Tips for Enhancing a Drum Loop in the Mix - How to Use Tape Saturation to Enhance a Mix

Tips for Enhancing a Drum Loop in the Mix


Hey, what's up guys? My name is David Glenn
of theproaudiofiles.com and davidglennrecording.com,
home of the free VIP mix training bundle.
If you haven't done so yet, go check that
out and join the list. You're going to get
two sets of multi-tracks, a whole slew of
impulse responses, two free video series,
and a ton more.
So I appreciate you for checking that out,
I know you're going to love it. It's free,
so no excuses, right? Moving into today's
video, we've got a drum loop, and I've called
this “Advanced Drum Loop Mixing.” Not
quite sure what to say about it, but I've
got a process that I went through for this
mix that I'm doing for themixacademy.com,
and I felt like it was worthy of a specific
tutorial video for The Pro Audio Files.
So I've got a loop here, and I'm going to
play you â€" maybe I'll solo the loop, and
then I'm going to breakdown and show you what
I've done. I've created a kick from the loop,
and then I've done a ton of processing to
get this to kind of come forward and shine
in this particular mix.
So here's the loop by itself.
[drum loop]
Okay. Here's what it sounded like before I
touched it.
[drum loop]
I'm going to boost the volume...
Okay. So I've labeled it DG loop, but that's
kind of selfish of me. This is not my loop.
I didn't record this, I didn't piece it together,
I don't know where it came from. It came to
me from the client.
What I wanted to do was in the mix â€" let
me actually play it for you in the mix and
see if you can...
[song plays]
Okay, so obviously, you can't really hear
it. There's a little bit of the kick thing
going on and some ghosting on the snare/hat
kind of thing, but it needed to come forward
and it needed to shine, and more than just
becoming brighter.
So I'm going to walk you through what I did
to it, and then what I did to it at the chorus
will be kind of a part two, second half of
the tutorial.
So anyways, first things first. Let me walk
you through the plug-ins. Nothing fancy here.
All I did with this was we have a kick drum,
we have a live drum kit separate from this
loop, so what I wanted to do was make sure
that none of this kick's bottom end interfered
with the live drum kit whenever that comes
in, so I filtered everything out below 85,
and that is very basically going to sound
like this. There's another reason why I did
this, but I'll show you in a second.
So here's before the filter.
[drum loop plays]
After.
[loop, filtered]
Okay. So you can here, we're just getting
rid of the sub in the kick for the most part
in the loop.
The second plug-in here in the chain is the
Kush Clariphonic, and this is the second revision
of it. We'll call it take two. It's updated
and it sounds incredible â€" it sounds nasty.
The first one sounded great. This one sounds
even better. The first one, it had a glitch
where it would crash Pro Tools. I don't know
if that was my fault, an update I missed or
something, but the second one sounds ridiculous,
so I highly recommend you go check this one
out.
I'm just boosting a ton of top end, and you'll
hear that this really comes forward in the
mix. Here's before.
[drum loop]
After.
[drum loop with Clariphonic]
Okay. So, a ton of top end. You can see I'm
using the Clarity, the Shimmer setting. Moving
on from that, I felt like it just needed to
be smashed. I just wanted to smash the loop
to my taste. I felt like I wasn't going to
go parallel so much, but I'm going to show
you one of my new favorite compressors.
To bring this forward, I smashed it, and then
I blended in some dry in parallel.
So let's check that out. Here's before and
after.
[loop, before and after compression]
Sounds nasty, right? Well, by itself, it may
not sound that great, but in the context of
the mix, it sounds incredible to my ears.
So I'm going to play it again, but before
and after â€" actually, I'll play before and
after for both of these.
[song, before and after plug-ins]
Okay, so you can really hear that loop is
a big part of this song, and the reference
track he gave me was Love Me Again from Jonathan
â€" I forget the guy's last name, but it was
a great track from like, 2013. I really loved
that song. Saturation, everything sounds incredible,
but the compression really helped it just
pull it forward and did amazing work.
That's the 10 dB compressor from Boz Digital
Labs, and my new friend David Bendeth. Love
the work that they're doing. Lots of great
stuff to come from them.
But for me, that wasn't enough. That wasn't
the end of it for this particular loop, because
I felt like it needed to be controlled a little
bit more. So the low end for me, if you listen
very carefully â€" let me bypass the Clariphonic
for now, just so we can hear the low end.
Focus on the lows. If you're on smaller speakers,
a laptop, your phone, you're probably not
going to hear this very well. Put in some
buds, some headphones, or a speaker system.
Possibly even with a sub.
But listen to the way that the low end just
kind of sustains and fills out â€" it's almost
got a tone to it where it just kind of resonates.
Check that out.
[song]
Forgive me, let me solo it.
[loop]
Okay, this is doing something that I don't
really care for, and I want to tighten that
up. We've got enough washy top end that I
wanted the bottom to be a little bit clearer
and a little bit clearer, a little more articulate,
punchy, whatever the word you want to use
is.
So here's before and after with the iZotope
multi-band transient designer, and I'm just
sucking out pretty much all of the low end
below 190Hz and give it a little bit of articulation
and a little bit of the transient back for
the attack, but for the most part, I'm just
pulling out that sustain from the bottom end.
Here's before.
[loop]
After.
[loop after transient designer]
Okay, and again, before, it's just taking
up too much real estate. The dynamics of it
are just all of the entire loop to be pumping
and sustaining like that. Totally unnecessary
to my ear and to my taste.
So I'm going to put the Clariphonic back,
and then we'll get to Pi in a second. If you're
not familiar, I've got Sound Radix Pi on here,
and the reason is we've got this loop â€" in
the chorus, I duplicated the loop, and I wanted
to have a little bit more punch, because the
kick in that loop pattern complements the
live kick.
We've got a four-on-the-floor live kick that
I'll play for you here. Let me solo this guy.
So this is the loop and the live kick together.
I'm going to go ahead and put Pi in.
[loop and drum plays]
And without the live kick.
[loop plays]
Okay, so the groove lies in the loop. The
live drums are really just holding down a
straight beat, and they really complement
each other well, so what I wanted to do was
I wanted to keep the live kick, but I wanted
to create a new kick for the loop that was
a little bit punchier and fit better with
a live kick.
So I'm blabbing, but here's what I did. I
duplicated the loop track, and I took it out
at the pre-chorus, but I made it to where
it comes in only at the actual chorus. There's
a lot of processing to get this one done.
I probably could've just copy and pasted samples
throughout the pattern here and been totally
fine. You know, a kick sample or something,
but I was experimenting and was having some
fun, and it might spark some creativity for
you, so let's take a look at what I did.
The first thing I did was I took the loop
â€" just to prove it's the same loop, let
me show you. Here's bypassed.
[loop]
Here's everything off.
[loop]
Cool. Same loop, right? And I just took out
the top end, so everything above 100-120Hz
is gone.
[filtered loop]
Okay, so now I have the sub, and we have just
what's going on with the kick.
After that, I went over to Alloy â€" I love
this thing â€" the multi-band transient designer
and sucked out the sustaining bottom end.
[filtered drum loop with transient designer]
We get the punch and the attack from the kick
now.
I'll bypass
it again.
Cool. So, we've got a more defined kick. However,
obviously that's not the world's best kick
drum, so I wanted to get a better kick drum
for the loop. I've got Drum Leveler on here,
and what I've done is I've set a high threshold
and a low threshold. I probably need to do
a tutorial all about this plug-in, because
it's ridiculous.
I've been using this a lot on loops, hi-hat,
snare drums, all kinds of stuff. It's really
great.
More on that later, but I've set a high threshold
and a low threshold. You'll see the kick kind
of coming across the screen here, and if I
bypass it...
[loop]
You kind of lose the kick drum, right? So
I'm bringing the kick forward, I'm setting
the threshold for picking up those subdivided
kicks, the pattern in the kick drum, the softer
hits and the harder hits, and I'm raising
the level and compressing to bring that forward.
Then, I'm taking this kick drum â€" call it
a kick drum sound â€" and I'm using Trigger
for what we've done to help Trigger out with
identifying what is kick and what isn't. Lastly,
I guess I forgot to mention there's between
29Hz and 109Hz that I have a side-chain filter
here, so this compressor is listening to only
those frequencies to determine what I want
it to listen to for the compression.
Horrible explanation, forgive me for that.
Trigger 2 I've got on, and I've gone to my
friends over at That Sound. Got an incredible
ton of kick drum libraries. All kinds of stuff
over there, go check those out. Iwantthatsound.com.
But kick06 I pulled in from one of the libraries,
but let's take a listen to what that is actually.
I hate that. There's a glitch that you have
to make it inactive and pull it back in, but
now you should be able to hear that. The reason
why, I have no idea.
It's still glitching on me. Let me solo it
and you can hear it.
[kick drum plays]
So before...
[drum loop kick plays]
After.
[sample]
Okay. So now, that kick, with a little bit
of help from our friend Lo-Fi, free with Pro
Tools...
[sample with Lo-Fi]
Okay. And Pi to make sure that the low end
from this kick, the low end from the loop,
and the low end from the original live kick
play nicely together. That is helping them
with phase coherence, and then that's not
all, but I'm going to hit play for you and
show you where we started with these two right
here.
[loop]
Forgive me, here's where we started.
[loop]
And where we ended up.
[loop after processing]
And without the kick we added... I could've
snuck that in a little bit sooner. Here's
with the kick, then I'll take it out.
[loop with and without kick]
Cool. I dig it with the kick. You may not,
but again, just showing you some of the options.
That's not all I did though. There's one last
step that I felt would help tighten up this
kick a little bit.
Let me pull â€" there we go. Track Spacer.
I had Pro Tools there, but...
Track Spacer I've pulled open, and lots of
plugs in this one, but if you come down here,
I've got kick side-chain, which is what I
use â€" it's a send that I use to send into
a multi-band compressor I have on my bass
on a lot of stuff I mix, and I'll push the
bass down in the sub frequencies with the
kick hits, and I've taken that same send and
I've set it up within Track Spacer.
So Track Spacer is going to receive the signal
from the kick, and it's going to push down
the frequency range I set here similar to
the multi-band compression, except this is
like a multi-band volume control. Kind of
interesting what's going on here.
But 20Hz to around 110-112Hz is going to be
pushed down every single time this live kick
hits. It's going to push down against the
loop kick when they play at the same time.
They don't always play at the same time, which
is why I wanted to create that loop kick,
but when they do hit at the same time, the
low end is going to be given to the kick in
the drum kit, not the kick in the loop.
I hope that makes sense. Maybe rewind that
and play it back a couple of times if I said
that wrong or if you heard it wrong, but anyways,
I'm all over the place. I'm still recovering
from being sick.
Anyways, here's what it sounds like. You can
see it on the screen. Whenever they hit, you're
going to see this dip.
[drum loop]
And without it.
[drum loop, sans Track Spacer]
Okay. The reason why that's such a big deal
is because when you have so much low end building
up, that's going to be â€" you got to be careful.
That might trigger your buss compression or
your pre-stereo buss compression, so that
extra build-up is not necessarily a great
thing.
So layering kicks can be a great thing if
you're adding sub or want more sub at a certain
section, but for me, I wanted to control that
sub so that the other kick would dominate
and it wouldn't trigger too much at the same
time.
So I rambled quite a bit on this one, but
I hope that you dig that. Let me play one
more time where we started from and I'll leave
everything in when we go here, and hit play.
Let's check this out. The way it was...
[music]
Okay, and then out here at the actual chorus.
[song]
Okay, then put that back where it goes, then
here's the improvements we made.
[song]
Very cool. I hope you enjoyed that. Davidglennrecording.com,
theproaudiofiles.com, and tons more to come.
We'll catch you in the next one. Thanks, guys.


How to Use Tape Saturation to Enhance a Mix


Greetings! My name is Ian Vargo, and I am
with The Pro Audio Files.
Today, I am going to be showing you how to
use tape saturation plug-ins â€" specifically
from Universal Audio â€" in an effort to make
your mixes sound more vintage and warm.
The track I'm going to be using is Ocean,
from the band, Sunny Love and the Moon Parade,
whose album I recorded, produced, mixed, and
mastered, which comes out later this week.
A lot of this band's songs have a vintage
vibe going on. Let's take a listen.
[mix]
Alright. So, for this project, although we
recorded in a good room with nice equipment,
we did not have the luxury of recording to
analog tape, which a lot of projects these
days don't.
So, fortunately, I had access to the Studer
A800, and the Ampex ATR-102 from Universal
Audio. So the way that I've been working lately
and on this project, is I have all of my drums
and percussion being sent â€" hard sent â€" through
an aux track. I've got all of my keys, guitars,
and bass going through an aux track, and all
of my vocals going through a separate aux
track.
On these aux tracks, I have the Studer A800
on each of them, using varying types and degrees
of tape saturation. Let's focus on the drums
for a minute.
[drums play]
Let's bypass the effect.
[drums, no tape saturation]
So, we're hearing a little bit of a boost
in volume in the drums. We're also hearing
slightly more punch, and a little bit of low
end drive that really affects the kick drum
in a cool way.
Something to keep an eye on with these effects
is basically just a balance between the input
and the output. I could really drive this
if I would like.
[drums, heavy tape saturation]
But I wanted to keep it pretty subtle. We
also have control of the inches per second.
If I change from 15 to 7.5, we're going to
hear a loss in high end.
[drums, adjusting inches per second]
That might be great if you want a really vintage
sound, or we could go up to 30 inches per
second for a very hi-fi sound.
[drums play at 30 inches per second]
I wanted to split the difference, so I kept
it at 15 inches per second, and we also have
different tape types.
Let's move over to the instrument buss, which
includes the guitars.
[instrument buss plays]
Definitely warms things up a little bit and
brings them forward in the mix.
Lastly, let's take a listen to the vocals.
[vocals]
And as you can see, I am driving this particular
instance of the plug-in a little bit harder
than the others, because I really wanted to
saturate the vocal and give it that sound.
Okay, so I have found that this plug-in really
does work great on individual instruments,
but I've been really loving it on these sub-aux
tracks that I have.
Let's move forward to the Master fader now,
and I'm going to show you a little bit about
how I use the Ampex ATR-102. Let's bypass
the effect.
[mix]
When I first demoed this effect, I had never
really heard any plug-in like it, so I had
to get it because it really helps with spatialization,
it helps the bass and drums sit together,
a little bit of a boost in volume, and really
just makes things sound a little bit more
round. Plus, there's so many options in terms
of types of tape here, inches per second...
Let's go down to 7.5.
[song at 7.5 inches per second]
Very versatile plug-in indeed.
So, I can't strongly recommend enough that
you at least demo the Universal Audio ATR-102
and Studer A800. If you have any questions,
e-mail me at ianvargo@gmail.com. Once again,
this has been Ian Vargo with The Pro Audio
Files. Make sure to check out Sunny Love and
the Moon Parade.
Thanks!