Original subtitles

The other thing that can happen when dealing with subs,

we like to try to think about smaller speakers

or basically what doesn't even sound like a speaker these days,

like on an iPhone or a smartphone or a computer, a laptop,

you're not going to get your subs.

If all you have... if the kick drum, I've done it where I've had songs

which I just like no mid range on it, so when the kick drum hits,

it's really just like a...

It's quite a beautiful tone.

But is that going to translate onto a smartphone or a laptop?

Probably not.

And I think a lot of people do this.

I've been doing it for years.

I do it with SansAmp, but if you add in a little distortion

and listen at a low level on a smaller speaker if you can,

you can usually get some harmonics that'll at least show its presence

on those little speakers without compromising that sound that you have.

It can be very dull.

I can add a really dull SansAmp distorted sound,

not like square-waving it where you hear the squares,

you can really low pass it right down to say 800Hz or something

and it's just like a... almost like a throaty thing.

It just takes some play, takes some time.

But then, you just work it in enough where you're satisfied that it's not

hurting the sound that you're going for on your big speakers,

but it does give it a presence.

Maybe not as loud, but at least, it's there on the smaller speakers.

Try that with a SansAmp.

I think it's easier with a SansAmp.

I'm going to move on to the percussion now.

I just want to say after... we'll go through the building blocks.

This is not how it would have been mixed.

I don't remember exactly, but I can give you an idea

of my process quickly.

It's hard to...

I think you have to see it, that's why I think the seminars,

like the week-long especially, you'll see me mix three, four songs a day,

all different genres, so you can see my process

of how different music gets mixed differently, what comes in first,

what stays in for me to get a drum sound, what comes out for me to get a bass sound.

It's different every song, and it's a really important part of this.

But for right now, I'm just going to, I'm showing you my colors.

Now, we're going on to okra.

We just went through the green.

Green is drums, percussion is okra.

I can do that, I'm from Texas, okay?

I can make fun of my old accent.

It looks like I've, yeah.

I have done some stuff to this and gated everything.

I guess I really wanted to leave the sounds in between the beats to the drums.

I don't remember that.

I mean, come on.

That's so cool to have in with that drum beat.

I love it.

Let's see.

There's the old Tchad Blake not liking top end very much.

I'm bringing up... I don't know if my ears are used to it,

but APIs sound, I don't know.

I always get the feeling that they sound like 800 or 1.5k,

just the API electronics, so I like to push it.

It just may have been the room at the Sound Factory that I used to work in,

it always had the sort of woody nobly sound without the clicky ticky.

It's like when you hit two pieces of wood together.

Listen to the "Earth Died Screaming" from Tom Waits

that whole beginning is just pieces of wood being clucked together

and on cement, and that's the sort of range I'm talking about.

I just love that range.

Maybe it's also listening to a lot of ethnic records,

that's what I started listening to first, was African music and tribal music.

It's all done with sticks on wood.

I just love that sound.

If I take this off, you'll see.

Let's see what we've got here.

If I brought that up in level in the song, it would have a shimmer

and it would be a thing that might have with the drums.

It takes you away from the...

It would raise the, almost like the pitch gets raised.

But for some reason at the time, I didn't like that.

I wanted just this to stay right in there with the drums.

I've really brought up that frequency range I like.

Obviously, I'm just trying to get rid of any foot noise around the mic,

low frequency that might be in there.

I don't think there's any use for that in a song like this.

Tickling the meters.

There it goes. Not much.

And then, get rid of whatever noise there might be there in between.

This looks like I did a little bit more.

Maybe we'll take one at a time here.

Again.

It sounds like really nice percussion, like studio percussion.

I want it to sound more tribal.

That's better for me.

And then, just trying to separate these things,

like put this percussion maybe behind...

The tambourines are doubled, so they've got their own stereo field.

And then, maybe just to set this guy back a little bit more,

but kind of with them.

That makes it sound like they're more together to me.

That EQ just brings it forward a little bit, that's not much there.

That's quite a bit.

That's just to bring up the tail end really, rings out a little bit more.

That, I've done the most to, let's see.

Again, I'm probably just trying to separate it from the other percussion.

If you want to, you can.

You can go right to it and hear it in your head.

That didn't speak to me.

In the context of this track, it wouldn't after the drums being like that.

I think that would be, I don't know, a flutter.

Let's make it into more of a part.

And that just accentuates that area that I like it even more.

That smooths it out a little bit.

Very noisy with... Now, what I've done with it

is made it quite noisy.

Get rid of that noise.

And then, I would have put it in, and then went, I don't know.

It's all quite samey.

Maybe I can make it change up each time.

Now, that changes the medium rate.

Works for me.

And then, it's just a color in there, and you just hear it poke out

every once in a while.

Next, we have the bass.

It looks like I did a fair amount.

I think, yeah, it was quite pokey, and I thought maybe,

I didn't want to really get rid of the pokeyness to it,

but it must have been a few hits in there which I guess you can see these spikes.

That doesn't always mean anything, but I think in this one, it might have.

Let's see what we had.

It's a very cool bass sound.

I like that.

Just want to see how much this...

I'm just getting rid of those leading peaks here, 3k.

Three dB.

Oh, 6dB.

They actually don't sound that bad to me if I solo it, but I would have heard it

maybe in the track, or maybe I listened on headphones once and I just was,

oh, that's a little bit distracting from the beat coming together.

But just listening to it without that on its own, I like that.

Sometimes, you can like sibilance or a lip smack, but then in the track,

it really detracts from the rhythm, and then you need to bring it down.

Let's see what I did here.

Brought out a little bit more of the mid range.

Look.

I'm not sure why I did that.

Had the level down.

I don't normally do that.

If you watched me mix, I'm moving around and going back and forth between things,

so sometimes, if that EQ would have been open

and I had something solo'ed, I might have just said, I need to turn that down.

But I might have actually put a little bit of automation in here already.

I just need to turn it down.

It's open, so I'll just go, bam, just turn it down there for now

and never think about it again.

That could be that.

Maybe it was hitting these too hard, and instead of turning it down

at the clip, because I didn't want to readjust the suppressor,

I turned it down here.

Don't hold it against me.

I'm lazy. I'll do stuff like that.

Fuck it. Just bring that down and move on.

And then, if it's not a problem later, if I don't hear a problem later,

then it's not a problem.

Let's see what I did next.

I would have had one of these on from the get.

That would have just been on when I started.

Let's see.

Tickling the needle.

I don't like to use my plug-ins like crazy.

To my ear, they don't sound good in the extremities,

I think I've been through that in some other videos.

If I want more out of that one, instead of doing more with this one,

I'll just add another one, and then try to set it to where I think

that flavor would have been if I was using an analog one,

how I remember them reacting.

That's all I'm going by.

I'm not A/Bing it, I'm not thinking, I've got to get this sound,

I'm just thinking I remember 160s giving me this sound.

We all know what our memories are like, especially when you get to be my age.

This is probably something I would have put on

after going back and forth in the track and just thought it needs more that.

And I could do it.

So I did.

And this is a great EQ by the way.

I love what Empirical Labs does, I always have.

Right from the first product.

I got a Distressor, he actually sent me one to try.

I don't normally get stuff for free, but he sent me one to try,

and I don't think he was in production yet, I'm not sure.

I'd have to ask him.

It was along the session. I remember being in New York and getting it.

I had it on for about a minute and tried it on three things,

and I didn't want to give it back.

The Distressor was, for me, it's still probably the best compressor

ever made hands down.

When he came out with this, I tried it.

And I just think it sounds great.

And I love how he's addressed the bumps that you get with your low pass filtering.

Depending on where you go with your filtering, it shows you the bump,

and you can correct it with this little cue if you don't want that bump in there.

I love the way this sounds, but at the same time,

I just thought the ergonomics of it, the skin that he's made.

It's a personal thing.

SSL has always been really easy to me to look at,

but the later Neves, if I look at it, I go, ah, I can't figure it out.

Some EQs, I look at, and I go, oh shit.

But the first time I put this up, I went, oh yeah, bam, bam, bam.

I loved all the parameters he gives you,

and you can put this down, you can fine-tune every one of these bands.

And it has this little Distressor box on it, so that's pretty cool.

I love this EQ.

Now, we'll look at these guitars.

Lovely ringing bell sounds on this guitar, I think it's great.

I'm adding quite a bit of top end and that's it.

I've got a filter on here.

I have a lot of these filters on.

To my ears, I don't like to hear a harsh sizzly top on everything.

I would rather it sounded a little dull and have a few things be bright

than everything have that.

You'll see me. I'll almost do that as a matter of course.

I know it goes against all the rules in engineering school, but there you go.

Not doing much there.

Quite a bit happening with that Cooper Time Cube.

But be aware.

You can see my delay compensation here is maxed out.

Whatever that Cooper is set to, it's probably actually double.

The plate, I didn't hear that.

Let me see.

It's automated.

I just gave it a bit of a tail end here with the plate.

On that little gliss down.

So typical.

Again, I'm spreading it out.

Make it sound like it's all been played together.

Not that that's always important, but in this song, it sounded better to me

to not have those be so specific here, but more...

And then, we have a Groovy.

What's the EQ on that?

Don't know. Same thing.

Probably just cut and pasted, just pasted the EQ down quickly

and never went back to it.

It happens a lot.

I'll hear that guitar and go, oh yeah, I want some 15k on there, bam.

And then, I'll move on, and then go to something else

and forget about that, it's fine.

I don't sit there and try to go, oh, is that right on this guitar?

Maybe, it needs something else.

If it sounding all right. It sounds all right.

Feedback.

And here, I've got some movement on it.

I'm adding a little bit of lower mids.

Taking some of the uncontrollable... out if it's there.

I don't even know if I heard it, but I did it.

There's my traditional 12k cut.

It's a very soft cut.

I don't know what it is really, but it's not major.

You probably can't hear it anyway.

Another bit of tickling.

This is my version of what I used, was my setup in the studio with a H3000

that had a patch in it called Buenos Noches, and it's a set of filters,

I've gone through this before too.

It's a set of filters.

If I remember, the number 8 comes up, and I don't know if it was that many.

But they're just, it's like a high/low pass filter that's,

I make it slowly modulate, and I've made a hack of it here

with a MetaFlanger, a MondoMod, and an EQ

because it was quite dull.

And then, I run that through what used to be an SRS.

But now, with the advent of, especially Atmos and stems and all this,

it's just much easier to be able to have it all where it can be done offline,

not have to adjust for delay compensation and changing

and sync issues with the stems.

I've gone, here, I love this.

It's the closest I've gotten to what I did with the SRS and the Buenos Noches.