All language subtitles for Mix Breakdown Start to Finish_ Mixing Masterclass with Chris Lord-Alge.mp4

hey guys i'm here for the uh yeah

[Music]

g'day there my name is chris lord algae

and i am an epic mixing master today as

you can tell i'm at my console and in

the studio mix la here in tarzana and

i'm going to take you through one of my

mixes and it's going to be absolutely

epic i've got my assistant here he's

going to be helping me

what's going on here i'm cla what are

you talking about sir this is my console

my spot sorry we're going through my

mixes i'm going to show you what to do

okay how you doing now

all right let's get into this g'day

there everybody my name is mpa welcome

to another waves audio shindig this time

we are doing a mix breakdown

start to finish with chris lord algae

otherwise known as the legendary cla

chris what's going on

here we are in tarzan and i have a song

up on the screen and we're gonna walk

through your questions

and we're gonna solve all your things

here today and we're gonna show you how

we break this mix down now one of the

interesting things about this one is you

might see if you look over chris's

shoulder you're going to see a blurred

out australian guy which is me because

today we're doing this inside chris's

studio i tell you it's like i banged

down the door until he let me in uh

well actually that's right the police

let me in but you know

who's who's being picky so chris we we

we have some questions here that are

from our users that i want to go through

but first of all uh what i really would

like to do is get you to play through

this mix so people can have a listen to

it and

while you're doing it bring up some of

the plugins so that we can actually see

what's going on here can you exactly

so i am sitting at my console but my

console is just a really expensive table

today as i have my keyboard my touch

mouse

and our pro tools rig

and we're playing that session right

inside the box so there's no console

involved the original mix that you

probably heard was obviously done on a

console but we've got you know we're

recreating it here in the box today so

i'm going to play this song it's called

hero by kurt deimer

[Music]

we're all in the game we all have

potential

[Music]

good or evil is all influential

[Music]

they come in all shapes and different

sizes

in your face

in disguises

out of nowhere

they surprised us they don't know our

names but they're standing right beside

us

anyone's a hero

come in to save the day show us a better

way

everyone's a hero

someone you even know is always good to

go

somebody be a hero

[Music]

just be the sun

when it's raining

[Music]

they come in all shapes and different

sizes

in your face

in disguises

out of nowhere

they surprise us they don't know our

names but they're standing right beside

us

and he wants a hero

come in to save the day show us a better

way

everyone's a hero

just lend a helping hand i know you

understand

somebody be a hero somebody

[Music]

[Applause]

i dedicate this song to the frontline

workers

to our first responders

to our military and our veterans

without you we wouldn't be free

you

are all

our heroes

is

[Music]

[Music]

man there's a lot going on in this mix

well i mean there's not a terrible

amount but there's definitely some

layers

um

and as you see it's pretty simple

plug-in wise what we're doing okay where

we just have four returns as i circle

them here

literally vocal verb drum verb short

delay long delay

and we're just kind of focusing on

notice the guitars are dry we're

noticing on just drums and vocals

getting effects

um

everything else is uh basically the

compression is your effect

and if you look at our mix bus

i love this one

going into mine

so this is like the preheat

pre-heats up the mix and then moves into

my mixdown plugin

and then obviously how we get it to you

guys so um

you know what i love about this plug-in

as well uh i'm gonna i'm gonna gush over

your plugins too but one of the things i

love about this as well is that you can

turn different modules on and off

and actually choose exactly what parts

of it you're actually using which is

really awesome as well so actually the

way the tg mastery works as soon as you

touch anything in a module it activates

yeah so which is cool but i really like

the way it sounds and even though this

limiter looks like it's it's really

pounding

it's not bad and i as you see i'm kind

of using it as they came 50

is really good on this you know and uh

just this eq at the end is really silky

so

um kudos on the tg mastering chain

but um

let's take a question here to start our

mix all right my friend so

as we promised everybody this is a mixed

breakdown so

we break down we do have some questions

uh the first question is

how do you achieve this wall of

sound effects with your guitars because

it's like something that sticks with you

with

your your your talent and your tracks

but it's it's very evident but in this

track it's really evident that those

guitars are just amazing and it really

is a wall of sound so what what is it

that how do you start to attack

a mix with guitars

to get that kind of full sound i mean

first of all you start with a decent

guitar sound now these are phil x

guitars he's a great guitar player these

are all done in his house

so sometimes they're a little bit thin

so don't be shy with eq i find that most

people make guitars they don't put any

any girth any any weight to them so if

you look at number one all right i'm

adding a hundred if i scroll down the

guitar list i'm adding low end okay and

look at this one i'm pounding the low

end

because a lot of the energy's coming

from that right so and also the

afterburner the la the cla 3a

is is what i put after guitar's eq why

because it takes all the harshness out

of the guitars and lets you push them

right forward um

as i'll play this so let me make sure i

have my groups back on here

and um

well they're on and let's just listen to

a piece of it

uh with vocals muted right i'll go back

to here

make sure that stuff is off

and take a quick listen

[Music]

don't be afraid to push it

it will fold if you add too much low end

but you find that spot where the guitar

tone isn't changing and you're really

working with what the compressor does to

the sound

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

plus part of it is if you set up your

mix bus right which i have set up

um

then

then you see how far you can go before

the drums go away and remember for me

it's like i push the guitars up until i

start hearing the drums go away and that

means that the guitars are taking the

lead in the compressor because look your

funnel your your two mix funnel your bus

compressor whatever starts to get loud

starts to be the thing that triggers the

compressor so you try to keep them right

under the punch of the drums

that's so hopefully that answers the

question i mean mpa it's it's just yet

yet another song that i'm gonna get a

speeding ticket to

okay so uh next question are we talking

about the guitars and the drums uh

another question was how do you place

your

guitar tracks in the mix how do you

place those

very simple okay it's left right left

right left right remember for me

kick and snare and bass and and lead

vocal are taking the center position so

why would you you know put anything in

the center but a guitar solo which is

you know which is basically the vocal

right the guitar solo is just the vocal

continuing played by guitar so i keep

them as wide as possible

so they eat up the corners and then the

center is driven by the punch in the

vocal okay so i have a follow-on

question here this is from uh user waves

user todd pernick g'day todd uh is

everything yeah is is everything left

center right or are there elements that

you place say 50 percent uh he has a

hard time when he's trying to do left

center right because it feels out of

balance

i'm a left center right guy the only

time i start not lcr'ing is when i run

into stuff that's not on this song which

is usually like shakers or tambos or

percussion

or something that if you wrench it far

left or right it might seem to poke too

much but think about it look at your hot

you're like okay well look at my drums

they're all lcr because well why is your

hi-hat's so far left but remember the

hi-hat is just a direct mic in the big

picture okay of the drums so when you

start to poke it up out of the left

corner it just

comes out there a little bit

over the top of the big stereo image so

i would really start to just focus on

lcr

unless you get into

percussion that it's either center or

left and right so yeah if you put a

tambo hard left or a shaker hard rice

it's really obvious so you may maneuver

it in between the clock somewhere so

there's my lcr answer okay so while

we're talking about that seeming as this

is a breakdown from start to finish

let's take a step back for a second

because one of the things i noticed

about all of your sessions and we've

done quite a few of these uh these kind

of

events is your session organization

and i rarely get the chance

to sit here right behind you kind of

breathing down your neck

um take us through how you actually

organize a session so obviously you said

these guitars were recorded at home

um so how do you bring in stuff that's

recorded elsewhere

bring it all together and organize it

kind of like so it works in your kitchen

and you can cook a meal

let's talk about session organization

that was a good analogy actually wasn't

it yes

it was a very good analogy thank you

michael you know like i can always

depend on you for bringing the brains to

this operation well you know us i just

bring the beef that's all i have

um

now

i hate

i dislike let's go there i dislike when

i get sessions where the name of the

track is longer than mississippi okay

and it gives me hieroglyphics uh

whatever i get whenever i get audio from

anybody i change the names okay i make

it the simplest name possible when i get

guitars and they're all mono tracks i

find i find the partners i find the

double i find it and i make stereo

tracks out of all of it okay

i really prefer to have all stereo

tracks except the model ones such as

vocal kick snare bass because the main

reason is once i balanced that stereo

pair and made it a stereo track then

it's one eq to worry about okay so then

when i want to eq that stereo track i'm

not trying to deal with two monos one

left one right and 20 cues okay saves a

lot of time in the big picture uh i

change all the names i try to make the

letter code as short as possible okay i

don't really it doesn't really matter to

me what the person's name is what

they're playing we can write that down

in a separate paper on a separate track

later for me its vocal is v plus plus

what is the plus plus mean

plus one tuned plus two

timed so if it's tube if it's tuned and

timed and that's usually the lead vocal

i'm talking about it's v double plus and

then v double and then my background

here fill x p x chorus okay it's already

got the doubled here on the file itself

and then i assemble the bv's

bv1 bb2 who cares okay look if it's bv

low it'll be bb space l or bb space mid

i try to make the least amount of

letters because when i flip the page to

this and i go into view right and i'm in

narrow mix i don't have a lot of parking

for what the song what the tracks are

called

even down here where it's room near and

room far

it's like what am i going to call it rue

like kangaroo i could but i try to get

three letter names for everything or

less and you're looking like what's foot

kick drum i grew up with kick drum being

ft ft1 fd2 well these are just my kick

samples for this

okay

and um

snare top snare bottom as you see it's

as it's as short as possible that i can

have and obviously this one stairs is

called stella and tab these are

nicknames because i know what they sound

like aside from that i made it as short

as possible

and it's always vocals guitars drums

bass and whatever percussion or loops

are in the track the drums are always

red guitars are always green vocals and

backgrounds always blue

and the final mix which is sitting up

here is always purple with the bass and

they're always in that order right

they're always in that order the only

thing that's above the vocals is if

there's keyboards when there's keyboards

on the record it's all keyboards then

it's the vocals

it's usually

click

then keyboards and then vocals

it's funny because i think one of the

things

and i'm fairly positive you agree with

this because i've heard you say it

before one of the things that people

struggle needlessly with when they're

learning about how to mix

and try and emulate what you do is in a

part that's actually easy to fix which

is organizing

the session in a way that they can

actually get around and know where

everything is so that they don't have to

think about it um this is also something

that you teach a lot when you when when

you were talking about your uh cla mix

hub um and how you mix in buckets um uh

and how to name it as well sorry buckets

of eight i mean 100 michael i mean look

if you look to the left

you see some of the source tracks here

okay

see all these ones are not being used

these were all the background tracks

because i went out there i did eight

tracks filled at eight tracks there was

like a lot of gang tracks okay that i

quickly comped that create all these bv

tracks this way i have one two three

four five six pairs

and then all this stuff is just sitting

there

pre-comped okay if i ever need to redo

it i'll say okay well look at this this

was gang you know the gang bucket so

i'll just go back and redo it it's not

that hard you know but once you have it

the way you like it the less real estate

the better okay so if you go back up a

bit go if you scroll back up on that

track v plus plus yeah uh i do see

a cla mix hub on that so what if you've

got cla mx hub 76 and an l1

uh take us through that combination what

what what's what's that combination

doing for you

this is my go-to chain

for vocals

is it shift then as a command then pop

the next one up yeah right

no that turns it off it says shift to

get the next one up there we go

and there

so this is the typical

vocal chain that i have um

eq and the driver now before i even say

that let's look at the vocal okay if we

look at the vocal tract we go to the

audio suite and we look at normalize and

we just oh we look at gain sorry

we got to start here this is important

let's look at the level of that vocal

look at it at in peak right analyze okay

it's normalized to zero okay what's its

rms

uh minus 20. okay

so that means this vocal track's been

normalized so once it's normalized then

i know i can deal with that level i like

to normalize all my vocals

if i'm combining a bunch i'll gain them

down three db or six or nine in that in

that form but simply

first thing is this okay this feeds the

compressor which is always 3018 three

and seven okay and then the afterburner

which takes the which takes to uh takes

some of the tree tops off uh some of the

big problems i have with vocals there'll

be some branches sticking out that

really bite so this will hold that back

in the mix okay

so i will use

this as my eq

and as i'm looking at the song i will

adjust

i can either adjust the line trim or

clip gain this down if i feel it's too

hot but a lot of times i will just pull

this back okay but if i'm you know when

i'm driving this this is a plug-in that

gets a little overdriven a little

distortion which i like so it makes a

bit of an analog thing

so what i do to continue with that

is

the doubles the exact same settings and

then my background vocals are getting a

similar

setup except these gangs i don't put the

after burner on because they're already

kind of compressed to begin with

so

can we hear them yep so let's hear that

we can hear this in solo here um

game

let's just get you right at the

beginning yes

we're all in the game we all have

potential

and to me that's the excitement i'll put

good or evil it's all influential

and our reverbs are just muted just cuts

through they come in all shapes in

different sizes

in your face

in disguise is

out of no way

they surprise us they don't know our

names but they're standing right beside

us

anyone's a hero

come in to save the day show us a better

way

everyone's a hero

someone you even know is always good to

go

somebody be a hero

be

a hero

so inside the track you're like wow

chris you're really compressing those

vocals

hey i'm just giving them the real estate

they need because think about it if you

want to be able to hear every bit of the

vocal the smaller you make it

the less room it's going to take up in

the mix but stay powerful but the

beautiful thing is here and this is one

of those things that i i i hear a lot in

conversation is you never hear anybody

uh

hear a song on the radio where

you just hear the the vocal soloed or

the drum solo you hear the whole song so

you do what you need to do to get to get

the sound that you need so it's it might

sound weird solo but if it makes the

song sound like you make your songs

mixes sound then it's freaking awesome

no one hears anything in solo okay ever

so what does it matter if it sounds like

it's blowing up or too compressed or

whatever if it works in the song it

works this song same and a lot of times

that happens with the drums now in this

song this song is a different animal

drum wise why because

because of this like tribal tom beat i

had the drummer brian tishi who's an

excellent drummer play this in two

separate passes which means he plays all

the wonder one pass and all the brass in

the second pass

that gives me

the opportunity to have

more compression on the rooms because i

have no

pesky symbols to deal with if you look

here this is the package of just when he

overdubbed hi-hat ride and symbols so if

i mute this

okay and then i play this

over here so i'll mute these guys right

um

remember i'm the old man trying to drive

the pro tools so i'm not as quick as you

guys but i'll show you here's

so when you go down here let's just turn

let's go

so there's nothing to worry about it's

all

there's no crashes in here

all right they're muted okay all muted

here because and there's just one loop

i'll get rid of them

so then you can say okay let's destroy

the rooms

and then if you go over here we have the

drum reverb let's turn that back on

like well of course it sounds a little

bit long

so then

let's drop that back a little bit

[Music]

when it wants to work

[Music]

that's pretty good

and then of course

[Music]

no reverb is ever correct you have to

always eq it

so make it work for the song but then

you know

[Music]

what i'm saying and then if you're like

okay well chris that's not sexy enough

for me then

jump on the old

pg mastering train

and just go oops let's add the

compressor

then oops let's add this

[Music]

and then even better let's had the

spreader

[Music]

look at the spreader winds it

[Music]

that adds a sexy right there

okay

[Music]

so what happens is when you have you

know you specify as the producer

engineer whoever is involved in the

project if you have a song like you know

what let's do this wood and steel

separate

then you can dig out a different kind of

drum sound okay and it lets you

have more control and since this is

tribal and i want it to be like that i'm

able to make the the kick and snare like

you know big and ringy and affected so

okay so uh with while we're dealing with

reverb on snare

one question that comes up a lot is

people are asking about uh how to stop

reverb on their drums sounding making

their mix sound muddy

um and one thing that you mentioned just

then was eq'ing uh a reverb and that you

can't have a reverb without eq'ing it so

can you dig into that for a second right

so i'm gonna unmute everything so let's

dig into that for a second first of all

do you see ascend off the snare top of

the snare bottom

no

okay see here's the sends right the

sends are on the samples okay the sins

are on

a little bit of the toms and the sends

are on the rooms these rooms have no

symbols in them okay and even when

you're mixing something with symbols

you're going to be careful about that

having the symbols go into the room so

when i listen to the song here let's

play it in the verse somewhere i'll show

you how we control the reverb

[Music]

or evil it's all influential

[Music]

you feather it in until it gives you the

length you want but doesn't turn into

the murky the muddiness that you're

saying right and then also when it if

you crank it up check it out

you hear they go oh i see why it's money

and then you go up to the eq

and you adjust accordingly when you have

it loud and then

coming in

you pull it back into the mix and you

toggle it off and on you notice oh

that's just what i wanted thanks cla

[Laughter]

you're so awesome can i have your

autograph um

so you're using cla mix hub lite a lot i

noticed here uh

there's going to be some questions about

that that's a simple answer good

tell us because i'm only using it as a

channel strip right use the light one

because

it just takes less horsepower with your

um

with your daw and with your laptop so

you can have more instances of it

when you're using it as the when you're

using the hub

factor of it and using that portion of

it then you use the regular but if it's

just a if it's just a channel strip by

itself

let's pull some of that extra horsepower

off it so you can use it just as eq

okay and that's why cool okay beautiful

okay so now let's go to another question

we've got a

a question here from uh doug doug wants

to doug lansin wants to know how do you

approach getting the vocals and guitars

to sound good and cut through the mix

independently from each other uh now

that's an interesting question because

you've just taken us through

the

the guitars and the drums uh the the

and kind of the vocals but they all seem

to kind of have their own specific space

and everything sounds uncompressed as a

mix but when you

solo it it all sounds really compressed

so it's like there's some really

magical stuff going on here and i'm

trying to

work out how do we explain this to

people

well it's actually pretty simple let's

think about it how do you make the

guitars really exciting how do you make

the vocals really exciting make them all

cut through in the mix

let's start with the fact that your

guitars right here are all pads in

stereo

so

like they're parked in the corners of

the parking lot

okay your vocals are generally feeling

like they're in the center your main

vocals so they're in the middle of the

parking lot okay so they're not

competing they can both be as loud

the vocal the vocal eq range is going to

really be focusing on the 1k

you're really going to notice that 1k

and top end presence okay

where you're going to try to not you're

going to try to make sure that the

guitars have top end in the bottom end

around that so it surrounds it so

i mean the real science is when you

compress the vocals into the same

dynamic range as a guitar is they

coexist a lot better if the vocals are

too dynamic you're never going to hear

them over the guitars okay

it's like wearing a shark fin and

swimming in the ocean okay the guitar is

the ocean and the shark fin is the vocal

just peeking out over it okay if the

vocal is too dynamic you won't be able

to breathe because you're not going to

be above water so you make that dynamic

small enough where there's no getting

around here in the vocal that's why the

compression's so heavy but when you hear

it in the record it sounds natural

it really does it's it's pretty amazing

okay next question

uh this is a question from henry din

g'day henry hi

how do you approach fader automation

when you're mixing what's the philosophy

about writing the fader

well the philosophy is simple

and you should only do this once you can

get the song to almost mix itself

right now the way you have the song set

up you can play it from the top and it

once i get the balance the balance is

the most important thing once you get

the bounce the song should mix itself

okay

then at that point because well i gotta

use some fader automation well my fader

automation is going to be simple it's

going to focus around the lead vocal i'm

going to chase this to make sure that he

rises and falls with the dynamic of the

record

when the guitars start packing in the

track well he might get swallowed up or

she so my favorite automation is a lot

of times vocals

and it may also be let's make the guitar

impact and the chorus hit harder

so i'm less is more with fader

automation if you think you're going to

sit here and do pass after pass of

riding one fader at a time you're not

going to automate anything but a pile of

poo

so i really think that if you balance

the song first

then turn on your fader automation

to write at that point

uh that will help you

oh

oh yeah sorry

that girl

that girl back there anyway

uh so to answer your question simply

only engage the automation once the mix

literally plays itself and all you're

doing is the final seasoning

the lesson there also was

before you do any kind of event

make sure everything else is muted

chris

sorry yeah i'm trying to rebuild my

laptop okay so

um

this song you started you recorded this

as well correct sure yeah okay so so now

so you recorded this so you went through

and you organized this and you directed

all of the recording parts so wait let

me let me correct you on this i only

recorded the vocals on this okay

because

phil x did the guitars at home

brian tishi has his own studio did the

drums at home

all i did was align them and and add my

samples and then do my vocals and then

clean up you know intros and outros to

all the tracks now we're getting into an

interesting area so we've got

drums being recorded by one guy

separately a guitar is being recorded by

another guy separately and then vocals

were done here

so how does it sound so cohesive because

that's the part that a lot of people

uh online are looking at and going how

do you make something like this sound so

magical

when everybody did it in their own home

without other musicians around well

here's what makes it cohesive michael

very simply

you go through all the tracks okay and

obviously the ones that recorded we

cleaned up as best as possible

with the drums these are samples helping

the drums we go through we adjust the

level and normalize it and clean it up

now

brian sends me all mono tracks so i can

form it into stereo pairs

okay and i adjust the levels when needed

cool so what plugins do we have on the

drums again we've got i mean we're doing

the same thing we're mix hubbing yep

76ing

and then we're even fairchilding these

rooms we're double double hitting them

okay but if we just go to the dry kick

it's literally just

yeah mix-up

snare drum

huh let me guess top and bottom why

wouldn't i

same here 76 on the snare bottom

uh samples even no no was that was that

a black key or that was a blacky right

yeah the stair bottom why are black here

not a bluey

uh blackie's better for i like blueis

for vocals and the black ones for

guitars bass and uh drums got you

now you notice that i have the mix hubs

on every track

except the reverb returns and if they're

on there they're after the effects

for me it's like this creates a console

okay you see how there's a

there is a mix hub on every channel even

if it's doing nothing

uh where i think like right here it's

doing nothing right

what it is doing is it's creating

a phase coherence it's it's making

everything be on the same line

so if this plug-in's taking

200 samples or whatever the delay

compensation is with this

everybody's on board the same way the

audio is passing through it yeah i'm

just passing through it but that means

that my phase and the drum stays even

tighter because everyone's on the same

plugin okay so there's no shifting no

phase shifting at all because

everyone's like going through the same

console for me it's like okay i'm just

gonna make this a console so i put

everybody on the same thing

this way whatever this plug-in does

delay wise inside of pro tools

everybody else is on the same wavelength

and then the song glues together better

so whatever you're a fan of channel

strip wise maybe it's the ev2 it could

be any of these okay

um

anything on our list here's some of my

shortcuts

it could be you could be into the apis

okay

um

but my point is that just that just

helps

make everybody line up right okay so uh

i have another question here about your

master bus um the the question is a lot

of your mixes

sound

not so much like each other but there's

a certain sound to a crystal algae mix

sometimes that there's a has a certain

character to it is there a consistency

in what you do with your master bus on

your mixers

yes there is uh michael first of all

when working directly in pro tools the

first thing i do in the session is put

the cla mix down on the mix bus

this means no matter what i'm doing with

the song it's already sounding like a

record it's already compacting it and

that gives me a judge

on how i'm hitting the actual bus of pro

tools so

by using this in the default mode it

works um so i put the mixbus in right

away i don't do it later okay

um

now what i've done here with the with

the abbey road

the the tg live as we call it is

i'm using that because you know lately

i've really grown to love it the widener

just the clarity of it and just just the

way it's it's just analog sounding so

i actually put that before the mix down

um to start with

so that feeds into it so you're using

the spreader is that i'm using the

spreader yeah

and i love it

yeah not right now on here but a lot of

times i mean i should i should i can go

a little bit more here why not i love

the spreader on this i just love what it

does with guitars and width so uh

right there alone even if that's all you

use that's very cool too

so i just keep it simple i don't have

i don't have this big cocktail of

plugins you know uh

and i don't really use a limiter okay

now

you can put an l1 after this or an l3 or

any of the l's the double l if you want

but then just be careful about what

happens to your drums at that point so

uh my mix bus is pretty simple

okay so let's take a step back for a

second and let's talk to

the

uh the guy or girl who's starting out

and is looking at

becoming the next chris lord allergy or

the next

legend that

surpasses you which i know you said at

different talks that you know one of the

things you'd love is people to

go big and beyond

where do they start

say for example i mean there's a lot of

your plugins on on this session and i

know for a fact that you do actually use

a lot of the plugins that you actually

help us help you make

um

uh it's not just your name you actually

use them but what what would you suggest

is a good starting point for a beginner

who's starting to mix

when it comes to

sessions like this where do they start

well

i mean i think that's a

that's a very good question michael and

actually a very easy one i gave some

good advice for that

um talking about the plug-ins just what

you were mentioning a second ago is

i made the plug-ins for me first but

with you in mind so

when i came to creating plug-ins people

think well you didn't you didn't even

use them people said you didn't even use

your own plugins i'm like

well you're wrong i made the plugins so

i can use them so i have those tools and

then i thought about well let's make

sure that people are going to aside from

me are going to like them

so for the beginner that wants to be the

cla that wants to get jump in okay jump

in with three here's three important

things to do

organize your session like mine because

if it's not organized it's impossible to

mix okay the less real estate it takes

up on the screen the more you can manage

it number one

create your shortcuts with plugins and

try to figure out how to use

a half a dozen plugins

just a half a dozen

maybe you have an eq chain

a compressor a limiter a vocal a delay

and a reverb let's just start there okay

that's five plugins okay

um and maybe a bus compressor that's six

so find one channel strip find one

compressor

start there before you start spreading

out with all these varieties of you know

like chocolate raspberry sprinkle go

vanilla

chocolate strawberry start with the big

three okay eq compressor limiter okay

and then reverb delay okay one plug-in

you can have that on multiple instances

you're lucky to be able to do that so i

recommend doing that because this way

you're focusing on the mix not

conquering the plug-in

most people that are mixing are trying

to conquer the plug-in you'll never do

it the plug-in always wins the plug-in

is a tool so get a hammer a screwdriver

and a hammer regular and a phillips and

get started with that keep it simple

you're very wise

like yoda yeah yeah you like the yo-yo

the yoda you like the yoder of tarzana

the yoda of tarzana

tarzani yoda here i like teasing it

hey how many times do we get to do this

in your studio with an annoying

australian right over your shoulder okay

so we've talked about those plugins so

it's over my shoulder right i'm over

your shoulder blurry but i've got my own

camera too now um

mix hub cla mix hub

you're using the light version a lot uh

the cla mix hub

how do people go about using the actual

hub version of that if they want to get

into that as a beginner

well there's a complete tutorial in

video on how to use the mix up a

complete what i'm sorry there's a

complete video tutorial that you

probably helped me do

so there if you really want to learn the

mix-up

up on waves you can easily find that if

you want to get into details

um

in this instance because the way i have

it set up i'm not using it for that at

all

i am just using it as the guts and glory

channel strip that it's sorted out by

without a great channel strip the hub

feature would have not been important

because there's bucket view and i

haven't even assigned anything to it so

you can easily

select you could you could assign tracks

to to the bucket and look at all the eqs

at once right

um

and i can just like quickly do that um

okay

um

and then get to your bucket there

oops sorry

sorry sort by name sorry there we go

and then i forget if i dragged him or

not and then get a bucket view and now

they're not there there we go

um

and we can look at it that way and look

at eq okay

you could easily do this if you want to

see what you're doing in a big way okay

um super easy so i i could play my

guitars and then just eq all at once

right here let's move this one over here

oh let's put them in order right i love

when it's in order i like things to be

orderly and you could do the same thing

with drums

um

i forget which bucket i did so i could

just go here and i could assign

and

i'll just do

one two

six

and

i only need six for that because it's

six i don't want to add more because

it's going to go over

and

right and then

channel view

bucket view right

and that's just the kicks and snares

and if i really want to i can make

just the toms and

toms and this okay

and leave these guys out

okay

and then now i have just i could look

little so now you're looking at multiple

now and now i see they go well let me eq

the rest of the toms

and i'm saying that that this kind of

helps me if you've forgotten something

let me go to bucket four let's assign

that and i can put all the stuff that's

making the noisy fun bits in there

um

which is just these four guys

um you know what i've noticed chris but

having me over your shoulder is a really

bad influence

i i think you actually work a lot slower

with an annoying australian in the room

oh

it's accurate right it's totally active

yeah

it's way slower so

so if i go back to a sign then i can say

here's all the symbols solved there's

only six perfect two

five six and the loop and then back here

and bucket few and then it's it there we

go there's another bucket of all this

stuff has nothing on it so if i want it

this will you know this speeds up the

process

um

well it one of the things i love about

this workflow is it gives me the ability

to actually

mix

a bunch of tracks without actually

looking at multiple plugins and without

actually even feeling like i'm looking

at plugins i'm looking at a console

um it's like i'm tweaking eq i'm

tweaking compression

and i'm tweaking knobs on a console

from one interface and i'm closing it

and then i'm getting on with the job

well a hundred percent i mean

the good the the really good thing about

assigning stuff to the bucket just

because

sometimes you're working too fast

and you don't realize if you've missed

eq'ing something like i missed eq and

the vocal double here i can look at okay

here's bb12 here's gang okay well here's

phil's chorus right all right let me

just eq that to match him i can look at

all these okay man low in here these bbs

all sound right maybe this is too much

i can actually go there and it's i could

be an inspector like okay here's the

guitars that all looks right or cares

that one was really thin

solo okay that's right

i can move over to two and say okay

here's kick this kick needed no eq snare

top all right that samples fine

these guys look good let's just put

snare bottom you know next to snare top

right or and then my three times i

didn't notice that i didn't even bother

with them and then maybe i can carve

some of the low mid out here

because that's what i normally do

and add a little more

a little more girth

right and then off to four it's just the

rooms i can just look at okay here's

room near oh wait let's just add some

low end to this guy because it needed it

his rooms were kind of skinny so let's

just let's just fatten them up a little

bit

and then look okay overhead same thing

this just gives more gusto to the snare

just the length of it right

by using the hub you're going to do that

this is all a decent balance of the

hi-hat ride so i don't even need to

really judge this i mean i can look at

the dynamic of it i can look at the

output whatever i can look at the input

here

you have control you have control so

super easy so there's your bucket view

so there's the mix up now it did not

affect anything over here

and i think i can look at any of them

any of the mix-up i have and the bucket

fee is going to be the same in all of

them

so what about your uh mix down what's

what's what's the benefit of mixdown

well the benefit of mixdown is that i

modeled mixdown to mimic my mix bus

right here

so the when everything's at zero

it's exactly the mix bus i use here on

setting one okay

and it's all it's really dialed in so if

you have the optimum level

in pro tools now i'll just i'll play

this without you hearing

any

i'll turn this volume down a little bit

this player will look at it

so you just pulled up the output of

because i'm driving that into this okay

cool you know i'm driving the abbey road

into this so if i turn this out put up

the feet it it hits that okay

[Music]

when it's hitting threes it's perfect

if it's just nailing the threes it's the

heavy stuff it's it's it's perfect

[Music]

if it starts going all the way up here

to 10 you're over driving you're you're

hitting you're just your mix bus is too

hot okay your faders are too high

then you're i mean

pro tools just completely has zero

forgiveness okay it clips

and not in a good way okay this is not a

console this is a digital box all right

so we've gone through your

uh organization of mixing we've gone

through

uh

how to make your drums cut through how

to make the vocals cut through we've

gone through how to make sure that your

reverb on your drums and vocals doesn't

create mud and we've gone through the

difference between cla mix hub and clmx

hub lite and which ones

you guys out there should start with

when you are starting out or when you

want to mix more like chris now

uh i think there's one question left

chris if there was one piece of advice

that you could give to people to

get out to the world that you think

you

really need to kind of like push forward

that people need to hear what would it

be organize your session

clean up the session

don't even start mixing until it looks

like this it's simple okay it's cleaned

up organized and all the

production decisions and arrangement

decisions are done and you can get it on

the least amount of faders without

compromising the ability to have control

over individual instruments

okay and stuff like this go here right

jack this waveform height all the way up

do you see any crud do you see any stuff

before the signal starts do you see crud

here right oh you mean like noise just

just like stuff like that just like

guitar hum buzz all these you know

people think they can just use strip

silence to clean this up look there's no

crud this is maxed out there's no noise

look a tiny little tail here and there

in a background vocal right okay but the

beginning of the song

okay

when the drums come in there's no before

it okay there's no anything and same

with the bass like

see this is maxed out so

you could get rid of this but this is

you know that's so low

that's just in between the base but you

see how it's all cleared and cleaned at

the front here

this is important okay

look even you see this crud and it's a

little loop right here but so low you're

not gonna hear it so what do we do we

just get here and get rid of it right

buy whatever

okay and then just you know it's just

this stuff builds up so fast in a

session

that

that you know you find yourself look

this is being audio made okay

don't start a mix unless the counters

are clean okay start from a clean

playing field have it organized okay

and have it make sense i can visually

look at this and say okay here's the

song okay here's the guitars background

so here's how it's going to go okay

and then when i drop this

you know i get more of a normal

vision of the real estate of it and i

always have my session set up to the

lead vocal

but not both just the lead vocal

is okay i'm getting both anyway oh

because the grouping so i just ungroup

that and then the lead vocal is

one one size bigger than everybody else

oops

that's smaller

so i kind of look at my sessions like

this

what i'm mixing so the top top thing on

the screen is the vocal so i'm seeing

that so i know what my attention is

focusing on and usually i'll even make

this guy a little smaller

so i'm getting the most out of it but

also when you look through your session

and i'm zooming in pretty heavily there

for you

is that you go through the vocal and you

look and you look for okay where's the

breaths

is there a pop somewhere okay

okay you can i guess i guess you can do

this with this right you can just go

okay what's this right here okay what's

that is that a kick drum is that a pop

on a vocal or something right

so

a lot of times i'll go through the

vocals look for breath problems look i'm

compressing it beyond normal you know

beyond an inch of its life so any

breaths that are in there that are

unnecessary i'm getting rid of

i get rid of all the breaths on all the

background vocal tracts okay because if

everybody's gasping at the same time

well it's like a breathing contest

so i clean all that up so there's a lot

of homework to be

done before you even start mixing the

song

that's my advice see there you go

all right folks

that

is your education today uh from chris

lord algae the man the myth the legend

cla my name is mpa i'm sitting

annoyingly over chris's shoulder

and

this has been a lot of fun you know what

uh i think i'm gonna move her chris

chris

can i get into it

hey

it's been fun

fun times yeah it's fun michael pa my

partner since the beginning here in

waves making it happen for you guys at

home so keep mixing but remember

organize first play later

[Music]

we're all in the game we all have

potential

[Music]

good or evil it's all influential