All language subtitles for 3, Electronic Pop

Hey there and welcome back for another
mix.

This time we're going to be working on a
track that's kind of a O electronic

track. There's ballad like elements in this

track and there's also dance like
elements in this track.

So a lot of stuff for us to work on here.

This is by an artist called Twin Lights

guys named Shane and Morrow, producer duo
and I actually worked on a track of

theirs for my mastering course mastering
demystified when we did some mastering

from stems for them.

And this time we're going to be diving

into full mix.

Does my mic sound better?

In the original rough mix, we'll find
out.

You let me know.

I think the original rough mix here is

really good.
So we're going to be doing the same thing

that we've done in other tracks in this
course.

We're going to start by listening to that
rough mix and just getting a sense for

what are the things that we actually
could or should improve on.

We don't necessarily have to reinvent the
wheel on every mix we do, and we're not

going to do that here either.

In fact, I had these guys send me a

couple versions of the stuff they did
their original mix using a whole bunch of

fancy proprietary.

Logins, but we're going to be doing our

mix using nothing but Ableton Live.

I'm doing this mix in Ableton Live.

I'm not an Ableton Live user.

I've actually never mixed anything

Ableton Live before.

I don't think I've even opened Ableton

Live in 10, almost 20 years since like I
was back in college.

I use it like a few times, but I was able
to open it up and apply the principles

that we've been talking about in this
course using nothing but the stock

plugins in Ableton Live and I think kick
up the mix a notch from where it was.

So again, the principles are so much more
important.

And the tools.

When you're mixing this for yourself, you

can go in and use whatever fancy tools
you want, just like they did for the

original mix.
But for the sake of this course, I'm

using nothing but stock plugins here to
show you that it can be done A and B so

that you could just download a trial
version of Ableton Live and open up this

mix for yourself.

I had these guys send me some stems to

work from, as well as wet and dry tracks.

They just sent me their Ableton Live

session in the beginning, but there were
just so many plugins on it that they were

already using that I said, hey guys, this
is what we should probably do.

Why don't you send me just all of your
wet tracks and all of your dry tracks and

I'll import the wet ones so I can kind of
pick up in the mix where you left off and

then in situations where I really want to
go back a tick because I'm not loving the

effects on it.

I'll be able to go into those dry tracks

and pull them in.

We actually end up having a little bit of

a problem there since it's a fairly dense
session with a ton of tracks in it.

There was a couple of missing elements,
and I could tell that when I started to

get into the mix, I just felt like the
low end wasn't quite there in the same

way no matter what I was doing.

And I felt like we must be missing some

tracks here.
So I had them send me stems, and when I

brought up the stems, things sounded much
better.

Stems, in case you don't know, they are
kind of like Prince of your buses, right?

So you'd have a print of all of your.

Bass tracks.

Rendered out, recorded as one stem, all
of your guitar tracks, all of your

keyboard tracks, all of your lead vocal
tracks printed out.

So instead of having sixty seventy eighty
ninety tracks in the session, you have

the eight or 10 or 12 most essential
buses kind of printed out.

So I went and brought in those stems and
then went back to individual tracks where

I wanted to be able to refine things more
than I could on the stems alone.

So you'll find a mix here of stems and.

Original individual tracks in here.

I'm actually going to show you right now
on the screen here.

We've got a kick drum stem, a bass stem,
and then this bass group that has a whole

bunch of bases in it.

I started working with these individual

bass tracks originally, but this is one
of the elements where I found that

something was missing and it turns out
they hadn't sent me this subtract.

So I brought in a the base stem and
things were sounding pretty cool.

But I liked the tone I had gotten for the
upper base stuff, so I ended up layering

their base stem with the base group that
I had treated in.

The original mix right try to give things
a shot, but they just weren't working

because I don't have all the right
tracks.

We also have a stem for all of the snare
drums.

I think there's some Tom fills on here
and on this one I didn't really feel like

I had to go in there too much.

There is some automation on here from

section to section to give things a more
even feel throughout.

We'll find again, there's a bunch of
automation in this mix that's one of the

most important and most neglected things
for new mixers is doing your automation

passes at the end.

We have a guitar group in here.

I wanted to adjust how the guitars were
being panned and a little bit of EQ, so I

didn't use the stem there.

We've got a piano track by itself, a

string group.
Again, I wanted to adjust things slightly

so I used individual tracks and there's
this thing called the drop saw.

This is like a chorus synth, and I have
that in here as a stem because again, I

think in the original drop saws when they
had them track by track we were missing.