Then you end up getting situations when it's peaking and
you can't control the volume and the last thing you want to do in a mix
is not being able to control your overall volume.
You want to be at a good level especially when you send it to the mastering stage,
which is what we're going to talk about.
I always start with one instruments and since I do a lot of more electronic stuff,
especially now, I tend to start with the kick drum.
What I'll do is just solo the kick drum by itself or turn everything down,
whatever way you want to do it.
Make sure it's at a low level and then gradually add the rest of
the parts of the beat to that kick drum, balancing against each other and
slowly start bringing in each part of the arrangement one at a time.
What that does is it almost forces you to take a new look at your production.
A lot of times when I've done this,
I found that there were parts of my production I didn't want in there anymore.
Because I bring it up and
I think that actually didn't work as well as I thought it would have worked.
For me, it's so important to just start fresh in one element at a time.
>> I think you bring something really interesting right in there in that
you chose this process because of the type of music that you're making.
And that's something that we haven't talked about yet in this class,
but we all have many processes that we use.
>> Definitely. >> And you said right then,
I'm doing this type of music,
this is the process I'll take because you know from experience what that leads to.
>> Absolutely.
>> I'm wondering what's your process with this for what kind of music?
>> I work with a lot of singer songwriters and rock bands and things like that.
I start with the vocal.
Because if you start with the vocal and
you make that sound like a record by itself, like this is an a capella record,
you get the effects just right, you get the compression just right,
you just clip gain to where it's hitting the compressor just right.
All that stuff to where the vocal is just right there,
then you start putting things in around it and never mute it.
>> [SOUND] >> You're making everything conform to
that, but in some ways, it's very freeing because you can let things get larger and
envelope the vocal once you've established where that's going to be.
>> Mm-hm. >> And then,
I will go through a lot of stages of mixing, I do try muting a lot of things.
I try to see what's the least amount that I can get away with.
And that sometimes is just eureka moments of, my gosh, it sounds amazing, just for
this first verse just to be vocal, and bass, and drums, and
then bring in the harmonic instruments later, or vice versa.
And then I start taking some breaks and coming back and doing different checks.
How's the low ends hitting?
Is it kicking me in the chest the way I want to?
How's the kick in the bass really coupling together?
How is that going?
And then, how is the top entry?
Is it nice and bright?
Am I getting the aural excitement that I want to have out of the thing?
Then trying it on different systems, listening as I'm mixing.
Listening to it out in the car,
listening to it on the laptop, listening to it on all different kind of systems.
>> Yeah, so you're bouncing out renders, >> Absolutely.
>> And then bring it to your phone or something and
bringing it to all these different locations, checking it out.
>> And doing save as, after save as, after save as.
Sometimes I just put the time, save as Monday PM 5:45.
>> Yeah, the time.
>> Because you always want to be able to get back.
When I'm doing a mix, I may save anywhere from five to 30 different versions.
>> Interesting, you were saying you got all the vocal and all the effects totally
done on it right away and that's actually really different than I approach it.
I try to focus on volume and
panning, I try to get as close as I can get to the final with just those.