Transcription
What's up, guys? David here. Welcome to another video. In this one, we are going to break down the mastering session for a song that I did some time ago. It's called "Quamer" by artist Cazya. You can find the song everywhere. You can find the video on YouTube; it's doing quite well.
This was a fairly simple, so to speak, master because the mix was really good. But the reason because I picked this one is because for this specific track, I went for tone over loudness. It was much more important for me to have a really big low end, a warm sound on this track than going for ultra-loud, which first of all wouldn't have fit the track well. This is kind of a moody, intimate song. You will hear it in a minute. And of course, I would have had to sacrifice something, uh, tone-wise, in this case the low end. There's always the battle: low end versus loudness, right? So this is the reason. Let's take a look at what I've done.
This is the project right here. Of course, this is a hybrid mastering, so I have some hardware—nothing major; I actually only have five pieces of hardware. You will see it in a minute—and a few plugins. So first of all, let's hear the mix versus the master. The mix is the green track at the top; then we have the master right here in red; and then the blue track, which is, uh, the file that I use for the session. Notice, like I said, I'm pushing the volume of the mix 6 dB louder, and I'm lowering my master of 4 dB, so there's a 10 dB difference in favor of the mix. So you can hear, uh, hopefully the tonal balances instead of the massive volume difference, because even if I didn't go for maximum loudness, it's obviously still hell of a lot louder than the mix. And as you can see even from the track, I kept it very dynamic. That was the second reason as to why I wanted to show you this. Size, especially of the low end, and macro dynamics were much more important than aiming for a specific number at the loudness stage. The take-home message here would be: yes, loudness goes hand in hand with mastering, but it's not the end goal. All right, let's hear it; mix first.
[Music]
All this good stuff happening to you. Know what that means? That you're favored by God. When you're favored by God, you're also favored by the Devil; he's coming for you.
[Music]
Coming for ee…
[Music]
What you should hear immediately are a few things. And keep in mind the mix is actually peaking much, much louder than the mix; actually, it peaks at 0.1, and my master is minus 4.1. If we were to put the fader of the master at zero, pay attention to your monitors; turn the volume down now, 'cause there's going to be a massive difference. This would be the difference.
[Music]
Okay, so a little louder. We all know this, but the things that you should have heard right off the bat are—I want to say probably three. Number one: low end. Low end is the most apparent thing. We have this massive, round, warm low end on the master; right, not that the mix didn't have any, but I really felt this song needed this weight. It just goes well with the groove. Okay, the second thing: the vocals. All the low-level information are all here. You can hear everything, 'cause again, this is—it feels like an intimate song, right? There's not many effects on the vocal, just a couple of throws; it's pretty dry. So you want it right here; at the same time, you don't want it harsh. That's key, because the more intimate and the more close to the listener the vocals feel, the more smooth they have to be, or—or at least the more attention you have to pay that they don't come out harsh; otherwise, you know, you do this when you're listening, right? We talked about it. The other thing, of course, is the density. All the instruments feel more glued; there's just more density in the mix. That's what we do. And something else that is subtle, but once I make you pay attention to it, you will hear it: there's this kind of 3D effect on the mix, which I'll show you how I did it. All right, let's get started on the processing.
We only have two plugins before going out to our analog chain. The first one: it's SplitEQ. What I did here: I wanted a little more punch for the kick drum. If you notice the kick drum is kind of round, and it doesn't have a clear transient, right, like an EDM song would have, and it's fine; that's an artistic choice; it fits the track well. So I wasn't looking to change that, but I still wanted a little more snappiness, so to speak, because it's also kind of slow, which again fits the track, but I wanted more punch in the 50 Hz area. You can see my boost here is a 4—8, 4 dB only on the transient portion. With SplitEQ, we can do this to get this big low end that I was hearing in my head. Started, and I say started because the heavy lifting has been done with the analog EQs, but this gives me more punch; it gives me a better raw material to feed to the hardware, right? Because now that range is a little more snappy; has a little more transient. The key, as always with SplitEQ, especially when working on the low end, is this at the bottom right: separation, decay, and smooth. This is what I like to really fine-tune, and what I like to do is to solo the band that I'm working on and then make sure that it only grabs what I want to boost; in this case, so, uh, let's first of all hear it with and without.
[Music]
[Music]
Right, should be pretty clear. We already have a little more aggression, so to speak, even though it's still a round kick and still have this almost flam type of transient. Now I have a little more snappiness. Okay, super simple. I can solo it to you so you can hear how I fine-tuned.
[Music]
It. All right, it just grabs the kick drum. Okay, after this, the only plugin I have is Oxford Inflator, and I'm at 20 something. Per curve is neutral, and what I usually do—I know because I do it all the time—I don't put this now, and then I start doing the master with the analog. I do the opposite, so I'm showing you this one now because it's right after the SplitEQ, but what happens is I start doing the master with the analog, and then I decide if I want to push the track a little more into the chain, and more often than not I just push it with volume. I have several units that have clean gain that I can push into my chain with, or if I want a colored type of gain, that's when I use Oxford Inflator. I had a little bit of grit and again more density going into the hardware, so we can still hear it. I bypassed all the hardware so you can hear what it does.
[Music]
Man, why I like it, because if you hear—this is partially responsible for bringing a little bit of the top end of the vocal up, the hats up a little, and the snare up a little. So everything that is in kind of the mid-range and is transient or somehow has energy in the mid-range, this one kind of pushes it a little bit more. Okay, from here we go out to the chain. We have SPL PQ; this does the main EQ on the track; we have three bands: top, high mids, and mids. Then we have the WesAudio NG bus compressor for the compression, and then let me open the WesAudio patch. You can see here in the toos we have the A25 EQ and the PTE EQ, and that's going to be interesting 'cause I kind of divided my sweetening in EQ. All right, so it's a fairly standard, so to speak, uh, analog chain: clean EQ with the PQ, then compression, and then after that sweetening EQ. Last piece of gear, we have the Spacecraft on the Moon. I'll show you that at the end.
All right, like I said, we have three bands here: two very, very minor boosts at the very top, high mids and a 1 dB and a half cut at 130, 125 Hertz, 'cause it was a tiny bit too much, especially because I'm about to boost quite a lot of low end with the other two EQs without first.
[Music]
Let me boost the frequencies for you so you can hear them in action. I'm going to bypass the other two.
[Music]
Okay, so this one grabs the hat and the snare, obviously. Okay, just 1 dB. The second one is even less; is half a dB, but here, let's hear the difference again.
[Music]
This one is the snare, so a little lower than the previous, and the vocals; it just adds a little more presence to the vocal, right? And then we have the buildup, so to speak. This wasn't really that much, but enough to make a difference, especially when you start pushing things. So this, we have 1 dB and a half at 125. Let's boost this one and see how it sounds.
[Music]
This is clear as day, right? Is this resonance like this on the vocal? So 1 dB and a half; we cut it a little bit. After the PQ, we have the NG bus compressor, which is right here on my left, but we can take a look at the plugin; it's easier. This is again fairly simple, although it's quite different than my usual settings for a song like this. In fact, if you look at my attack, it's fairly fast for me. If you follow me, you know my usual attack in mastering is pretty slow, between 15 and 30, right? Instead, here I'm touching five, and my release is also slower than my usual. I like this compressor because I can get away with a faster attack, and it's clean; it doesn't stutter; it doesn't give me a weird artifact, so I really like it. But again, for this song it didn't fit, because usually my fast attack is when I—I don't want to say is that is the only reason—but when I push for loudness, of course, I want something that is more alive and more snappy and more sustained. So the—so the fast release gives me just that, right? The—the push right after the compression. Okay, this one is relaxed; has got this really—not just big, but also long. We—we are going to hear it. The—what the other two EQs did is extend a little bit that kick drum, that big 808, right? So the nervous release here didn't really work well. So kind of different changes. My side chain is still—still pretty high at 150, but I did not want the compressor to react to that low end, 'cause I really went for dynamic and big. Okay, and I have a little bit of THD; I am making up the gain for 1.5 dB, and I'm probably compressing a little more. So let's do without first.
[Music]
Right, this is straightforward; pretty simple; is reacting to the snare, which is at this point the loudest element in that mid-range. Why I did this: first of all, because it glues things a little better, but with my boost with the SPL pushing into the compressor, you feel that the snare now is not so out on top of the vocal. It is supposed to be on top of the vocals, right? Because just the nature of the range of the vocalist, it sits lower, but it feels a little more glued. I'm also using it in stereo, which is quite uncommon; I usually prefer dual mono, but this one really needed to be steady. I didn't do anything mid-side: no EQ, no compression, nothing. I wanted a strong mono because, to me, intimate is really focused, right? We don't have that many things going on on the sides; I didn't want to shift the mids with the sides; it needed to be consistent. After this, we have the two EQs, and the sequence is A25 first and the PTE after. Let's take a look. Probably one that is going to make more difference. This is the main sweetening EQ. We have four out of five bands engaged. You will see: low end, 60 Hz, 4 dB; then we have a cut, minus one, at 3K; then a boost of 1 dB at 8K; and then 1 dB at 5K. These are shelf; this is a bell; this is a bell; this is a shelf. So let's hear.
[Music]
It. All right, this is pretty obvious. The most evident thing here is the low end, like I mentioned earlier. You hear—it feels like now it's longer. That was really the kind of tone that I was looking for. And we have another couple of boosts, just mostly to compensate for the big low end and keep that sparkle at the top. I can—I mean, the low end, I don't need to push it; you can hear it, but I will show you the cut at 3K. I will boost this one so you can hear where I'm cutting a little bit.
[Music]
For… okay, so pretty clear, uh, this—these two are a push-pull; one cuts a little bit, 1 dB at 3K, so it smooths out a little bit, and this one pushes a little bit on 5K. You heard how smooth and sweet this EQ is. We talked about it a million times. I—I—I love this thing so much because of that. And so the top shelf, which is barely audible; that's how smooth it is. But we are actually boosting an extra dB. After this, we have the PTE. The PTE is there for two reasons: one, just for the box tone, just for the color of the box itself; and—and in fact, the only move that I've done—and we can take a look—it's half a click at 30; everything else it's not used: not the top end, not the mid-range, nothing. This is because I kind of split the low-end boost with two EQs. Instead of pushing 5 dB with an A25 on the low end, I pushed four and I left half a dB there because the PTE will—here have, I don't know, some magic happening at the bottom. It's very close, not in tone but as a concept, to my 542s—the D 542s that I would have used—but in this case I needed this, uh, boost in the low end cleaner than what the 542s give me. And the A25 is—it is colored, but it's a very subtle color: the—the box tone, right? The unit itself. And because of the transient being kind of flammy on the kick, I didn't want to run the risk of that being confused for distortion. So I wanted this high-edge room clean; still there's a tube enhancement in it; that's why it feels longer, but it's not crunchy. And the PTE is there—is just the color of the box; it does something to the material, and just adding half a click is not really the boost; it's just engaging that circuit, and it mixes everything a little deeper at the bottom. Pay attention; you should probably wear either really good headphones or have mains or a sub, but let's hear it.
[Music]
I can actually bypass them both here and so you can hear the difference without either of.
[Music]
[Music]
Them. Hey, you notice not just the—the low end; if you pay attention, there's way more clarity in the vocals and the hat again because of the top boost with the A25. And then we go finally to the Spacecraft on the Moon, which adds that special depth thing, which is again kind of sorcery; this machine. I didn't widen the mix; I didn't do anything, 'cause like I said before, I kind of wanted to keep it intimate and not going rock and roll wide; this is not the song. So you've seen this master is kind of all very subtle moves to get to the result, when—when you put them all together, they make the big difference that we heard at the beginning. So let's take a look at the Spacecraft. All right, this one is again very simple; it's just one knob, one function used. So this unit has the widener, has the depth, uh, has many functions; one of them is the zoom. All right, this is the only one that I use. You can see my setting is like a 9:00, which is probably as high or close to as high as I will ever go. This is so program-dependent; that's not a right or wrong way, or even less a set-and-forget; it's totally by ear. You have to pay attention to phase; you have to pay attention to a lot of things. Put it back to zero and exaggerate the setting so you can hear it.
[Music]
Okay, if you paid attention, you heard that it literally just adds space; that's what it's called; it just kind of gives the song this 3D. And in a track like this, when you don't have many effects, when you don't have that much, uh, going on in the stereo field, this is a very, very subtle effect, but this is exactly what I wanted. So that was the last piece of hardware that we have; then we go back into Pro Tools. After Pro Tools, because we are working with really high sample rate for mastering, I have my absolute favorites: infrasonic and ultrasonic from Toyon Lab. We talked about this before, uh, as my filters coming back from the analog chain, just to make sure. And you see in this case I'm even cutting a little with it; usually I keep the low cut past 20; in this case, because we have a hefty boost, and my boost with the A25 is, uh, in shelf mode, I just want it to contain a little bit; and so is a 21.5. You want to hear the difference unless you have like a full main system, but you can see the settings and the—the 20K is just a safety net coming back from, again, the analog chain being a high sample rate, and there is going to be additional content for members only. So this video ends here, but if you're a member, you can see the extra content, which is the loudness part, so to speak. I hope you guys like the video. If you want to book mix and mastering with me, go to the website mixb.tv.com. In there you can also find all the mix and mastering courses, book private lessons, mix consultations, and a lot more. If you want to access the exclusive library of mix and mastering videos here on YouTube, including this one and the additional content, click the Join button, become a MixB TV member, access the library, get all the perks, and if the videos are helping you, please consider using the Super Thanks or grab some merch. Thank you for watching; subscribe if you haven't already; stay safe; see you next time. With my kiss poison on your lips, never again when I let someone in; aching within my soul, tragedy and my bone.