Original subtitles

Hi, it's Tchad Blake here again, but this time I'm in a brand-new studio.

It's pretty awesome.

It's the Mix With The Masters Studio in Paris, and I've brought a song

by an artist who goes by the name of Queen Kwong.

Her name is Carre Callaway and she has incredible musicians playing with her.

I believe she was discovered by Trent Reznor at the age of 17.

She's just done this collection of songs that I loved.

And it came to me via a producer named John Congleton, who I'd done some work for

a few years back but he recommended me for the project which well,

I will be eternally grateful for John, thank you.

It became quite a special project for me.

I think that lyrically she was definitely going through some tough times,

and I loved it for that.

It's raw and also special.

Note the way she does the songs, from what I understand,

is that she goes in and the band improvise.

I guess they must have a set, some parameters.

But, they basically improvise the song including lyrics and do the whole thing.

And, I don't know what they do after that.

If they go in and then make it a little bit more of a song,

or if it's actually comes out, but there's a huge portion of it

which is through improvisation.

That also just feels different when you do that, and I've loved working on this.

So I've got this song called "I Know Who You Are,"

and I have a rough mix.

I can show you where we started.

It's a very rough mix, and she was very open for me to do my thing,

which is my favorite way to work for an artist is for me to be able just

to set myself free.

But I think it was especially good on this project because she sets herself free,

and I think it really worked for me doing it too.

And it was a really good collaboration in that regard.

Not trying to really toot anybody's horn here, but I liked it.

And I loved working on it.

And I was really happy that she said, "Yes," when I wanted to do a video

for Mix With The Masters on it.

In fact, she was quite enthusiastic so let's get started on this thing.

So you can hear where it started and what I heard to make decisions to take the gig.

All the music's so different, all the songs are so different,

but the thread is her.

It's her energy and her perspective, sometimes her anger,

but letting go of the anger.

There's so much here, and this song, it meant, I think lyrically

was pretty self-explanatory.

I won't start a mix until I've heard a rough.

And it's not just because I'm hearing this song and all that,

but I want a relevant rough mix that shows me

when the artist stopped working on the song

what it sounded like when they thought it was finished.

I want to know that moment, and it also helps, obviously,

when you get a track.

I've done mixes before where I've gotten a rough mix or didn't get a rough mix,

sorry, and went ahead and did the mix, sent it out, and they said,

"Oh, the mix sounds great but where's the piano?"

And this has happened to me three times.

And I said, "piano?" and I go look in the session and there's no piano.

And they say, "Oh, damn, we'll send you the piano, sorry."

And it changes everything.

I might have to completely redo the mix.

So now I have to have what I call a relevant rough mix to start

so that doesn't happen.

But I didn't really get into how I use the rough in doing a track.

I don't like to listen to the rough while I'm doing it because I want to freehand.

But I will check it.

Like, when I get my... what I call my big brushstrokes, that usually takes me

anywhere from an hour to three hours, depending on how many tracks there are,

how it just comes together, luck, how much I feel like I have to rearrange.

Sometimes I'm doing lots of mutes, I'm moving things, editing.

So it's all dependent on that.

This was really beautifully arranged

and I don't think I had to do very much in that regard.

But I will check the rough mix mainly to see vibe.

You can do a mix that sounds way better to you on multiple sets of speakers,

but the vibe somehow is lost.

And, vibe doesn't matter how loud you're playing something.

You can have yours really tough and loud, and then play the rough

and it's like half the level, but you go, "Wait a minute,

I'm missing a whole area of this mix. So what is that?"

Then, you have to determine... so I'm not A/B-ing, I'm referencing.

So I make a distinction between that.

A/B-ing, to me, is when you're trying to copy something, you...

I got to get my top end like that other thing. I don't like to do that.

It's never sounded good to me because I'm not working on that song.

Other people's mixes often sound better than mine to me anyway.

Just like I was saying the other day, you know when you make an espresso at home,

it's good, and you even have a professional machine maybe,

but you go out to a cafe and it always tastes better.

Well, there's the rough and I mean I just loved this song the first time I heard it.

And in fact, it's one of those things I think as engineers we often do it,

we hear something and I'll always find something to do on a mix

and no matter how good something is.

And there's always something that I like about a mix.

If I think the mix isn't quite up to snuff for a record,

you still usually find something I like about a vibe.

And this is just full of vibe to me.

So I think I expanded it and got more energy out of it.

But again, it's another one of these times of mixing

where that's the easy thing to do is get the top extended and the low end extended.

But it's very easy to lose a vibe that was originally there.

So I had to watch that on this.

I'll play the mix, where I ended up, by my recollection and notes here,

it says, "mix three" which means mix one is my first mix,

and then it looks like I did two revisions on this

so this would be the second revision that ended up being the master.

So I think you can hear there's quite a transformation.

And I guess I'd start with her on the drums

because I think that's the first really noticeable thing.

Maybe in the intro, I panned things.

I panned the vocal over to one side and the keyboard over to the other.

I don't think that was in the rough.

But, I think to me, that it was a greater separation between the two.

I really wanted the intro to sound almost like a...

I mean more like a separate piece of music.

More like a separate thought in the back of your head

that almost didn't even fit this song.

It does fit the song, but that's the picture I had in my head was...

and by panning the stuff over, it just feels like it, I don't know,

more lonely somehow.

So that's actually the first thing that you would hear is that panning.

And, of course, I've turned it way down

so I can get more out of the downbeat of the drums coming in.

Let's go up to the drums and see what I did.

The darker tracks are, I think, those are my process tracks.

And the lighter tracks are what I got sent.

So if we listen to the kick here...

Pretty cool sample.

Very aggressive.

I almost always use a sub-sample on kick drums, whether it's live drums or machine.

I just like... I don't prefer to EQ those things.

Like the low end.

If I end up EQ-ing a lot of low end on different instruments...

I've never liked the sound of it.

It doesn't fit together as well.

I like a nice, clean...

I am adding some Lo-Fi, so there you go, that's clean.

But it doesn't sound dirty but it is adding a resonance to it.

You can hear it brings up the low-mids

or like maybe even some of the upper low register like 150 to 250 or something.

Gets rid of that annoying kind of tick on the top.

I really love dull kick drums. That's my favorite.

It doesn't always work but...

on this it wouldn't have worked, but I've kept that dull

because this is so aggressive.

And it looks like I've cut down on the length a little bit by doing both,

raising the attack and bringing the sustain down.

And then I've got another sample here.

Let's see what that is.

That's more of just a normal drum sound.

I suppose that I was trying to get a little more punch out of it.

I find if I add these samples, like especially with the sub in this,

because there's a little bit 100 hertz and 150 on this kick sample,

it actually punches up that...

Fills in the gap between my... the drum supplied and my...

It's pretty subtle.

But, it's there.

What's that? What have we got here?

Let me see what I did with this.

So I think I've got crashes here.

There's no room, or there's no real spread.

And I thought once I got other instruments in because I usually have more instrument.

I don't just go through the drums.

I would have had everything in, even if it's lower than it's going to be,

I would have had everything including the vocal in while getting these sounds.

And often overheads, especially when they're stereo,

I like how it takes the focus off the center.

If you're going to have the vocal in the center.

I don't like all that drum stuff having a focal point right in the center.

So I think that's why I did this spread on the snare.

Created a room sound out of the snare by adding this SansAmp for the distortion.

Let's see.

The honk brings out a little bit of the snare honk.

This is set to be an expander, EvenTide Omnipressor.

It's mainly taking off some of that...

I'm getting rid of a little bit of that so it's not quite so messy.

Basically a gate.

Some EQ, or not.

More of a gate, but I don't think that's really doing much.

I think there's a little compression on there.

And then one of my favorite plug-ins of the last couple of years

is this Brainworx Stereomaker.

I mean for spreading stuff, like...

making it sound like you just have two mics on an instrument instead of one,

I haven't found anything that does that.

And you can do stuff with delays and phase and all that,

but it's doing it for you in a really nice way.

Plus, you have all these parameters you can adjust this high-dampening,

a whole range of tones here, tilt mode.

EQ so you can actually, with equalization, get it more left or right.

It's really useful for say a hi-hat if you want it to sound like

it's coming through the overheads instead of...

And it wasn't done with the overheads or percussion that had one close mic on it

and you want it to sound like maybe it was a distant stereo mic or something.

Plus you can just pan it within its own field and then output gain.

And you can mono-ize the low frequencies.

So it's a really comprehensive, very cool plug-in.

You'll see it a lot in my mixes these days.

Hi-hat, pretty normal stuff.

Looks like I didn't do anything to that.

Toms. Oh, yeah.

What's that plug-in again?

Oh, it's a SansAmp. Okay, great.

I end up using that a lot for various reasons.

For crunch, just EQ, smoothing out the top of something,

or if it's too ratty but I don't want to lose the top.

I can't say all the things that it does.

It's a miracle worker.

That's what it is, a miracle worker.