All language subtitles for Soundtrack Mixing Masterclass From Stereo to Atmos with Todd Burke [Donnie Darko, M83, Ben Harper]

[Music]

hi this is justin colletti of sonic

scoop and welcome to mixcon 2022. we've

got a whole bunch of great presentations

coming your way this year from a whole

bunch of major mixers producers

engineers taking us under the hood of

real mixes and today we've got an

awesome presentation for you that is all

about mixing mixing music mixing

soundtracks and not only in stereo but

also adapting stereo mixes to surround

sound and dolby atmos whether you're

working in surround or at most now or

whether you hope to in the future you're

just curious about this is going to be

an awesome presentation for you or if

you're just working in stereo there's

going to be a ton of great key takeaways

and insights into adapting stereo mixes

to surround sound formats like 5171 and

all the way up to dolby atmos our

presenter today is a great producer

engineer named todd burke he was working

in the 90s with major artists like ben

harper and jack johnson he worked in the

2000s with artists like bell and

sebastian the thrills fits in the

tantrums and today he's going to be

sharing with us a mix from a soundtrack

for a huge cult classic favorite of a

movie which is donnie darko if you

haven't checked out donnie darko you

probably showed it has a huge cult

following for a good reason it's a movie

that is a critic's darling and it's got

a really cool really interesting really

haunting soundtrack that we'll get to go

under the hood of today

like all mixcon master classes this one

is free to the public and it is free of

the public thanks to our sponsors and

the sponsor on this one is a natural fit

it is antelope audio they make software

and hardware solutions that todd uses in

his work mixing every single day and

their new galaxy 32 synergy core now

supports speaker calibration not just

for stereo playback but also for

surround sound and all the way up to

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so if you're looking for an interface

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antelope is a great way to go their

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totally for free we've also got a mixcon

mega giveaway going on check out the

show notes in the description down below

you'll find a link we're giving away

thousands and thousands of dollars worth

of free gear from all of mixed con

sponsors so check that out down below

and good luck to you if you're here for

the live premiere of this presentation

you can actually type your questions in

real time into a live chat box and we'll

save the best questions that come in

during this presentation for a live q a

that's going to happen right after it

concludes look for the link for that

also down below in the description and

in the comments and if you're visiting

us from the future yes the replay is

available and there'll be a link there

and it'll still work even if this is

years from now but if you're with us

live we want to hear your questions so

enter them in now without further ado

really excited to get right into this

one mr todd burke is going to take us

under the hood of a real mix from the

soundtrack to the movie donnie darko

which he has recently remixed from

stereo into atmos let's get right into

it todd take it away

hey you guys my name is todd burke i am

a recording engineer and mixer in los

angeles and i'm thrilled to be coming at

you via sonic scoop today

i've been between speakers for a long

time

and if i'm totally honest to survive as

long as i have it's required sort of an

ability to bounce back and forth between

a few types of gig

i primarily recorded mixed albums

but in leaner moments over the years

i've been lucky enough to sort of pivot

to underscore work and back and forth

back to records back to underscores

whatever

and i can safely say that if i'd have

ever put all my eggs in either basket

and let's say i just sort of started

passing on work from one type of client

and held out for calls

for the other camp

i probably would have gone under

i've found there's sort of an awful lot

to be said to being open to sort of

drifting where the work currents take me

and finding you know the fulfillment of

the work itself regardless of genre

but recently i've found that having a

background so deeply steeped in both

record making and score mixing has made

the transition to atmos mixing

i mean just brilliant pretty intuitive

and sort of simple you know

i'm sort of combining these two fairly

different

crafts i guess into a real love and

maybe even a penchant for atmos mixing

and that's what we're here to talk about

today

so

atmos is very much in everyone's mind

lately with title and amazon apple music

now fully committed to streaming at most

releases as a mixer you have to really

make a real effort at this point to not

get involved to some degree you know if

you haven't had a project come your way

with atmos as a delivery requirement

it's only a matter of time you're gonna

this is you're gonna see this so

at namm 2022 which just passed

they had a tesla in the building showing

off its atmos audio option

and it sounded great

and i think it's safe to say at this

point the failures that we've seen in

consumer surround sound you know and i'm

talking about quad in the 70s and i

suppose 51 mixing to sacd or dvda in the

90s

dolby seems to have conjured up this

particular version of uh surround sound

in such a way that i honestly believe

that it's going to stick or

maybe at this point in 22 do we just

call it stuck right

but you know the bottom line is the way

the format scales from headphones

to maybe a living room sound bar to a

714 setup in the studio or in this

hypothetical car that's in any of our

futures

and even beyond to like theaters and

large installations like it's just

badass and then the fact that a mix

created today in atmos

will have the ability to scale itself to

future formats and technologies we can't

even imagine yet and i'm thinking about

like

elon's neural link or

whatever right like there's a lot of

possibility there and

it's all mind-boggling is the truth and

i'm very excited about it and i imagine

you are too if you're here so

here we are

but they're you know they're engineers

who've been mixing music to atmos for a

number of years now um and i'm you know

the guys at capital

uh have been at it longer than anyone

and that's you know steve jonowick

nick reeves

greg penny

but

most of us began catching wind of this

more recently right for me

i decided in the summer of 2021 which

was about a year ago from

shooting here

to start trying to figure this out

to start doing the math on whether or

not i'd be able to use my existing space

or not and um

you know it starts thinking about sort

of cost versus potential return and

i eventually decided to go ahead and

pull the trigger but for me you know it

wasn't a terribly largely because i'd

already been mixing underscore since 7-1

in this place for for a number of years

so

i needed to hang height speakers

and i needed to figure out a speaker

controller that would facilitate

a few extra channels

i'd been using a 7 1

martin sound controller for years that

was totally fine

it wasn't god's gift to fidelity

necessarily but for my purposes it got

the job done and it was right at this

time

that i also got connected with the guys

at antelope audio at the time it was

just sort of perfect you know as you

know they seem to be interested in a

conversation

at least about atmos and

i was too and

sort of to make a long story short

through a series of like

brainstorming sessions over zoom really

we cobbled together the fundamental idea

of taking their highest end audio

interface uh there's actually two of

them and building into them a software

solution for atmos speaker control and

you know it was a totally self-centered

pursuit for me right i wasn't looking to

drop five or ten grand on the speaker

controller on top of the cost of more

speakers and cabling and whatever um

but it was obvious that there was no way

to overlook the importance of a full

featured speaker controller for atmos

right like

we just everyone needs that

dolby's laid out a very specific spec

for where the speakers go and how they

should be voiced

or you know eq'd

and with so many speakers sort of

honking at you

the arrival time of the signal from each

speaker needs to be adjusted in order to

get a system to image properly

and then you know just like in seven one

or five one you need a controller to

handle base management so for my setup

here

that's all handled by a single

one you audio interface from antelope

and it's likely the cost of getting

going in atmos will continue to come

down as more mixers get set up with this

more manufacturers see you know a larger

sort of audience to

sell to and the whole thing will sort of

perpetuate itself we're getting there

one thing that is absolutely true for

all of us we're putting together some

unbelievably complex setups though you

know engineer pals that are also working

at most we all agree

the learning curve is steeper than

anything in the last 20 years and these

setups end up being

very complex

there's no need to go on and on about

the gear i suppose right i could i could

talk about dante for 20 minutes

but let's not

uh let's talk about mixing in ammos

and i guess

let's start with a quick history of sort

of surround mixing which i can only tell

from my point of view from this chair

over the last

i don't know decade or so

and what this evolution has looked like

to me over the years has been a process

of sort of inching our way forward

through a series of small

improvements so i dabbled a bit in 5 1

in the early 2000s

i mixed i don't know a ben harper live

album in

02 or 03 or something

there were some other things back then

but

it wasn't until like

2012 or so

uh but i really got going and surround

which is and you know and this era is

one of those areas i mentioned earlier

where i was really

immersed in film work

and

i'll tell you transitioning from records

to film

it wasn't it wasn't a small leap you

know i mean

i mean the gear is the same and i

absolutely

love making records you know spending

weeks sometimes months with a band and

helping them to fully realize you know a

dozen songs or so

been some of the most rewarding days

i've spent on this earth uh but you know

moving into film

i found it like uh

like liberating almost to suddenly be

focused entirely on making music that's

sort of a scene within a movie right

like

making music

that has to fit within the emotion and

the aesthetic of a scene it's really

tricky but from a technical side i found

it to be sort of freeing you know like

to remove that constant worry of uh like

is this cool enough or is the the snare

the right decade or

are the guitars uh sort of

gritty tough enough without being too

metal like there's this endless of

totally subjective aesthetic calls we

make all day long on records

and

on film

all that energy often gets distilled

down to simply does this feel right you

know like does this music enhance

the emotional drive of a scene are we

steering the viewer towards the right

feeling you know so

to me working underscores is

it's a lot less like

cerebral and a lot more heartfelt and i

really like that part of it it's all

really trying to say

generally from the mixer seat film

scores have a lot less to do with being

hi-fi and sort of well-mixed

or aesthetically dialed and a lot more

to do with conjuring up a feeling and

giving the heart the right nudge you

know so so anyway

early 20 teens

i'd recorded and mixed a few movies at

this point with a composer named mike

andrews uh but we'd only ever worked in

stereo and we kept having this

experience of going into the final

layback the final audio mix of the film

where the dialogue and the effects and

the music are all blended together and

it sort of becomes the version of the

film we all see in the theater okay but

you know we show up to lay back and you

know we sort of scratch our heads

because these stereo stems that we

methodically crafted and blended and

like found that you know really really

made them function

emotionally

they're all sort of smeared around the

room now in the theater and in some

cases the queue sort of fell apart or

you know they weren't connecting

in the same way

it seemed like

most of the re-recording mixers were

using a combination of plug-ins that

would sort of create center

and

rear content

through some kind of i don't know like

some odd filtering

and then there'd be some ambience added

fill out the theater

and

while you know most of us been handing

in stereo stones for decades a lot of us

still do for my client and i in that

moment we realized that we really should

be mixing

the cues we're making in surround and

sort of handling that ourselves

simply to avoid this kind of awkward

handoff in the final hours of the

project so from then on i started mixing

underscore cues in surround

so in those days most everyone wanted

five one so i set up my room for five

one

left center right

two in the rear and a sub right easy

and the move to five one absolutely

improved the hand off to the dub stage

but you know as a mixer i really felt

pretty limited there was really only so

much that you could do in terms of

panning rear that didn't draw attention

away from

the scene

and that's of course the last thing you

want so

my experience in 5.1 really was a pretty

humble process of filling out the rear

speakers with a bit of the sort of

natural ambience of the queue whether

that was reverb or

you know ambience mics room mics but for

the most part leaving the music to exist

in front left and right

and then sort of fill out the rest of

the room with a little bit of

sauce

you know i might creep a little

something into the center during montage

moments or whatever but really

you know panning any instrument over

about 20

rear

meant the instrument was now like behind

you you were always sort of aware of

this thing happening here well i wanted

my attention to be here

and it was just there wasn't a whole lot

of content that would work

in the

rear

you could make your send to the rear

dark you could put some delay on it you

could whatever the game was

but you know

in terms of a theatrical setting in 5.1

it was all about sort of hiding just

enough content in the rear to fill out

the room but not draw attention

so by and large

you know i'd sneak 50 or 60 of the

reverb returns from that from from

accused elements let's say to the rear

and that was the majority of what 5-1

was in my experience back then

so then we fast forward a few years to

let's say i don't know 20

15

or so

and

more often than i'm giving the thumbs up

to go ahead and deliver my stems in

either five one or seven one and you

know i'm always up for more

so i added

side channels

moving my room from five one to seven

one and i remember on the day setting up

the speaker stands and hoisting the

speakers up there and in that moment

i don't think i had any idea the

creative difference that was about to

happen but

the moment i got a session up and

started fiddling

my mind was blown like in seven one

suddenly i'm able to play with sort of

panning elements of the score outside of

left and right you know and it gets

wider and unbelievably exciting and

it's not drawing any energy to the rear

of the room

right it's not it's not taking me away

from the scene

but it's huge suddenly like this the

sound stage

it's massive and you can wrap the musics

the music sort of around the front

corner

of

the theater

and it's just it's just incredible right

i just keep saying it like the amount of

sort of sonic real estate

is unbelievably huge

it's it's

this is just absolutely revolutionary in

my mind right i just can't get enough of

mixing underscores in seven one

uh

and i'm still having the most success

pushing a q's natural ambience

re-ripping room likes and whatnot

to the rear for the most part

but i've just got this great big huge

corner and the whole front of the

theater now that i can pan around in 7-1

and it's remarkable

so then we fast forward to now and

maybe before we get into an approach to

atmos

i'm going to pull up a cue here that i

recorded mixed by my composer poem mike

andrews on a film we did way back in the

beginning of his film career called

donnie darko

and we'd initially delivered stereo

stems on this but over the years we sort

of kept it up to date with the surround

trends for dvd releases and whatnot

so let's have a look at this in its

various incarnations over the years from

stereo to five one to seven one and then

to ammos

so if we start here in five one

this was essentially the mix that went

on a dvd release i believe

if we look at this real quick the key is

unbelievably simple

and i

i tend to keep things pretty easy but

this is like really in general but it's

a really good example of like

you know the thing doesn't have to be

hard to sound good so what i've got here

is uh one two three four

five

stereo stems

and then uh some ambience to sort of

fill the room a bit so

let's just listen down to this cue and

i'll sort of blab over it

uh this is

[Music]

this is such a beautiful cue this was

music uh

in the first

sort of uh frank moment in the movie uh

where donnie has sort of this sort of

lucid dream

sees the bunny he's walking across the

golf course kind of it's a really major

moment that films incredible such a

beautiful melody super haunting really

lovely

uh as the melody comes in a second time

here

we've got the worldwide

[Music]

and then my kind of roland vocoder still

got it

and this vocoder is just such a lovely

texture

and then we've got some melotron flute

there

[Music]

and those are our elements

[Music]

but as you can see here you know in 5 1

pretty much doing the same thing that

you know i'm doing what we had sort of

talked about just a second ago where

individual stems that the music for the

most part is all just focused

[Music]

um

[Music]

i thought i'd creep them in slightly so

they would yeah so the move is creeped

in just a little bit which which sends a

bit of it to the um center channel

sort of

you know bridge of the gap i guess

between between the two

and uh i've done the same thing here

on the flute

[Music]

uh

what else is going on here so yeah so

essentially you know as we talked you

know the best thing i've ever really

come up with by one this is a beautiful

piece of

[Music]

that sort of moment in the film

where frank is just sort of standing

there kind of menacingly it's beautiful

oh no no sorry that actually that swells

over when you when you when uh the

reveal of the uh the jet engine and

donny's bed amazing right

so

anyway i'm a fan of the film

but as i said in five one you know for

the most part uh we've got everything

forward you know front left and right

flying at the center slightly some sense

to the lfe

and then you know

on the reverb returns each each element

has got its own reverb

it could just it could all be a plate

i actually think in an early mix of this

the original mix

we mixed at capital initially so that it

was all just capital chambers

but

you know

the best use of sort of 5.1 that i found

on film

was this idea of sort of

panning a lot of your ambiances or in

this case all the ambience sort of back

aways and filling out the theater a bit

with the reverb from the queue but sort

of music music forward okay

so

pretty pretty straightforward uh let's

let's look at the seven one

let me see if i can just simply pop over

okay

so here we are again

this was then at 7-1 pass we did uh and

you know this is this is sort of where

you get into that kind of turning

turning this front corner in the queue

where you know same thing

move this forward maybe we even sort of

cheated in slightly as we fought so we

hit a bit of center channel

piano's forward but then you know some

of these things enter a bit later like

the vocoder

and the flute

but we can sort of pull them back into

the theater a little bit so they're

maybe instead of being you know

seemingly coming from the screen they're

coming back and sort of around us a bit

but we're able to do that because we've

got these center channels which sort of

you know create sort of a barrier that

keeps the music still forward of center

and not coming from behind us in a sort

of like distracting way it just works

that lovely you know beautifully um

i'm doing a very similar thing with the

reverb returns and pushing them more

towards the sort of back

uh

quadrant i guess of the of the theater

but let's look at it um you know and

again

if you're in headphones uh

i'm doing a binaural render of this

the idea that like audio of the cue

that's coming through is

going through the dolby renderer in five

one and now in seven one but it will do

a binaural i'm gonna i'm gonna use the

binaural output in the quicktime video

of this so if you're in headphones you

will get somewhat of a sense of the

space so maybe put on some headphones

here we go again

but you know music forward

some ambience

filling us out

[Music]

here comes our world sir

which you know soros are gonna

could work sort of back into the into

the theater a bit as well

minded up here kind of like things to

sort of incrementally work their way

back is the truth

that feels so nice my vocal ranges and

it's sort of it's a little bit more

enveloping you know

the same effect like it just it feels

it's just sort of wrapped this is so

much wider and spacious throughout the

front of the building here you know it's

i can't say enough about seven months

[Music]

expensive right there

[Applause]

[Music]

okay you get the gist right like there's

no reason to talk this into the into the

dirt but the seven one really does give

you um

i just keep saying it you know it just

gives you this front corner which is so

so

so beautiful so powerpoint so many ways

to sort of utilize that and maintain the

sort of focus of the listener from the

audience

forward the screens

very important

so then

you know then that brings us to

the atmos pass

so for this i think i'll bring the

renderer out here so we can see it

that'll work so then

you know in atmos though we've got to

sort of when i did the the soundtrack

record

we were no longer concerned with

uh

we were no longer concerned with uh

keeping the audience's

faces pointed this way this is a

soundtrack record this was purely audio

enjoyment right

and as we said there's no reason to sort

of be gentle with atmos

it's atmos so

we went really far with this and i think

it's really i think it really came out

cool it's super effective so

this one you can see i've got everything

sort of assigned to an object and

we can get into

if anybody wants to talk about beds and

objects and

sort of get into getting into sort of

like game plans in terms of all that we

can talk that into the dirt but

let's just look at sort of painting

considerations and things now so so this

one uh in atmos

uh we decided to really go for it

and you can see everything's sort of an

object here uh it starts out sort of how

you would expect

piano front left and right

right

uh that's objects 1920 here with the

capital chamber here 53 and 54. so it's

you know

not not far off from what i would do

uh on a 7-1 mix

uh and i decided to hold up a little bit

on this one and sort of push uh you know

those

that vote coder so ethereal that

i thought that'd be a really good use of

height for this one is to push not only

the flute but the vocoder sort of

up into the space and it's and that

reverbs up a bit it really functions

great

another thing here the wurlitzer which

plays the melody the second time here

that's now up in the up in the ceiling

behind where it's not great

[Music]

and it's just so effective you know so

this is the um this is the vocoders

coming from behind it feels really nice

the flutes are kind of panned here

a lot like they were on this other one

honestly but they're they're

up quite a lot quite a lot of height to

them as you can see here

um

i ended up sort of duplicating i've got

a pair of plates

uh that i'm using on the

float

so that i can have two different places

sort of different responses

to create kind of a quad reverb up top

and i'm

[Music]

creating a quad reverb that's panned

all the way up actually

i just love it though

i really love atmos and i love getting

really aggressive even even with music

that's this

simple

uh it's really effective like sort of

having

elements

approaching

face

all in sort of coming from different

locations

uh i just love it

and i think i did a thing i think i

panned the moog

yeah and the moog sort of goes to the

back

or actually the moog is side to side uh

here for this last little swell

so you know there you have it it's this

is such a simple cue it's it's such a

you know it's it's very easily

digestible it's very lovely

uh but it really works well in surround

particularly in the soundtrack record

atmos i'm really proud of how that works

and i'm really proud of sort of not only

how simple it is

but um how effective sort of having

everything coming from its own space

can be and that's you know that's sort

of the biggest thing i think that we get

into

with atmos is we start sort of breaking

apart the stereo mix

this is pretty

simple

and that you don't have sort of like a

rhythm sex you don't have like a real

rhythmic component which then as you

break things apart from the mix begins

to unravel this is this is so such a

sort of easy and simple piece of music

that it you can break it apart very

easily and it just works you know

other almost atmos mixes are

far more complicated to sort of pull

them apart

and uh maintain that sort of the feeling

and that and the kind of

propulsion let's say

of the stereo mix when you start pulling

things apart but you know that's that's

the game of it that's the sort of beauty

of it that's the sort of puzzle that

we're forever unraveling with atmos

so uh

yeah let me uh let me put this session

away and we'll wrap this up

okay so

i've had some you know really sort of

creatively fulfilling afternoons lately

especially working on uh catalog music

projects in atmos and

i guess by that i mean records that are

several years old whose stereo mixes are

already well known what the job really

isn't mixing per se like the song has

been mixed right

the job of the atmos mixer uh is to sort

of usher the song and it's mixed into a

new format um to kind of like break it

apart and then trim it around to find

the spot that feels like where the

stereo makes landing like just like

everything we were just talking about

and i've had some really fun times

lately doing that it's just a blast you

know

and you are like you're sort of taking a

mix and helping it to happen all around

the room you know and i guess i sort of

approach uh a catalog mix as

maybe i've already said it as like a

puzzle to be solved you know like how

can you spread this thing around and

maintain that initial sense of balance

and particularly maintain the sort of

like

rhythm section propulsion of the thing

that's tricky right

um and it's super rewarding when you do

find it so

i can't say enough about it i absolutely

love atmos and i you know if you're if

you're thinking to get involved you

should right so

i guess that kind of that's sort of what

this video is about i suppose i mean i

guess i've got i hope it serves a few

purposes you know and and it's just that

if if you are maybe

sort of just considering getting starter

in atmos um

this is maybe like a gentle nudge to

just go for it right just get in there

there's a ton of atmos

releases on whatever app you stream your

music from just waiting to be sort of

like studied and

learned from and

you know the further you get into it the

more you'll realize like like i'm

realizing all the early engineers you

know the steve genowicz and the greg

penney's that i've already mentioned

they've sort of laid this groundwork for

us in this format

and the thing that i love is those guys

those guys aren't around we're

also lucky that the majority of this

initial push of atmos music releases

it's mixed like the building was

on fire you know i'd love it i think i

think there's a sort of sense in the

audio community that this has to matter

you know or it's really not worth doing

uh most everything that i hear and

everyone that i know that's doing this

is that just going ultra bold with

panning and sort of an approach to

immersive that's uh

just

full on like all out and i absolutely

love it um

i'm here for it in my opinion uh quad

failed uh because i think you know

truthfully with the exception of maybe

dark side of the moon and a couple of

tomato records

uh from what i've heard

that was sort of phoned in at best

you know it was like it sounds like an

afterthought um it sounds like a

delivery requirement that was sort of

just

i don't know what else to say phoned in

so

going forward in atmos let's be sure

that every mix matters and that every

mix is a move forward for not only the

song but for the format right

and

you know on the other hand if if you're

mixing in atmos now uh maybe this video

is just a little reminder of how quickly

the whole format has evolved over these

last 10 or 20 years but particularly

this quantum leap we just took

creatively

from 5.1 to now

atmos just in this last few years and it

really shouldn't be overlooked it's

sort of easy to take it for granted

maybe but it's been a series of a few

small steps to get here

but we're here immersive mixing in 2022

has fully arrived

it's happening i can't say it enough

get involved

well i hope you enjoyed that master

class with todd burke as much as i did

some great insights there from todd on

translating stereo mixes to surround

formats from five one and seven one all

the way up to dolby atmos if you're here

for the live premiere we've got a live q

a coming up right afterwards and if

you're watching this in the future check

out the replay of the live q a we're

about to do with todd burke right now

check out the links down below if you're

looking to get into surround mixing or

at most mixing for yourself one great

way to get into it is with antelope

audios interfaces they offer full

solutions that will handle all of your

monitor routing and speaker calibration

for any surround format all the way up

to dolby atmos big thanks to them for

sponsoring this presentation check out

everything they make over at

antelopeaudio.com

or if you want something totally for

free we are giving away more than ten

thousand dollars worth of free gear

right now in the mixcon mega giveaway

look for that link down below in the

comments and the description and i hope

to see you for the q a with todd burke

coming right up after this thanks for

hanging out with me this has been justin

coletti of sonic scoop

see you next time