saturation up and do some further saturation to the guitars or even other drugs. Let's go to the drums. With the drums, it's just minimize everything so we can see everything. It's an instrument. And then down here, we've got the drums. So even on these drums, I could add a saturation of plug-in and add some slight bit of saturation. I could literally strap this across all my best channels and add varying amounts of saturation. And it would work really well within the mix. So basically, what I'm saying is it's a very simple plug-in. Don't push it too far, but a little bit really goes a long way with getting elements to really push out through the mix 13. Clip Based Editing vs Automation: In this video, I want to talk about the difference between Automation first, Clip-Based Editing. And when I mean Clip-Based Editing, I'm meaning when you taking a clip and you riding up the volume here, as opposed to going into the automation view and making changes to the Automation. I've done a strong move away from automation to more Clip-Based Editing, because I just find that it's lot easier to view everything with Clip-Based Editing over having to open up the Automation and then taking a look and seeing what has been automated. Now, we're not talking about automation now. I'm just meaning volume rides on tracks and faders. I'm not talking about Automation. For example, the rates on of course, because that probably is going to have to automate it. But I'm talking about how you can neaten up the balancing of your tracks. For example, if this changes along the timeline for part. So what I would have done in the past, let's say this vocal over here, you can see the waveform. Now, don't mind, I have done some editing with male dancer. He just seeing this node data over here, for example, if I go into the middle down editor, this is the pitch node creation that's happening on each clip. But what I want to look at is these waveforms. So let's say I wanted to increase this part over here with the waveform. What I would have done before is gone into the automation view. I'm just using a on my shortcut. But if you just go and check out, you can see that the shortcut to show the Automation is over here and a track and show automation. And my shortcut is a. So what I have to do is going to show automation. Choose the volume lane. They're not have to make some node points and move these up for that volume automation. But it doesn't show any changes. So what I actually prefer doing and I find is a much better method of working is if you want to automate this volume, meaning increase that volume, I'd go to the split tool, split that clip over there, take this and increase it up. You can see the changes to the volume of right away. That's very clear if you zoom up. So I can adjust the volumes like this on a Clip-Based level to get everything sound and correct. Now, if you take a look at these vocal parts, I've recorded different parts here and there's varying degrees of level adjustment. Now, let's just play through and I'll show you how I go through and edit the Clip-Based Editing for these Vocals. But before doing that, in my next console, I have added a basic vocal chain to the Vocals on each track. I've got the same chain, but basically it's a Compressor with about a ratio of 3.6 to one. I've pulled down the threshold, so there's some slack gain reduction of about four dB of gain. Then I've got a pretty Q. We have cut out all the lows. I've notched, add a sort of reason and peak area at about 676 hz. And then have boosted just to give more presence and aids the Vocals at about 4.7 khz is a slight bit of saturation as well, just to help push that vocal through the mix. And then I've Bus the Vocals to a room reverb and a Delay. And with us Delay, I've actually just used the stump us Delay an empire and it's using eighth note delay. We have just cut out the lows and highs so that those repeats are getting full Sadat. So very simple, I'm just going quickly through that, but I don't want to focus in on Mixing Vocals because I do have a dedicated course on that. Basically with this, I just want to show you how I'm using Clip-Based Editing over Automation. So what we're going to do is let's just solo the Vocals. And I'm going to play through this part over here. And I might have to meet sections, but I'm going to show you how are we going to adjust the volume, you know, when it will. So I think this is the main vocal that I'm hearing when it starts Add Zone, know when it will. And so I think this is the low vocal over here. If you listen, that's lower and that's higher. And the levels seem okay. I just want to adjust the volume of this, increase. That slightly sloppy sounds, you know, when it will you be. So this is isolate those and hear what that is. This is this, you crumbled to map. That can actually come down a bit. That's fine. Maybe this part can be slightly louder, so I will create a new clip to turn snapping off. I can just get finer details of where when a place where I can place those splits on a clip. And in this list, take listen. Criminal to map the song altogether. We've got this. Sound good if the music. Now, let's just get onto this next section. Sounds girls are times when things work in, please, as you can see from the waveform there, that is a very big jump. So what Add once do is go in with the split tool Gain and make his split share. And you can actually get quite fond detail. I could actually go into each one like this. For example, bring that down, bring this up and bring this one with a very hard level right down. So your evening out, the wave form between all the parts. Sounds Galba, are times when things I can also select multiple clips and bring them all down in one go. Sounds girl, of times when things were killed. And now with the vocal sounds go by. Times when things work in, please. That sounds good. Any. Now, this last bit of here, you can see some varying degrees. I actually got a bit of grit and distortion happening on this vocal. So what I wanna do is actually make some clip adjustments there as well. So this is a bit higher, so I'm gonna bring it down. And as you can see, it's very fast and you get a very clear indication on what's happening with the waveform. This take listened to this one over here. You'd say is better than swears Cree. Maybe I'll bring that up as well. So it's very quick and easy. This one is definitely going to need some changes there. You can always just listen back in here if these drastic adjustments are actually working. Okay, sound good. So that was a very quick editing with Clip-Based Editing on the Vocals with us verse section. And you can see the waveform changes. Now, if you take a listen here, there's a bit of a drop in level because this part was recorded first and in these Vocals recorded next. And the voice was really warmed up and had some ladder level to it. So basically if I go here, oh, consols and fairly lives smashing sequence as an through, then I feel like I need to raise this a bit, say that the waveforms match up, that one's fine. This one mark need a slight increase. But as you can see, there's gonna be some problems with some of the waveforms. So if you take a look here, we just going to quickly go in and make some changes. So I really like the workflow of Clip-Based Editing and I find that it works nicely, just having a visual display of the waveforms and you can quickly go in and make changes. So it is very, very fast work with. And if you find that you've gone too far, just easy just to go back and just check what you did. For example, I'm just going to make some quick edits here on this lab part. And as you can see, I can drop it down. I can see that I'm dropping a minus TDB and it's the difference. And I can go back up and restore it basically back to what it was before it find that it's not working. Because ions and failing lies. Smashing sequence as Andrew then drop. That is not actually I was, but too soon. So just doing some cuts are similar. And even if you're cutting rights on a part, you'll find that you can get away with quite a bit by not having any clicks or pops in audio, but just by doing some volume adjustments. And these last ones are but loud. A very quick and easy. That is how we do some Clip-Based Editing over Automation. And here are showing you how to do it with a vocal. So now just hearing everything within the context of the mix. Here's the Vocals. You know where on and take those and drop them down. Sounds go away of things, working, lives. Now overall, I'm finding that all these Vocals were just a bit loud. So I can just go and select them all. Hi and just bring them down. It's that easy. I don't have to mess around by going and some automation making changes day to each node point. It's just done right there. So definitely consider where you working with audio, where you can go in and use Clip-Based Editing over Automation. Obviously, if you're working with virtual instruments, you're going to have to use automation. But alternatively, if you're happy with the virtual instrument, why not bounce it to audio instead? And then get involved in doing Clip-Based Editing with their track as opposed to Automation? 14. Hyper Realism in your Mixing: Now I've mentioned in some other parts of this course how it's good to add some tartness to performance. Where you probably take it to the point where it's more of a Studio performance than live performance. And another thing I want to talk about is Hyper-Realism. And that's where you take your audio editing to a point where you take it past Realism. We're, you do some heavy editing to get it to sound really polished. Now this is gonna be a personal thing. Maybe you don't want to take it this far, but I just want to show you some steps that I've taken in some more productions and show you how I did to really tighten up some things. So for example, in this vocal part over here, I'm just going to solo the Vocals. And you've got this note that's extended with all these harmonies. But as you can see, they all end at different times. But just to tighten everything up and to make everything ended the right point, let me show you some editing Techniques that audio. So first off with no snapping enabled using the slip tool. I'm going to split this part up over here and split near the end and just get rid of this tail here. As you can see, it looks like the ends and about there. So what I'm going to do is create another split, maybe two splits that should work. And then I'm going to drag this cert looks like that tail ends about the same area. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take this part here and duplicate it and just drag it across. But as you can see, as you drag things across, you get these gray areas. Now if I just zoom up, if I press X, it creates cross fades between all these areas. Now if you take a listen, now if you listen to the part in isolation by itself, it might not sound quite right. But with those cross fades, it's actually even that adds and made it too. There's actually a solid and right there. Now, this is taking listen from start to finish. So we can listen to this part and this feels like that extends out. But this part needs to be edited as well. Somebody do the same thing, just create some cuts. Drag this out. So it's sort of ends at the right area. That should be good. And I'm going to extend this out and just make cross-fade. So if you don't know where the crossfade is, it's created crossfade under the audio Craig crossfade and a Masada, the shortcut is X slam shut. That's pretty much the default one. So now let's add in this vocal part. That's ending well, and then finally, this last one. If I just hover over here, I think they all pretty much any get the right part. So just with that slot, edits of cutting, duplicating and creating cross fades has tightened up that vocal performance. Not another tool that I'd like to use to really tighten up the transients and starts of audio pause is the slip edit tool. So I'm gonna scroll over down to these guitars over here and show you how it's done. It's just scroll up to these acoustics here. I just zoom up. You can see they don't quiet start at the same point. So you can get really meticulous about this. But basically, if you hold down the command, an option, or the controlling alt on a PC, you can slip edit the audio within. But because I've actually really got the start and endpoints of the audio region really at its max. What I need to do is sort of creates a lack fake area on where this is going to be. So I'm going to catch her and I'm going to minimize that. And now just drag this across. Now if I just hold down the Command and Option, I can drag that around. As you can see there. I can really tighten up to make sure that those parts start at the exact same time with slip editing. So basically, the way can think of slip edit is this is a container and you can slip that audio part wherever you want within that container. And if you want it to be super, super accurate, you could go in and create slip edits for all your parts. So I'm just going to do a quick integer there. I can bring those in. Maybe I feel that that part needs to change there. And you can really tighten up all these performances. So the starts are exactly where you want them. As you can see, there's some slight discrepancies. So you'll leave I'll leave it to your discretion. But I find that you can really tighten up things and make it feel like that you can really tighten up things and make things feel really polished. Just bear in mind if you obviously slipping summing round that you create a sort of break points for the N and the start states. You can supergravity not moving the whole area of that one looks good. There. We're going to need to do something as well. So just that option, Alt or Command and Alt, and just slipping everything on time can be a bit tedious, but depending on how tight you want the performance be, you can really get in there and make sure that everything is sitting right on top of each other. And once you get the hang of it, It's really quick to just go along and DD slip edits. Now if you go back, just going over this section over here, it's going to be really tight. So that is how to use some cross fades, some duplicating of parts to extend tails, and some slip editing to make a really hyper real top performance 15. How to use Delay and Reverb Throw Effects: In this video, I want to talk about reverb and delay throws and how they are sometimes done and a way that I look at doing them. Over the section over here, I've got some held vocal nodes. And maybe you want to take a line and with the line finishes, you want to throw up that Reverb or throat Delay sense create an effect with the vocal, for example, with this. So I'm going to solo this track and playback and listen out for the effect that I'm going for when our Throw this Delay app. Will you traveled to Matthiae? Now to do that, I'd have to go in and automate this parameter. Now, like I mentioned in another video, I'm preferring some other methods over Automation. For example, they are talking about changing in volumes and how App food Clip-Based Effects where you can adjust the volume over Automation volume. And here is another method. We are actually preferred doing something else other than going and automating parameter. And that's by creating a new track and then using that track for the delay sand. So what's nice about this is when you're looking at your arrangement view, you can see exactly where Effects apply because you've got dedicated tracks for that. So for example, let me show you how many do this with this track. I'm going to right-click on it and I'm gonna say duplicate track. So that's duplicated the track with all the Effects. I'm going to name this Vocals to underscore Delay Throw just so I know what it is. And then I'm going to take this part and I'm going to copy it down over here. And I only want this section over here to be the Delay Throw. So I'm just going to minimize the tracks. So it's just using that audio part. And the beauty of having a dedicated track like this now is I don't have to just go and increase this Delay. I can actually go wild by adding extra processing onto it. So first what I wanna do is filter out some of the lows and full traps and behaves. So I'm going to have a different filtered Vocals side for this take. So let's add an instance of the prey Q. And on this, I want to cut out all the lows to, let's say, around about 500 hz. And the same with the hackett on a cap that out to about 2.4. Let's say I've got a narrow band where we're going to be applying the effect. And this I want to be before the Saturation. Instead of using the lesson to create that sort of Delay Throw, I'm going to use an insert Delay. Delay are really like is the stump box Delay an empire. Some are low that up and go for this Delay over here. With us, I'm going to use eighth note delays. And let's just cut and for those repeats or want them to be filtered out as well. So I'm filtering out some of the lows and highs. And this mix, I'm gonna turn all the way up to hundred per cent. So this is what this part is going SoundCloud, just click here and here at an oscillation. Listening back to it, I can increase the volume, pan it to the One side's, create some extra interest. And I'm just going to increase that feedback. So if we listen back to both these tracks, this is the result we're going to have now. You traveled to Matthiae. Very nice. Now, how about this vocal part over here? Let's do the same thing. We're going to duplicate the track. I'm going to call this reverb and delay through. And we're going to do something very similar. So I'm going to copy that part down with this. I just want that part to be repeated with this R1 to maybe pen it across quite wide. So the rat, so this is going to be on the left, and in this games be on the right. Let's add a pro EQ. Same thing. I'm going to filter out the lows to about 500 hz. And the same with the highest full to those ads. So again, we've got this narrow band that's going to be before the Saturation. I'm going to add an instance of empire again with a delay with similar settings as well. And this time I want to use coordinates. So on the left, the Vocals going to have Delay repeats of coordinates, and on the right is going to have repeats of eighth notes. So it's just gonna give an R stereo spread Effects. I'm going to locate those lows and the hackett increase that mix and the feedback. And like you saw in the name, this is going to be a reverb and delay Throw. So what I wanna do is increase this Reverb. So what you got now is this. So the two throws, we've got this listening back. This can come up and this can come down. And now in combination with the other Vocals, gravel to be. Sounds good. So before it was less credible to Matthys? Its okay. But this Daphne creates more interest. You gravel to Matthys. And within the context of the whole mix, we've got this. So it's subtle. I could go way more wild. I could add other effects. I could change the volumes maybe so that you can really hear the difference what's happening with this. But I'll leave that up to you. Definitely experiment with us and try it out. But basically, the idea here is if you want a special effects on a vocal or guitar or a specific part of the drums. Then cut that part out, have a dedicated track for it within your arrangement, and then go wild day with Processing. Sometimes it's better having an effect as an insert as opposed to send because it'll work more net instance. Like yeah, I preferred the delays and inserts. And then on this track, I did use the reverb send. But as you can see, you've got a lot more control. You can see exactly where everything's happening. And I find there's just a better way of incorporating these into mix 16. Multi Stage Compression on Vocals: Welcome back. In this video, let's take a look at multi-stage compression. Now, what I mean by multi-stage compression is using more than one Compressor to get the desired results with the audio and getting the dynamics that she wants. For example, let's take a look at this vocal part. What I want to first do is just mute these other Vocals, so we just listening to the main vocal. So let's just make sure that those are all muted. And they, so there's just this Main vocal parts. We've really got a Compressor on here. So what I want to do is bypass the compressor and bypass the Saturation up. So we've got this and just increase the level. Okay, so that's a starting point. Now, why would you want to use two compressors are more than one Compressor? Well, you want to use each Compressor to do a specific thing. So for example, you might want to add your first Compressor that's got a slower attack, but it's going to even add and bring out the softer dynamics. Then with your next Compressor, you might use a faster attack to nail down on those sharp transients and bring them down just to even know that you've got a nice smooth audiotape that's got some good dynamics. For example, if you just look at this vocal part share you got some quiet birds and in some sharp transients. Now we're going to use two compresses to help even out these. So let me show you what we do. So starting on his vocal, let's add a new Compressor. On this compressor, I want to use a slow attack. So let's go for a slow attack of around about 40 milliseconds. So a much slower Compressor. And now was actually really important is this knee function. So basically with the knee all the way here, you've got a hard knee at the threshold points. What this means is when the input signal comes in and hits that threshold point, the Compression is going to kick and straightaway. But if you soften this knee, you're going to have a softer curve. And especially with something like Vocals, which is quite dynamic and you don't want to nail down too hard on with a Compressor, you can have a smooth compression happening at that threshold point. Now next up, let's set a ratio. So let's say the ratio of about six to one. I just wanted to demonstrate this by actually recording a tune audio track. So you can see what's happening to the audio waveform as it gets compressed. There's no hard and fast rules with compressors, but basically you do have to use your ears, but sometimes you need to use these meters just to confirm what you doing with Compressor is actually happening visually with the metering and you can hear it and audio. So what are we shooting for is a good input signal that's coming into Compressor of around about minus six to minus dB. That's a good level. There's a good level for the audience come in. Then we're going to apply some Compression and see the results would be going forward for this first compressor is a soft knee, a higher ratio, and a slow attack. Now let's just take a listen first and just check up if we need any makeup, gain. Awareness. Pull down the threshold. So we've got about minus four dB of gain reduction when things should be good, and then just have some makeup gain. Okay, So that's the Compression settings that we're going to be going for for this demonstration. Now, what I wanna do is create a new audio track. So I'll go for a new monitor track. And on this, I want to record the input of this track. So for the input, I can go down to tracks and that tracks called Box2D, and I'll set that. So before doing anything, what I wanna do is bypasses Compressor. So all we've got this, the EQ and the room reverb and delays and record it into this track. And I'm going to call this Vox know Compression. I'm gonna record Ahmed and estrus recording a snippet of us audio. I'll just solo that vocal. And according well, it starts at Zona aware on it will and gravel to map. Okay, so let's just take a look at the waveform. As you can see, this is with no Compression and you've got some hard sharp transients and then some soft quiet bits. So now let's enable the Compressor. I'm going to meet that and creates a new monitor track. On this track, this is going to be the first Compression. So I'm going to call it comp one that should do also set the input. So this is going to get the audio from Vox to and record Ahmed. And here we go. Well, it starts at Zona aware on it will gravel to Matthys. So if you're looking at this waveform, you can see that the software bits of the audio or the softer dynamics have been increased, but you still got these sharp transients. So what does Compressor has done? Has brought up the quiet but, and just decrease the dynamic range of it. But you've still got this sharp transients happening at the beginning here. So now let's go for a second Compressor to help even this ad. For this, I'm going to add a Compressor after this chain. And with this Compressor on use a very sharp knee. The compression ratio, Let's go for again for about maybe six to one. But these are just really drastic settings by just wanted to show you what it's doing. In this time, I want to use a very fast attack. Now let's play this back and go for around about minus 22 minus three of gain reduction. When it starts to pull this threshold down. Cradled zoom out. Some makeup gain just to make up for gain-loss. So as you can see, we've got a medium ratio with a hard knee and a sharp attack. So for this time, I'm going to add another new track. So let's go for a new monitor track. And this time we're going to call this vox competency sets after the two compressors. And the input can be pulling the audio from Vox to record Ahmed and record. Well, it starts at Zona aware on it will travel to Matthys. Ok, So Check this out now, from the two compressions you can see with no compression going to the first Compressor with a slow attack. But just evening out the dynamics. And in a second Compressor that's nailing down and it's hard transients and just smoothing everything out. So you've got a much smoother dynamic range. So I hope this gives you a good demonstration, which you can see from the initial waveform is you've got quiet, a dynamic range on the vocal with some very quiet, but it's in some very sharp trends. For example, check there. As you go down here you can see the dynamic range has been even dad and the sharp turns into the beginning have been smooth as well. So overall, you should have a much smoother vocal now from plying a multi-stage compression. So what I'm gonna do is just remove these tracks and just turn a folder meeting of parts. And for what we got now on this vertical part is these two compresses, and I'll add in the Saturation again after the Compression. Well, it starts at Zona awareness. Will you be much better upfront, but smooth dot dynamics. Now that's just on this one vocal part. If I really went to the ticket to turn, I'd go to all these other vocal tracks as well and use some multi-stage compression. But just what I want to show you here is you don't have to use one Compressor to help target and fix everything on the part. You can use Multi compresses to do different things to help even out the dynamics or tighten up the dynamics, or what you want to get what you want with the dynamics and that audio 17. Conclusion: Mixing is definitely one of the most important steps in your production. And after you've implied some of these tips and techniques into your Productions, you'll notice a huge difference compared to your mixing before. Thank you so much for watching this class and I hope you enjoy your journey with Studio One and your songs and your Productions