Okay, now that we have a good blender, we've added a little EQ to sculpt each channel. And in some instances, we sliced out some problem frequencies, then we can get to controlling dynamics and just like EQ examples a moment ago, we can control dynamics but other credit purposes or from fixing problems, and the tools the trades are these guys here, gates, compressors, and limiters in this example, here with this PreSonus, but we have a ton of them. In fact, we have a gate compressor and limiter on every single channel at every single subgroup. Back in the analog world, we'd probably need to use an outboard processor like this old compressor gate like this from DB x, use an insert cable, like we said before to insert that into a channel. And in the case that this is a stereo two channel one, you'd only be able to control the dynamics of just two channels here.

So just see how digital consoles end up being a great deal. If you add in the cost of a compressor like this for every single channel. By all these hardware boxes, I've spent absolute fortune. So before we actually get to use these tools, let's have a quick look and see how they work. Okay, the three dynamic effects we'll look at are compressors, limiters, AND gates. The first one we'll look at is the compressors.

Now if you look at signal like this, there's a lot of big peaks that the average level of this signal is pretty low compressors job is to compress them those peaks so can have an overall hotter signal that three main controls on a compressor, a threshold, ratio, and gain. Now a thresholds job is that when you bring that down, then it will compress everything above that threshold by a ratio or effective which is determined by the ratio. In other words, if we were to do a two to one ratio, then everything above that threshold would get squashed by half. If we do a four one ratio, then it would be squashed by quarter. So now we have a more densely covered A populated signal but it is low in level and that's what the makeup gain is all about. We've been to the makeup game bring that up as a much, much punchy signal I mean compare that signal to the original signal we had when we started out.

Okay, so here are the main controls on a compressive. The first one is the threshold that is where that compressor kicks in if your threshold is too high and no compression happens, but then once you bring that threshold down, then the ratio is how much compression is that a two to one or four to one etc. Then the game is sometimes called a makeup game gain is how amped up is that resulting signal after it's been compressed down. And then we have attack and release the attack is how soon the compressor kicks in and the release is how quickly that compressor stop compressing. Now if we look at limiters, basically Late eliminate is effectively infinity when compress, it's almost like a brick wall that's been placed there so that the signal cannot get any further after that. Now in terms of noise gates, noise guys are just a great way of just taking out low level noise.

So just like in press, they also do have a threshold and the whole idea is you bring that down, and then whatever doesn't get above that threshold just effectively gets cut out. It's almost like an automated mute button is really great for things like noisy guitar amps. So do you see in the abstract what these tools do, gates clean up the signal and drop out all the low level stuff compresses narrow the dynamic range so that a signal can kind of pop its head out of a mix and also protect against distortion from loud peaks, and limiters can just strictly limit the set the level of a signal So only a certain amount goes through. Now I'm going to show you these tools on this precise console. But you'll you'll see very similar consoles on other digital boards and even standalone dynamic processes like that DB x one I just showed you a little while ago.

So you ready to go back into it? First, let's look at a gate here, sometimes called a noise gate. This one's a pretty comprehensive one. But the most basic ones might just have these two options here, there's a threshold and range. So we just turn on, I'm going to bring up this kick drum and you can hear I need a side stick back and he'll get a hi hat as well. So clearly, this is not a magical market.

Even though it's a kick drum mic, it's placed by the kick drum. There are other things that are bleeding through there. We can fix this with a noise gate and by lowering the threshold, here's what we can do. Yeah, there's other stuff, other stuff that's going away, right? If you set it too high like this, then nothing will get through. And if you just bring this down a little bit, okay, now a kick drum will come out, you'll notice those, those gray side, boom, boom, that leading kick drum note is actually not strong enough to get through this.

That's why threshold is very, very important. If you set it to load and everything will come through, right, set it too high, and only the very loudest hits will come through. So, example but you know, on a snare drum, if you're doing a small sidestick, then that probably won't get through. If this was if we're compressing a snare drum channel. So threshold is the big one in a noise gate. So just bring that down so that you can get all the notes that you want through and all of the notes of a lower level will get filtered out to this gate.

Now, a lot of gates will have this range here, some may not but if you're lucky enough to It hit a range basically decides, okay, anything that's bolted out that doesn't meet that threshold Are you going to just pull it all out or you just got to reduce it just by a few DBS. So now we can hear that background there. If you don't be so draconian with just pulling it all out, then you can go and meet somewhere kind of down the middle. So you can hear how noise gate once you set the threshold, basically anything below that threshold, the signal is either basically music like this or reduced by number of DBS. This is kind of like an automated mute fairy. It just kind of sits there and mutes the channel when nothing's going through it and unmuted when it sees a signal drastically cutting down on all the background signal.

Now, the background signal really could be anything perhaps drums leaking through a particular channel, most commonly called a Drum blading I mean, think about it this way, if you have all these open mics around a drum kit, and they're picking up other drums, not just the drum that they're next to. But here's the trick, the drum that the mic is right up on is going to be louder than the other guys there. So dropping down that gate threshold will allow only the loudest drum to get through. And in, you know, to get through that gate, cutting out all the others. Actually another use is a noisy guitar amp with guitarist adding a bunch of stompboxes to their mix, you can sometimes have a really noisy signal when it comes out of the amp. So now the basic idea of a gated down to these two most basic controls which is threshold and range and range basically takes the The basic gates whatever's below that threshold, and reduce it by a certain number of DBS.

The next most common set of controls are the attack and the release. These control how quickly the gate opens and then closes a short attack. And release is like a gate just opens and closes. Let me bring this up here, it will do this super fast. You can hear some kind of clicks there. Now, let me just bring that back a little bit here.

And is that I'm going to close up all the way down so we can really hit escape. So let's play around with release. If your released is really short than the gate could kind of close during the natural decay of a signal and sound a little unnatural. Like it kind of does not slow down that release. You'll get a better result. If it's too slow.

Then the gate will all pretty much always be open. You don't want that. So let me pull this back here. I normally go here and then stop. Yeah, probably around there is good. Now the attack on the other end of the signal, and in this case, you just want to have this as fast as possible without causing clicks.

That some low frequencies Let me pull it down. Some low frequencies take a while to complete a full cycle for example, 100 hertz bass note takes 10 milliseconds to cycle through. So I would normally slow down the attack a little on signals that are low frequency heavy. So the basic rule of thumb here is to have the attack as quick as you can be until you start hearing those clicks and other artifacts and just slow it down a bit until those guys go away. So man, you can see how gates just a great way to lift out your main instrument while sifting out lesser important instruments and the gate knows what is emitted. And what isn't by the signal levels.

If it's above this threshold, then you get through. If you're underneath the threshold, you don't make the cap. So you can see why the threshold is the most important setting on a gate. If we set it way down here, then everything will get through. But if you want to put it up here to only your main thing come through, you want to make sure that that main signal open forget this is actually a real common problem in getting drum sounds. If you want to isolate the snare drum, maybe set your gate right here so only the snares get through.

Only those loud snares will get through. But if your threshold is here, then any grace notes or you know, small rosters, I bet you do, they may be too low to get through. That's why you kind of you can't just set and forget gates, when different drummers come through one drum I just hit really loud. And you so you set the threshold, you know, accordingly. And in order to have a soft jazz guy come through with rushes won't even have enough points to get through the gate. So you know you absolutely won't have me here.

So set them up at soundchecks. Now one other problem you might have with Gates is spills from equally loud neighboring sound sources like maybe a hi hat next to a snare mic in terms of the snare mic, the high hat might be further away from the from the snare drum mic, but that sound can really cut through and might open up your snare gate. That's where a key filter here will come in useful. It's not in on all gates, but it's a really useful feature to have. You can have your gate listened to a particular frequency range for its trigger to open. You can set the threshold way down low if the instrument man lives down there if I were getting a drum overhead and I wanted to trigger you know my with with cymbal crashes, then I'd set the key filter right here to probably 4k or higher.

All these controls should be tweaked. And the results listen to in isolation, the best way is just to throw in some headphones, and listen to those results while soloing that channel. Okay, so let's get on to compression. So I'll bring his bass up here, we're gonna hit his bass, and his Air Compressor here, which I can turn on. Now some of these guys may actually look a little bit familiar to the guy we saw before we have a threshold, attack and release ratio and gain. So let's look at threshold here.

Or point your attention up over here. This will be different on your particular compressor. But what we're looking for is gain reduction. And if you start lowering this threshold, you'll notice that it'll start pulling down this is the gain reduction that is happening because this signal is going above this threshold, and it's being reduced by this ratio here and this ratio is at the moment is two to one you could have two to one or three to one or a one to one is no compression, you'll see that there's no gain reduction right then. So for bass, maybe I'd like say three to one, something like that. And what I'm looking for is about a 60 be an average 60 dB gain reduction.

So here's what the level of this bass is right now. And then let's turn the compressor on and off and you listen to how with the compressor on it is has allowed us to see signal. Let me bring up the makeup gain here. Chris, once you compress something, you're one of the makeup that gain and now listens to to one Upton. So it's much punchier with the compressor on there. So you get the idea with what a compressor does, it just compresses down those peaks.

So you can bring the entire signal up, and it just results in a much conscious signal and, and that input channel can kind of live in the mix a little bit more easily. So you can see that a compressors job is to really squash down the signal above a certain threshold by a factor you can then use the makeup game to make up gain to read the entire signal knowing that you won't have any peaks above that to push that signal into distortion. This gives you an overall hotter signal. Great candidates for compression, kick and snare drums, vocals, guitars, basically anything that has a big dynamic range that can place the average level down, you know, pretty low grade exam. is a snare drum where the drummer is doing both side sticks, and also big hits, compress the signal. So the big hits will be brought down to the same level as the side six, the whole signal can be brought up and can really compete within the rest of the mix.

Threshold of about, I would start with a two to one or three, one, something like that, and bring down the threshold. So what we're looking for is about a 60 dB gain reduction on the loudest peaks. Just set your threshold accordingly over here and then make up for that reduction by going up here in the makeup game. And you can bring it up and then now the attacker released let me just bring this down again, the attacker release, adjust how quickly the compressor clamps down and then release that the signal. I think I showed you maybe a few slides ago how a slower attack and we can let initial transients get through if you want a more of a smack at The beginning of a time or a kick drum. If you're not sure how to set the attack and release here, a lot of compressors will have this auto mode that'll do it for you.

A rule of thumb is to set these guys attack and release it to as fast as you can get away with that without this sound becoming kind of choppy or jittery. Now a lot of compressors have socked me here. With this off, then the compressor happens as soon as the threshold is reached. And otherwise it just reduced the gain as soon as it's reached with sock me on and the compressor kind of eases into the signal kind of not so abrupt abruptly. And finally, the limiter here prevents the signal from going any higher than what is set here is it it's essentially an interview one compressor. So there you have it in terms of you know, all the different ways in which you can control dynamics.

If you have a child that has, you know, all sorts of bleed through from other instruments, or maybe a low level background hum then gates where to go. If you have a signal that seems to have a hard time popping its head above a crowded mix, then compresses the tool to use and to limit the final signal signal then limit your answer. Now, the commonality with all of these dynamic processes is that if you do it right, no one will notice don't make the rookie mistake of lowering the threshold of your noise get so much that you hear them opening and closing all the time. Or maybe your compressor just washes the life out of your vocals. If you have direct processing on every channel, like this guy here, yeah, I use them up but I use them very, very gently, a little two to one compression on vocal to just kind of simply flatten out those occasional peaks is something you don't really hear but it has helped that vocal just sit in the mix a little bit better.

So easy going on the dynamic processing and processing and certainly if you have an analog mixer with only outboard gear lights DVS I showed you there you probably can't afford to have a bunch of these guys hooked up. But if so, I would use probably an outs board processor on the really important channels like maybe the lead, Burkle and bass guitar. By the way, if you do want to have some bang for your buck there, get a multi channel compressor like the ACP 88 actually also made by PreSonus. It gives you eight channels of dynamic processing that you can insert across any eight channels that you wish. So we've mentioned roll off gates, compressors, limiters equalizer The last type of signal processing is only the data of effects and in this case, this digital board we have here has a ton of effects built in. If you're back in the analog world, and you might be using something like this little Mackie mixer right here has some built in effects right within the unit but if not, I mean you may have met a lot.

If you have not alone, then you'll need to pick up a little multi effect unit like this cat, Melissa zero bunch of them out there. And with a fixture like this, you can turn your vocal into this. And who doesn't love a vocal like this? You love a budget. You're pledging chorus and tremolo and your voice and a ballad? Not really, right?

I mean well effect units have hundreds of effects and these external guys will Intel guys, most digital mixers have a ton of effects. In terms of practically mixing a song we tend to use the more bread and butter effects and they are reverb and delay. reverb gives you where you can be either in a huge defeat or a small room. With a big reverb sounds like a lot of fun you find yourself using more subtle effects like this room makes same sound a lot better just like kind of sing in the shower right. Now the other major category of bread and butter effects are your delays and there are basically Three different main uses a shorter, can you give me this kind of john lennon with a little echo around like 100 milliseconds. A second use can be too thick and the sound to really short delay normally around 30 to 50 milliseconds.

This gives you this kind of sound that works well in picking up a vocal or a guitar track. You can even pan your dressing or outlet and your delay out right to really widen your stereo image. And finally, you can use the traditional echo echo echo to give you this kind of sound sound, giving us the effects sent this ramp up the echo at a certain point to just echo only particular words like this. This is now to show you how to use these effects like reverb and delay. Let's actually switch back to analog mixer. Okay, we're back on our trusty Mackie mixer and this particular model has some built in effects.

Right here. I'm a vocal coming down the first channel here and we have a dedicated Send Miss cases effects to that goes into these internal effects here. And because it's a effects and you can have a little delay, a lot, a lot of delay, or you can just delay certain words. So in other words, if your vocalist is singing long enough as a pop, you just want to echo just hang off until they hit that big word. And then you can bring it up and then bring that back down. So that's how to deal with internal effects.

Here we saw before how we could set up a external effects loop using an effect send right here and the return here I've got that going into my lease this micro verb, and that's coming off of effects and one. So now if I turn this up, I'll have reverb and you can see I have level over here as well. So I can have a little bit of reverb and delay in This configuration we're using an external effects loop as well as an Intel effects loop. Now, because these guys are fed through auctions or effects ends, and each channel has one, you can use the same effect and give differing amounts of in this case, this would be delay. So if this was you know, kick, snare, hi hat or whatever, you could put a little delay on the snare drum, maybe a lot. And maybe just a little on your guitar and so on.

And correspondingly, you could have differing amounts of reverb using that exhale, affixed to it. So if you're lucky enough to have internal effects like this life is pretty easy. Just bring up the desired effect and then add effect to any channel just by using the effects and across each channel. Now if you're using an external effect, you just hook it up like I showed you And then return make sure that returns back into either a dedicated effects return or even just any old channel. If you have another way to bring in, just make sure if you do bring in, don't add some effects on that return channel or you'll get instant feedback loop. So we pretty much have all the nuts and bolts of how to use a fix down.

Let's see this actually used practically when we make Okay, I brought up a couple of pegs and it's done. Second one let's go to the backing vocals. He's a guitar and sometimes you want to make a little solo with an echo, echo, so tap the tempo. Right You can hear a lot of this on a bunch of people that can really make a guitar Make sure that's in a timeout that might be out of time. So you could either work that out with a BPM tempo calculator, a lot of mixes will actually allow your device to tap around. Cool.

From very humble beginnings we've taken some rock channels. We've seen how to fix problems with things like rolling off a low frequencies with a high pass filter, fixed bill or bleed with gates control dynamics with compression and limiting. sculpt the sound with a careful use of EQ and finally some frosting on the cake with some reverb and delay. Now if you can do this not optimized then you will be very much in demand as a sound person But everything we've done has pleased the people who are on this side of the main print of our speakers, the audience, right. But before we leave, we really need to know how to please the people on the other side, the performers. And we do this by making up Manasa mixes to help them heal themselves and others are keeping time.

And also keep in pitch. It's very easy to be sitting out in the middle of a room, you know, hearing the main mix, and thinking that you can basically hear everything, but if you step back on the stage, you're performers that don't hear much of anything back there, except kind of reflections off the back wall, you know, half a second later, they really need your help to blend a personal mix for them so they can put in a good performance. And we do all of this with Master mixes. That we've seen how to blend master mixes on analog boards, right? Just simply send a little of each instrument out to an oxen which flows out of here. In other words, the oxygen one here, this will flow to an app and onstage monster or an IRS monster transmitted.

And these monster cents are typically pre fader so that any changes you make down here on the main mix are not reflected in the monster mix because these accents happen before they hit these faders. Let's go back to our digital mixer now. And we have our whole band playing down here into the inputs. And I want to show you how to use the oxygens on this particular mixer. We have 10 oxygens, along here that we could use to feed onstage monsters or any monsters and I've labeled them right here. Now here's how to use them.

This might be of any use to anybody who doesn't use this particular mixer, but if you're using another like a Yamaha or digiacomo, just consult your manual. On this particular mixer here. You select the org. So in this case, this is the burka monitor, and then you use these knobs here to send differing amounts of all these inputs to that vocal monster. So let's imagine your vocalist says I just want some kick, snare and hi hat and kick, snare hi hat you'd give them in different amounts here. Maybe she wants a little bit more snares.

I bet. She's going through here, maybe a little bass, a lot of piano, the acoustic guitar, you know, some other guitars here. And that's about it. Also, she definitely wants a lot herself so she can actually hear his talk, singing and a little bit of the back back vocalist as well. So this is what the mix looks like for walks number one, then the drummer says, Hey, I just want my own kick, snare hi hat. I want to hear basically all the drums.

So right across here. I want to hear lots of bass so we can play in the pocket. Now give me a little lead vocal, little Background Vocal, and maybe a little acoustic guitar and some other guitars, then the bass player wants lots of drums right? And what else might the bass player one, maybe one wants himself a little piano and lead vocal and Background Vocal, then the keyboard player definitely wants a lot of piano. Let's imagine that keyboard player is right next to the drama so doesn't really do anything from the drama, maybe a little bass, and lead and Background Vocal and the guitarist wants lots of himself right. All of the guitar mix and also wants some kick, snare hi hat and some lead vocal and backing vocals.

So you can see that each mix has a different sorry, each box has a different mix of blend of instruments. So the person who's listening to that particular mix through the monitors or in ear monitors will be able to hear what's going on. Obviously, this is completely independent of what's going on down here. This is what the audience hears. This is what in this case the bass player is through their own monster. So in this instance, if the if the vocalist said, Look, a, I'm hearing too much hi hat, then you go to the vocal, and then you go across the high hat and you can bring that down right there.

The bass player wants more lead vocal, then you go to the Bass Mix, go across here to the lead vocal, and you stood just like that. So you can see how sending off mixes to each performer is this as easy as sending different channels, different amounts of each channel down that auction that feeds that particular Performance Monitor, that could be an AMP and to an onstage monitor, or could be to an in ear transmitter which feeds their little belt pack, and so they can hear it through the monitors just listen to what they want. And the mix is going to be going in their ears, given totally what they want, because It's really not affecting anybody else, though, if they're listening to an onstage monitor, you may have to kind of play the bad cop. Once in a while to keep the stage volumes down. There's nothing worse than a bunch of musicians all competing with each other until the stage volume is just so loud that you can hear it above the main Front of House speakers.

And then that really starts to mess with your main mix in terms of you know, competing with it. So, things to remember, if a drummer is placed in one of those drummers boots, then other members of the band may have a hard time hearing him feed some hi hat and snare to other musicians mixes to help them kind of keep in time, particularly if they're actually far apart. On the stage. There actually been times when I've been a guest mixed and I thought that no man this guitarist on stage, just really sloppy timing. The first thing I'll do is walk over and check out his monitor. Mix.

If he's not hearing drums through as much as as if he's just hearing drums through the air, or 30 feet away, and just hearing it through 30 feet, then he's playing the drums 30 milliseconds late, and he's gonna play late like nine times out of 10 it's a little kick, snare and hi hat. Send me out to that guitarist we'll just tighten up that guitarist you know, in a heartbeat has been playing perfectly in time. Same thing with pitch, some, I mean, some people his best thing. But if you have a good thing a singer tune in, make sure that they're getting a good source, a reference pitch, like a piano or guitar through their mix. So mixing monsters requires you to be kind of part engineer, part psychologist part development. Just make sure that everyone's happy, and most importantly, hearing everything they need to hear.

To tune in on pitch on time, solid performance.