All language subtitles for PART 6666

I'm Rob Kinelski, and you're
in my studio right now.

I'm the mix engineer
for Billie Eilish "No Time To Die".

Today, we're going to go through the
session and take a look at what I did.

I found out about this song actually
on the internet, I heard they were doing,

Billie and Finneas were doing a James Bond
song, and I really was hoping

I got a chance to mix it.

And a couple of days later,
I got a call from Finn

and sent me the files
and I got to mix the song.

Steven and Hans and Finneas and Billie
have been working on this song,

and they had, originally,
Billie and Finneas I think recorded a demo

to piano and some other instruments,
and then, they went back.

Then, they went in with Hans and Steven
and produced out the song together.

They had sent me over
the stems from that session.

Basically, it was, the strings were
grouped together already nicely, and also,

I had the woodwinds and the brass
separated, the piano

and some of the instruments
that Finneas had used too.

That was all sent over to me
in stem form and I dug in.

I know that the one comment going into
the mix that Billie and Finneas

wanted to recapture the energy from
the original demo which had just a moody,

darker kind of vibe, and I think
through the production process,

I believe they had actually
sped up vocals because the production

changed from the demo,
but I think they were using the demo

vocals originally,
I can't confirm that.

But what happened is the vocals went along
with the production and they got processed

in that time, and through
that process of building production,

the vocals were put in a specific place,
but they weren't necessarily in the same

place as the demo had.

The goal for me was to recapture the vibe
of the vocals that had already been

kind of processed a little bit
back to the original form.

That was the main goal in the work that
I did, along with just working with Billie

and Finn for a long time,
I was just comfortable with the way

they like things to sound.

When I had gotten the files, they
were already processed with some stuff.

They were dry, but they had been processed
through, I don't know exactly

how they processed it,
but there was some time stretching

to match the new tempos
because I think the tempos had changed

and there was...
I wasn't there for the production,

so I don't know
exactly how it all went down,

but I know that there had been
some changes to some things.

When I got the vocals,
they were processed in a certain way

with EQ and also
with some time stretching.

I did have them dry,
so there wasn't any reverbs or anything.

What I was trying to do was then bring it
back to this organic place which was,

the majority of the work I did
on the vocals was that.

When it comes to the tone of the vocal,
listen, Billie has an incredible voice,

so it's one of those voices
that you can just, if it's recorded well,

it doesn't need much,
and the clarity is there in the way

she delivers, and Finneas records
all the vocals with her too.

They had it dialed-in,
they always have it dialed-in.

When I get the files,
they're always processed a little bit

to get it in the way,
the sound that Billie likes,

and it naturally
has a darker vibe to it.

I don't try to take it from there.
I just try to keep it true to that.

But also, a lot of times,
it's just getting rid of some of,

a little bit of maybe,
a little bit of darkness,

like mud or maybe some,
just a little bit in the low mids,

sometimes, I'm cutting there.

I don't add a lot of top end
because I don't think it needs it.

I think a lot of people do that,
and it's okay and that's normal.

I've never felt the urge to do it.

It wasn't really an intentional thing.

I wasn't trying to be different or
anything, it just felt good to me.

The vocals will cut through nice.

Also, the productions often
have a darkness to them too.

If the vocals get too bright,
then they really just,

they step way from the music.

What I find is that since the production
already have the dark vibe to it also,

the vocal can naturally be standing out
without much help.

The vocal naturally has this air to it.

That was my approach on this one.

And this particular song,
when I went through it,

since the vocals had been processed,
they had gotten a little brighter

than I think Billie and Finneas
are used to.

A lot of it in this particular song
was bringing it back to that.

There's a little bit more EQ'ing on this
than I normally do, but it was just to try

to go back to that original vibe which was
there, I just, I had to peel back

some stuff to get there.

My setup for this song was Pro Tools HD
Native system that's being summed

through a Dangerous 2-Bus into
a Dangerous COMPRESSOR and then

into the Dangerous CONVERT-AD+.

I'm summing my instruments,
I break them down typically into groups

out of the Pro Tools outputs into the
Dangerous Summing, and then,

I bring it back into Pro Tools where I do
some additional processing

on the master bus
which I actually use an aux.

There, I will add some more color,
maybe a little more EQ on this one.

I added an EQ, and also a limiter
to get the volume up.

But otherwise, it's a pretty clean path.

There's not a lot going on.

To me, it's a lot of little tasteful
decisions that get it to a place.

I like doing this because when I go
through the analog summing

into an analog compressor,
and then back through another converter,

something happens to the mix.

It's subtle, but there's
a depth, I think, is added.

Digital is incredible.

You can stay in the box and it'll
sound amazing, but there's something

about the depth that I feel that I get
from doing that, and also slight color.

It's subtle, but when I go against in the
box versus running through this chain,

it feels different to me.

It feels just a little more musical,
it feels just a little more interesting,

but it's still very subtle.

Once I started doing it,
I never went back.

Since then, I've gotten the new 2-Bus and
a couple of other things in the chain,

but that was, this was my particular setup
at the time when I mixed that song.

After the compressor and the converter
going into my aux,

I named these
my print tracks here, okay?

There's the PRINT LOUD, and then PRINT LL,
and they're exactly the same chain

except for the limiter,
the Pro Limiter is turned down a bit

on the less limited version,
that's the only difference.

When I print the mixes, I print both.

When they go to mastering,
the mastering engineer can choose

if they want to use the loud mix
that everyone heard, or they want to

go in with something
with more headroom.

But on the actual mix bus,
what happens here on the ATR 102,

it adds this life.

I turn the noise off because it can get
noisy, especially when it comes to stems.

But it adds a little bit of color,
a little bit of life.

And then, I go on to this Culture Vulture
which also adds a hair of color.

It's super subtle.

All I know is that
when I bypass it, I miss it.

And then, in this song, I have
the BAX EQ which is adding a little bit

of top end and a little bit of
filtering, and then into the Pro Limiter.

It's pretty simple.

It's just adding slight color
and just a little bit of air.

It's the goal
on this particular mix bus.

And then, the CLARITY M
is feeding my meter.

That's my setup.

It's pretty much still the same,
except now, I'm using Outboard EQ now,

but that's not for this song.

So let's go through the master fader.

I'm going to bypass the plug-ins as we
build the chain, and then,

you'll be able to hear the difference.

Here we go.

It becomes more alive when the tape
machine gets put into the chain.

That'll bypass it.

I just feel like
the air opens up.

It just feels
a little more musical.

Let's go to the next plug-in.

This is the Culture Vulture.

It's subtle.

It feels different to me.

I can't really explain why, but it does.

Here we go.

This is the EQ.

Just brings it forward
a little more at the top end.

And then, I'll put the limiter in.

You have limiter just adding
a little bit of volume and giving

a little more control.

And yes, that was the less limited
version, the very loud part of the song.

Just to explain what's going on here,
DBuss 1-2 all the way through 16,

I have routed out to the 2-Bus.

I'm feeding all my drums
into this aux for drums.

And then, I'm using the Steven Slate,
the Slate Digital Virtual Channel which,

I've been doing this for a long time
I just never stopped doing it.

Once again,
another slight layer of color.

I don't really adjust it
on this particular song.

I think, did I adjust it?

No, I didn't.
This is the default.

And then, all the drums are going
into this bus, and then,

it's fed out to the
outputs feeding the 2-Bus.

I break it down
on the drums, bass.

Here, we put the strings,
what I'm calling guitar.

Let's rename it.

And then, keys are the piano and the
synths, and then, I have lead vocal,

backing vocal, and then,
down here are effects returns.

That's how I'm doing
the routing to the 2-Bus.

The Slate Digital plug-in is on each.

It's not doing anything besides
the default for the virtual channel.

I'm going to bypass these
all right now, and let's hit play.

It's subtle.

All I know is that I like it when it's in
better than when it's out.

I originally had done this,
to constantly try to recreating

the analog experience
when mixing on a console.

There are times I'll use this plug-in
and I'll turn up the drive,

especially on drums.

This particular song, I didn't do that.

But the drive is nice because
it adds drive, but it also maintains

the same output volume.

A lot of plug-ins, the moment you start
adding drive, it gets really loud

and they did a really nice job here
in keeping the gain exactly the same

as you add the drive.

For this particular song,
it's just left alone.

What I have going on here,
here's a drum stem from Finneas.

Not much done.

I had this SSL Channel on there.

I put it on, I wound up even not touching
it, but I left it there.

That's going on to the 2-Bus.

Same thing with this bass,
it was left alone, it was sitting right.

Guitar, same, processed, sitting right.

And then, I got to the strings
where I added some slight EQ.

At about 1.2k, I brought it down a hair
with a pretty wide EQ, and then,

I boosted around 6k.

That's the strings.

Woodwind and the brass
are all being fed to that.

And then, for the piano,
I think this first half of the song

was the original demo piano,
and I think we switched over to the piano

that had been adjusted
with the tempo shifting I believe.

That's why they're split up
in two tracks.

And then, the EQ was matched.

We took some top end off the second half
of the song of the piano.

It did a little bit of midside EQ on the
piano in the first half where I just did,

I brought down some of this in the middle
of the spectrum just to open up

more room for the vocal.

It's a subtle move, but I think it just
gives a little bit more space

for the vocal to cut through.

That was that there.

This was two mid EQs.

And then, the rest are normal stereo.

At the end, I have a filter just to give
the piano a darker vibe to it

in the outro of the song.

Synths were left alone, and then,
we get to the vocal.

As you can see here, there's quite
a bit of editing on the vocal.

Let's go through the plug-ins first.

This is the first plug-in I have.

It looks pretty aggressive here.

But this is right on the direct track.

The reason there's so many of these is I'm
going through here subtly trying to carve

out more to match
the tone from the demo.

There is a lot more
high end on this stem.

I'm bringing it down a shelf at 4.8,
4.5 dB which is quite a bit.

The rest are all pretty subtle.

dB here, a dB and a half, a half dB,
a quarter dB, just moving around

until I get to that place where
I feel like it's closer to the demo.

We added a little bit of mid,
but I'm also using the dynamic EQ

so it's also catching some of
the low ends that get a little too...

that poke out a little bit.

You can see it doing it there.

It's very subtle.

But once again, just to try to get it back
to that original state.

After this, it's going into my vocal chain
which is really simple at this point.

I'm just doing a high pass filter
at about 80 hertz,

and I'm using this PuigChild Compressor.

A little de-essing.

And then, I have SSL Channel here that is
just basically cutting a little bit

of low mids and a little bit
of top on the filter.

We go back in here, there's more
of the Pro-Q2 I'm using here.

And once again, a lot of subtle moves
to get it to sit right to match

more of the tone of the demo.

And then, we have the Neve 1073
that I'm using purely for color.

A lot of times, I'll use the filter on
this as well, maybe add a little top,

but here, I didn't.
I left it alone.

And then Vocal Rider, I'm using here
to give a little movement to the vocal.

It also picks up, mostly,
it picks up some of the lower,

it's like another way of doing it
without using compression,

but it will bring up some of the lower
volume stuff, but still keep it dynamic.

Going into here, you can see
there's a ton of automation,

did a lot of rides on this one.

This is getting it in the right place
and giving it life,

and that was the goal there.

And then, a lot of these little edits we
were going through since there was I think

a bit more compression in the stem
than we wanted, I would go through

and I would bring down
some of the noise.

There may be some pops or clicks or maybe
we wanted to add a little bit of noise

in some spots to give
it the natural feeling.

It was a way of smoothing things out
and giving it an experience

as opposed to anything
that would distract you.

Billie and Finneas actually came
into the studio on the last day,

and we went through it together and
fine-tuned a lot of the nuance of it.

For the effects, I'm using
sends and returns here.

This plug-in that I've labeled Doubler
is, let's open this up and look and see.

Sometimes, I'll label things
the wrong thing.

No, it's a Doubler.

The MicroShift, I'm using here
on this is subtle.

I've used this a lot
on Billie's vocals in the past.

It just adds a hair of width.

I turn it up until you can...
If you can hear it in the song,

it's too loud.
It's a feeling.

I'll turn it up and then also,
I might back it down until it just becomes

something that adds
a little width to the vocal.

Here, we have the Stereo Room which is the
Valhalla Room plug-in where we took down,

we've used the high cut,
so it's a darker room sound.

There's also a lot of automation on the
returns as well just to give the choruses

a little bit more 'verb,
just a little bit more movement

so this is not just a linear experience
with the dimensions of the song.

As the song builds,
we start adding other things too.

In the beginning,
there's a quarter note delay, but then,

we're adding an eighth note delay,
and then, I think we adjusted

the time of it, that's why
we used the time adjuster,

just adjusted the groove a little bit.

And then, we took out some of
the low mids, too, just to give it...

It was getting in the way
of the vocal I think.

And then, we have a plug-in here that
I call Dirty Echo which is the dirt echo

preset on the EchoBoy.

And then, we also carved out some low end
on that, and I added some PanMan

which is just giving it a randomness
in the stereo field, and then,

we made it super wide
just to make it interesting.

That is, let's see what
that is going on there.

This is the very end of the throws.

So that's what's happening there.

And then, the Memory Man plug-in,
I'm not using.

It's just there because
it's in my template.

Just a little bit of EQ here.

Brought the mids down a hair
and brought up the 5k a hair.

It was just a movement.

I felt like it probably was getting in the
way of the vocal a little bit,

and I didn't want to lose
the top though.

Sometimes, I feel like when you take away
from a certain instrument,

you need to boost somewhere else
to keep the volume happening.

That's a weird way I look at it.

It was sitting right volume-wise,
but when I cut that mid a little bit,

it probably felt like it went down a hair,
so I brought up some of the top

to still keep it in its place.

And I'm adding a little bit of width once
again to make it slightly a little weird

and it also frees up space
with the vocal a little bit more

which is right in the center.

But the actual sound of the strings
were awesome.

Like the stem, I didn't have to do
anything really besides that.

I don't make things loud
intentionally to...

I don't think about the DSPs
or anything like that.

I know that a lot of them just make up
their own volume afterwards anyway.

They just decide
how loud it's going to be.

I just try to get as loud as I can a lot
of times, particularly in my loud mix,

just until I hear a distortion, and then,
I'm like, "Okay. What's distorting?"

A lot of times, instead of just overall
mix volume, I might just be like, well,

what's causing it?
It's only happening here.

A lot of times, maybe it's maybe the vocal
and the bass are sharing a harmonic

that's also pushing the whole mix into
distortion, or sometimes there's low end.

I'm just trying to get rid of
a lot of times

frequencies that don't
need to be there.

I do a lot of filtering of the lows and
the highs if they don't need to be there.

And once you start pulling things out
that don't need to be there,

you're not getting this,
you're kind of taking away this stacked

frequencies of unnecessary sound.

You're getting a clearer sound, but also,
the mix gets louder.

You can turn it louder
and it won't break up as easily.

But also, too,
I use great mastering engineers.

Shout out to John Greenhman
and Dave Kutch.

Other guys too.

They're the people that are really making
the volume work after me.

I send it over to them and I just pray
that they don't hate me, I don't know.

Sometimes, that happens.

That's the million-dollar
question I guess.

Thanks for watching.

I hope this gave you some insight,
and more to come in the future.

See you soon.