So I thought a really good exercise to do is to go through each instrument and give you an idea of the kind of dynamic tools that I'll be using, you know, I would be using if I was trying to get this mixed into shape. And as always have a look into your example file all of these files there. So you can play along with your own da W, and also your hardware recorder if you're able to import that into your hardware recorder. So first thing let's have a listen to a kick drum. What's the first thing that sticks out? right?

Exactly that snare drum is bleeding through, right. So what's the tool of choice to get rid of drum bleed? Absolutely. It is a gate. So we'll insert here, plug in Dynamics and we'll go to expand it. gait.

Okay, so here we go. And here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to bring up, they're probably due yet I have one here, and noise gate for a kick drum. And let's basically what I like to do is go through the presets, if they got a preset, then you know, most of the works been done for you. And then you're free to tweak that. And also, it just helps new learning to kind of see, like we said before, how other engineers how the other smart folks at Pro Tools or logic audio, how they come up with these. And then you can kind of it's not like you have to use these presets, but there tend to be a good starting point.

So you can see right now, the range is it's it's almost muting. So let's actually hear this. Okay, what I'm looking for is that are there any of those leading kick drums that are not making it so for example, if this was set to here, Then we're getting nothing, right? So it needs to be down here, you could imagine that this would pass some kick drum notes, but not all of them. You certainly don't want to be down here or everything's going to be coming through. So you just want to be looking at these levels.

Okay? If you've got too long release, things will bleed through the API to shorter release, then it'll start standing unnatural. And you'll get clicking things like that. We don't want that same thing with the attack. If you want that really fast, you may get clicking. Yes.

So probably about here, and what I might do is not you know, pull all that out. That's a big difference. Check that out versus maybe tighten that release up a bit. Okay, the next thing I want to do is place a compressor on that. Bring up a factory of bolt, when we got here, kick, tighten kick. Sorry.

So a big difference between a kick tight and a kick them, like I said before is the attack. If we make that fast, now it's more kind of a round time. We definitely don't want that you want to let that initial transit get through. You know what's going on is that that's a part of the song Where it's not making it through the gate. So what I might do here is bring that threshold down. Okay, so that's working a bit better there.

So that's what you got to do every time you start working with it. Some of these drums if you set up your levels and setup your threshold for your gates and your compressors, you really got to go through the whole length of the song because sometimes the dynamics will change so much that those really small snare wraps and grace notes won't make it through the gates and your compressors. Okay, so now we're going to be working on this snare drum track and by the look of this waveform, I can guess this is probably a snare drum. And then this is a side stick. Let's see my hunches right. And here and I bet this is a two and a four snare because These bikes are further apart.

Australia to for wear, this is a kind of a double time plan as well. So what's the first thing that stands out to you we've actually done this exercise already, right, is that we want to reduce the disparity between the loud snare drum hits and the size stick. So what what tool do you use? Absolutely go over here and we'd bring up dynamics and we bring up a compressor. And you know what, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I'm going to go down here snare compressor and see if this helps.

First thing I want to do is to go to the quieter parts and see where the threshold is set so that the quieter parts aren't being compressed, and wouldn't know it perfectly. This this preset is doing a really good job. There's no gain reduction on these on the side stick but as soon as we get these snare drums, we should start seeing some reduction. Not seeing a whole lot. Maybe you need to bring up the ratio of it. Or maybe bring that down just a little bit.

So we're seeing a little bit more there. But all in all, I think the that preset is actually going to work pretty well on this track. Like I said before, if you want, once you set up this first compressor to really reduce the disparity between the snare hits, and in the hi hats, sorry, not the high hat, the sidestick hits, then you could actually place another compressor after that in that series. Remember, we set them up in serial. So yeah, one after the other. So the first one is just to reduce the disparity between these two different instruments and it's still just one snare drum.

It's just the way that it's being hit. These guys here is just a full on, you know hitting a snare drum. And then this is just laying that the stick across the snare drum and just, you know, hitting the rim. So the first one could be just getting these more kind of in the same ballpark. And then you could place another compressor in series up to this, to just handle some of the more nuances in terms of the dynamics once they're in the same ballpark that are made possible by this first compressor. So moving on to the high hats, what's the first thing you might want to do with the high hats?

In fact, we have the Tom's all of these guys, right here. Right overhead, all of them are great candidates for gating and also compressing we've kind of seen all those examples. Okay, so let's look at the bass guitar. So I'm gonna make that nice and jumbo so we can see it and I'm also going to solo that you See if any of these other tracks are solid right now. So we're just listening to the bass guitar. Okay, here we go.

So what do you hear first thing I hear is very clean is no need for any gates on that at all. Also I there's a there's a neat kind of sound at the at the beginning of that of each attack is a nice bit of a tactic that I definitely do not want to crash. So anyway, let's go. Let's tread carefully with a compressor. So we're going to dynamics, compressor limiter, and let's see it see if we can bring up a bass guitar and see what's going on. The attack is good, I might lengthen that attack.

We'll see how it sounds. See where it was, it's probably good. That's right about now that would bring in the drums and just see how that sit in the mix. I think that nice line is working pretty well and Matt Lowe sorry, bring up that threshold a little bit, not crushing it quite as much. I think that's fine. I mean the thing that the candidate for this that stands out to me is each doing this bass part needs to get some EQ and to get a little bit more bite out of it, but that's another master series we'll look at in the EQ setting.

So that bass guitar. What else do we have here? Let's have a look at some of these guitars. Okay, moving along to electric guitar. This is an electric guitar right here. And let's have a quick listen to him the dynamic range so here's what's going on.

First up is it Noisy, noisy. I suspect that has been edited out there but that's there's definitely no noise there. But as you can see by this waveform here plus when we play it, it's like in that 90 forget is no need for a compressor. A lot of guitar amps will have that. You know, I'm not sure what this guy was going through. Maybe he was going through some some pedal boards gave that compression some apps will give you that natural compression.

But I don't see any real candidates dynamic processing in here. Here's another electric guitar and you can see compared to the last one, this looks like it's a clean electric. Now you are starting to see some dynamic range. And because a lot of these chords of 3434 if you want to meant to wring out a little longer, you know, a little gentle compression might be worthwhile here, let's bring up the dynamics. And you know what I'm gonna go with that very first one, which is the acoustic guitar. Let's see where that's going to reduce the going to give this a little bit more sustained.

Okay, it's betting that you could even extend that release. Wonder how that works with the distorted guitar. See that just that little bit of compression there is gonna allow that to sit in the pocket, you know sit in that mix a little bit better than it would have been if there was no compression on this, this clean electric guitar. So distorted guitars have a lot of sustain just because of the nature of distortion but a clean guitar can quite often use just a little bit of compression. Go moving on to an acoustic guitar and on an acoustic guitar, I would definitely want to, you know, normally expect to see these spikes where there's the picking sound and then it's typically acoustic guitar is not gonna have the sustain of electric guitar. Going through a turret right?

So therefore if we wanted to add a little dynamics in terms of compression there, I might even go with that same acoustic guitar and see what that does. First round let's look at this pie now. It's a fairly narrow dynamic range. So it doesn't really scream out to be compressed but let's actually just try it. One thing you will notice because it's a stereo track is it's going to be a multi channel plugin. And so if we go to dynamics here and add a compressor, this will be a stereo compressor.

And I want to start out with the most gentle one which is the acoustic guitar. Any congressional member if I was going to put anything up Okay, so let's get started on vocals in your example folder, your seats free male vocals and Pre female vocals, the first one. So up here, and the first thing I noticed is that I see a big disparity in terms of the audio waveform here. Let me just check that and kind of listen to this vocal. While I'm looking at the level made, it's a dream man have a place only love can go. And you begin believing.

One thing I do notice is that these are basically the same phrases. Right, that's top here, and this is the best the next line here. And these tend to be a little quieter than these guys here. So this could handle a little bit of compression, just to even out those levels. I don't have the luxury of listening to the backing tracks right now and you'll just have just these vocals just by themselves, but you can probably surmise by the style. The vocal but this is not going to be a really busy pop song like that it's going to be a fairly sparse arrangement.

So that the job of compression, if we're going to use compression is not to remash this vertical, it's just to even out just you know, here's a great example of these, these two meet display that again, ah, Ben is up about here. And then that kind of echo on the next slide is you, Ben, you Ben is down a little low. So a little gentle compression can basically level those guys out. Let's give this a try. So plug in Dynamics. And I'm going to select the very first one, which is a very subtle compression, and we'll start from the top of it dream Three go.

This is Ben, the leaving orally No, I would probably just go with this the way it is. And we'll advance to this part of the song and then we'll certainly see some more gang reduction here. Now that should change your cost might bump up that ratio just a little bit. Now that you change your cost and do you want Okay, so there's some distortion there. Maybe that's just my headphones right now. Oh, yeah, that might have been on the original recording.

I'm not sure when you're hearing that. But anyway, that is a good example of what I do with a book like this just I mean really touch just Have a few of those little peaks and bring them under control. Compare that to the next track. We're bringing up male vocal to and we'll look at the level, you'll run through the heels. Run yourself to the grave. What's a user never trying.

So this is a great candidate for compression. Because these parts, they're run to the hills, you know, that's a lot lower level than these spikes up here. And if we set a vocal so that this sits nicely mixpanel lose some of this stuff. So you know what to do. We've done this enough times before. And let me bring up a new vocals.

Yeah, compressor here, and let's see what's going on here. So we've got a little bit of a soft knee. I would bring the ratio up a bit more and let's see what's going on. Maybe the threshold needs to be bumped up. You run through the hills, run itself to the grave. What's a use and never trying to look at that as a I mean the big notes and then the rest of this I kind of living in the same area, a run through the heels run itself to the grave might bump the attack.

Run through the heels and listen to what's the user nearby trying to notice that when you when you speed up the attack, the transit will be lost and consequently the sound become duller. So if you want something to bite and get through the mix, then you'll just want to adjust that attack. And like we said before, bring that out if you take it out too much Then you know, you're gonna start picking some of these levels. So you see this from the yo ramp a run through the heels, run itself to the grave. See we're starting to peek over here. Don't want to go there it becomes Darwin you can be saved.

Whereas the undying liar. Oh, the nice thing about that is that's bringing up some of the growl on his voice because this is kind of a big shot moment in this kind of a growl down here. And when you start compressing that down, and then bring up into a makeup game here, I'm liking the way this is sounding you run through the heels, run yourself to the grave. What's a use and never trying? nice voice. Now this third example, we've heard this before, and the thing is, you know, obviously sticks out to me is some of these big notes that are going to need to be timed but also listen to the vocal quality as it gets very quiet around here.

Cool. Again musky. Some exhaling there. This sounds really nice. I'd like to be able to allow that to compete with some of the louder peaks. So let's try a little bit more aggressive compression here.

Cool. Gaines mask. Where do you leave the kitchen? We've walked the streets for take away Oh, but that's my Time trended, we don't get to the best time we don't get to the best. So this might actually be a good candidate for a zero compression is that you could set up this compression to take care of those really big peaks to squash them down and then use the second compressor in the in the cereal chain to kind of do a little bit more nuanced compression. Okay, so we're now on to our female vocals we actually afraid to take up obviously, the thing you can you can hear before anything is that there's a guitar bleeding into that mind.

Session was obviously playing guitar when she sang. So what's the tour? We would go for a gate? I'm not sure it's gonna work well we'll give it a try anyway, I'll give you three to take away from a meeting crimes with all those words when the world falls apart, tell me that you mean me laugh, you know, I'm not gonna chase that around because he is a telltale sign is that when she's singing, you can hear the guitar in the background. So there's no way you can chop that out without chopping out her vocals. So let's you know, we gave it a try.

But that's not gonna work. Obviously, when the guitar comes in the mix as well, that will help you know right now we just come in, zoned in on this vertical. So it's kind of annoying right now, but once the whole mix comes up, it might be a problem. So you know, it's Certainly some compression could be done here. Also, maybe we could do some deep testing as well. So let's start off with a compressor bleep we're afraid to take a lie No way.

Move here to sound louder that you love me. quicksand tidal waves. You think they bring us close, but we just seem farther away. When our cross we're beautiful. Because that's working out. Well let's add a DSL on top of that.

Listen in So what you could also do is just loop apart where she's saying a lot of S's so you can really zone in on that. And then we can start breaking down that range is that you love me. earthquakes and tidal waves. You think they bring us closer, but we just seem farther away. Where have you so moving on to female vocal two let's have a listen. She's clearly building out.

There's not a lot of What's in this vocal? So you know, it's not something I mean, there's a lot of compression going on in a voice anywhere we have natural compression in our voice when we start no human horn if you know what I mean. So, I mean if we're going to be using any dynamics processing here, we could put a very soft compressor on that and set it up. So it's just dealing with just bring that threshold up. little thing to think of is that I haven't heard the arrangement the song but I suspect it's a lot busier than some of these other arrangements. So you might need to compress this a little bit more.

That's why you know, placements run on a mix and then playing around with the threshold. And ratio, and certainly be attack as well. messing around with that until the vocal can just kind of sit right in that mix. And on this third female vocal, we have seen this one before in some of the examples. Obviously, the big changes is starts almost whispering in a little quiet place away for you in a little secret play satury Have you seen some really nice breathy stuff there that we want might want to bring up. Another thing you can do here is that there's nothing stopping you from shopping some of these vocal parts out putting them on different tracks and then putting different compressors on each of those tracks is a great way to handle the very different parts of vocal tracks because as you can see, this area here is a lot different from this area here.

And if you set the threshold To crashed down these peaks here, it won't be affecting the threshold over here and you won't be able to bring up those those, those breathy parts. So for that reason, either a serial setup of a couple of compressors could work well or you can cut and paste some of these parts onto different tracks and then treat them completely different. So here's an example of me actually doing that I've duplicated this track down here, chopped off the tail of that chopped off the beginning of that. So we still had the two parts, I mean, all part of the vocal is split out in different tracks, which means that we can have completely different compressors set on these two very different parts of the vocal. You can see that the top one here has this compressor here, and then the bottom one has this compressor down here.

Let me just give that a little bit more of a ratio. So now what we should be Hearing is a lot of breath Enos at the beginning part here, because of the way this is set up there's a lot more makeup game there. And let's just see if they they kind of matched and we can get some of that breath mess out of the first part nothing seemed to suit when miss you like that breath in there alone and we have to now kicking into the second one. Your slave to your town. The great thing about compression because you can hear that she's belting that out but the levels have not got a lot higher. Let's go back here and we'll look at the levels here.

Describe a better flow. Let's play averaging around here. Right. Now look down here to see what it's like on the second track in your slave, look at the massive difference between the levels of this first part and then levels of the second part, but we've been able to match them in a way, just a single compressor couldn't do because if you had them just on the same track, you wouldn't be able to bring up some of the breath mess here. So splitting off tracks is really a great way to handle tracks that have very disparate sections within that single track.