Mixing and Arranging an 8 Bar Loop to Create a Release-Ready Track

Tutorial | Sep 13, 2022

In this video, I discussed creating an arrangement and mixing on an 8 bar loop from my previous video. I identified a few issues I wanted to address, such as the drone playing all the time, the lack of modulation on the pad, and the fact that the vocals play all the time. To solve these issues, I suggested grouping all the tracks together, cloning the first block, and creating different versions of the loop. I also discussed gain staging, using a peak limiter, and adding a bit of saturation to the kick drum. Finally, I demonstrated how to use a sampler to add a rim shot to the clap.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

Questions & Answers #

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is gain staging? #

Gain staging is the process of adjusting sound levels in the audio signal chain to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio. It is commonly used in mixing and mastering to ensure that the levels of all tracks and buses are consistent and well balanced. Gain staging helps to maintain a clear, transparent sound and keep levels from clipping or becoming too quiet.

What is the purpose of grouping tracks together in production? #

Grouping tracks together in production is a useful way to manage and organize your mix. It allows you to quickly adjust the volume, panning, and effects of multiple tracks at once, which is especially useful if you are working with a lot of different sounds. Grouping also helps to create a better overall sound by allowing you to process the tracks in the same way, such as adding a compressor or EQ.

How can dynamic processing be used to shape a sound? #

Dynamic processing is a great way to shape a sound. Compressors, limiters, and expanders can all be used to control the dynamic range of a sound, allowing you to make it louder, quieter, punchier, or more subtle. Additionally

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00.000] Welcome back to another video guys and today it's about creating an arrangement
[00:08.000] and doing mixing on this 8 bar loop we did in the last video so if you want to
[00:13.800] see how we created this you can re-watch the video. I'll put the link in the
[00:18.800] description of course and today it's all about progressing from this 8 bar loop
[00:23.480] to something more like a song or yeah a project basically that you can release
[00:29.640] maybe so the first thing is we made this a few days ago so I have some kind of
[00:38.680] disconnect to this track so I have fresh ears and I can already notice
[00:44.960] instantaneously some things I don't like so or spot some problems so the first
[00:50.680] one is here the drone the drone is playing all the time and there's also no
[00:54.960] possibility of sequencing this because it also plays when we hit stop right so
[01:00.680] it's just playing here so we have to do something about it then maybe the pad
[01:06.160] here is pretty static there's no modulation on there it's a bit of
[01:10.600] chorus here and the reverb on there so we can modify this here with some
[01:16.880] modulators a bit then there's the bass here can maybe rename here this to bass
[01:24.080] the bass also plays only on one note so pretty generic and static then there's
[01:30.320] the arpeggiator here I don't like the arpeggiator I mean it's okay it does the
[01:40.080] work the kick drum is I think it's also okay for now yeah the hi-hats maybe you
[01:55.640] can create some glitch effects on there or some breakdowns also the vocals play
[02:01.400] all the time here so we have to stretch this a bit out I think so maybe only on
[02:09.320] one part you have just this this part here and then maybe later on in the
[02:13.480] second part you can only hear this so just spread it out a bit
[02:26.320] maybe we can play a different line here or different lines for the piano at the
[02:32.400] moment it just plays in the background it makes some some ambience but maybe you
[02:36.520] can use this to create some kind of topic a theme a motive for the track and the
[02:49.120] clap is pretty basic and there's also reverb on the clap all the time so we
[02:53.400] maybe want to alternate between different things so okay these are
[02:59.840] basically my initial thoughts about it there's also something you can notice on
[03:04.720] none of these tracks is a dynamic processor besides peak limiters and
[03:11.160] most of the times these peak limiters do nothing they just reduce volume or
[03:17.000] increase volume but there's no limiting happening there's no dynamic
[03:22.400] processing happening and I really like to do this when I am when I'm in the
[03:27.640] draft drafting phase or in the creative phase where I just put down notes ideas
[03:33.920] without having to worry too much about dynamics and mixing and mastering and all
[03:39.480] that stuff because I noticed when I do that then I'm constantly switching around
[03:45.800] between different tracks and trying to you know increase the loudness here and
[03:51.080] then squash it there and distort it here and so I'm basically spread across all
[04:00.960] these different options I have so here I'm limiting myself to only basic things
[04:06.680] to put down notes put down a basic patch or sound and then move on and now we are
[04:15.520] in this phase and I can see there's maybe a nice track behind all this
[04:19.800] generic stuff and I can put in some some hours some work and make it shine more
[04:26.640] or better or make it even a real good track so maybe let's try this here and
[04:36.440] start with the drone so I said this is playing all the time even when we hit
[04:40.800] stop here so there are multiple ways of sequencing this we can use it the
[04:46.360] output output of this grid and just automating this here just putting in
[04:54.000] here some lines right this is something we can do or we just use a note clip
[04:59.400] and inside the note clip we just put here some kind of note and it doesn't
[05:04.400] matter which note or which key I'm using it's just having a note there and we are
[05:11.760] using the gate on signal coming from that in here using a select switching it
[05:20.640] off by default so the output here is going into nothing right it's using the
[05:27.440] input one where nothing is happening and then we use here a gate in and every
[05:33.360] time we play a note we switch this to on which is the case here with this clip so
[05:40.720] now we can use this clip the sequence basically our generative patch so here
[05:46.600] we don't want to have a drone and here we want to have drone so this is also
[05:50.760] something I can do but we also probably want to automate here the output volume
[05:57.040] later on to fade something in and fade something out okay so the second thing I
[06:03.240] want to do is probably to group all these tracks together so the drone the
[06:08.800] arp the vocals the piano and maybe the pad sound here is all something I want
[06:17.640] to have in a group so I group this with control and G and rename this group here
[06:25.960] to maybe music or atmospherics I don't know and then we have hit the kick the
[06:35.880] e had the xo and the clap and this is of course drums and we have the bass and
[06:44.400] the bass and the drums together go also in a group and we call this group
[06:48.240] drum bass group which I like to do and then we group the drum bass group and
[06:52.680] the music group here together and call it all okay and I do this for multiple
[07:00.400] reasons but I don't want to explain this any further because yeah it's yeah it's
[07:07.280] just in habit and so now that we have this we can just leave this alone here
[07:15.480] and clone this first block here into a second one by just holding control and
[07:20.400] dragging this over and what we do now is we creating basically different
[07:25.360] alterations of our initial loop so we have this loop here and then create
[07:30.680] another one and try to create a different version of it that sounds a bit
[07:36.360] different and you can use this later on then for arrangement then arrange
[07:41.760] multiple of these blocks and yeah can create some kind of arc song structure
[07:49.200] from it so yeah I don't want to have the vocals in there I don't want to have the
[08:01.800] arpeggiator in there and maybe I remove the piano part so I'm having here our
[08:09.120] drone in the background and the beats so this is maybe an alteration that's
[08:17.280] okay then we can create something like where there's no drone and only the
[08:28.560] pads maybe so this would be maybe a percussive part where we have more to
[08:38.840] focus on the rhythm so when we have to focus on the rhythm we can do something
[08:43.560] with the bass so we can change it to repeatings because everything is just
[08:50.440] one note in here right it's just one note and the rhythm comes from the
[08:56.480] repeater here and when we change the repetition setting here we probably also
[09:01.680] want to use a quantizer so everything is quantized to a 16 note grid so we can
[09:06.840] play around with these repeats without losing you know the main groove and let's
[09:14.160] create here an automation point oh this is that's the wrong setting I want this
[09:22.200] one here okay you can hear now it's much much faster playing the
[09:42.040] maybe want to increase here the cutoff so the cutoff is a bit wider and do this
[09:56.280] here can also use this opportunity now to tweak the bass here but maybe bring
[10:15.680] the delay in front of the peak limiter it's okay
[10:38.280] so I want to basically scratch here the ceiling of the peak limiter to get it
[10:44.760] exactly at 0 dB that's basically my line or my gain staging line usually
[10:56.080] when you use when you see gain staging tutorials about gain staging at a much
[11:02.280] much lower point maybe minus 12 dB or using even loves so like an RMS level
[11:09.440] something like minus 12 loves or minus 16 loves or even more but I like to use
[11:16.480] here the 0 dB line because it's much easier to do this here with that limiter
[11:21.360] you can see what's happening and you can see also here if you touch the
[11:25.840] threshold now also can easily control the dynamics so when I say this bass sound
[11:40.200] is way too dynamic so the distance between the peak and the RMS level is
[11:45.560] way too high and I just increase here the input
[11:50.120] squash it against the threshold here which is 0 dB line so I'm doing two
[11:56.360] things at the same time I'm making sure that nothing goes above 0 dB and I'm
[12:03.720] also limiting or decreasing the dynamic range at the same time because I'm
[12:11.000] bringing here the meat of the audio signal up to the 0 dB line everything
[12:18.160] that's speaking is squashed down so I'm doing two things at the time at the same
[12:28.720] time if you do mastering or gain staging with a much much lower loves
[12:34.440] level let's say minus 12 so you normalize everything to minus 12 loves
[12:39.360] right and then you want to decrease the dynamic range you can do that but then
[12:45.920] after you put on the limiter or the compressor you have to make sure you
[12:51.800] bring the level up again to the same minus 12 loves so you normalize then you
[12:57.680] do compression and then you normalize again to bring it back to the same level
[13:01.400] and then you constantly fighting with the auto gain finding the right balance
[13:06.920] between dynamic range compression and bringing up the level to your gain
[13:13.080] staging level so here I'm just increasing the input squashing everything
[13:20.160] against the ceiling and I'm limiting the dynamic range and I also hitting my
[13:28.120] gain staging target which is 0 dB instead of minus 12 loves also feel like
[13:33.600] this is the the main benefit basically of using the 0 dB line as a as a target
[13:41.280] okay so maybe we leave this here a bit dynamic this okay I don't want to scratch
[13:47.920] you squash the space too hard you can also use a compressor in front of that
[13:52.560] if you want to if you think the limiter is too hard too harsh to the signal you
[13:59.320] can also use a compressor for that and then use a limiter at the end to make
[14:07.520] it limit basically at the 0 dB line and make sure everything is stays below 0
[14:14.000] dB but I'm okay here with the peak limit of for the sound most of the time so I
[14:19.920] don't use compressors that much I also don't want to squash the signal too much
[14:26.920] and I don't want to limit the range too much because everything in here is
[14:30.760] digital and then use a digital synth most of the times it's pretty static it's
[14:36.000] not like an analog synth where the volume constantly moves up or down or you
[14:40.960] have a drummer that plays the drums and some hits are louder than or quieter
[14:47.320] than the other inside the computer most of the times everything is pretty
[14:51.040] static so you don't need to compressor that much besides maybe for some gluing
[14:56.280] reasons on a bus but usually everything comes out of all of these VST
[15:02.440] plug-ins pretty straight and pretty even so yeah that's that so here we have 0
[15:10.040] dB and then the bass itself you can see a few minus 3 dB so at the end here we
[15:18.040] end up at minus 3.3 dB so it's not that I want to peak with the base at 0 dB in
[15:25.680] my song right so here we are at 0 now I want to have it minus 3 dB or sometimes
[15:33.880] even minus 4 and this is basically a rough number for my bass sounds my
[15:39.720] basses are usually 3 or 4 dB quieter than the drums and it's also just a
[15:46.760] rough number because it also depends on how many upper harmonics you have for
[15:52.360] the bass so if you have just the sub bass then you probably want to have minus
[15:57.160] 3 so yeah the number depends basically but this is a rough number basically
[16:06.080] minus 3 minus 4 it's usually it fits very well with drums that are peaking at
[16:12.800] 0 so the drums peaking at 0 dB and the bass peaking at minus 3 or minus 4 and
[16:19.320] then most of the times the mix down is okay-ish so now that we have this you
[16:31.600] maybe look here at the drums so drums also the bass here itself there's no
[16:37.320] dynamic processor on there the kick drum here is peaking probably also at 0 dB
[16:45.200] just to make this show we put here so this is 0 and then we have a hard clip
[16:51.240] here on there using a peak limit at the end so we can see what's going on so
[16:57.040] there's a bit of small bit of room so we can push this into the hard clip area
[17:01.000] and this hard clip preset by myself works exactly like the limiter there's
[17:05.320] basically at 0 dB there's a line there's a clipping line and you push the
[17:09.600] material into the 0 dB threshold you can see nothing so it passes basically the
[17:17.280] 0 dB line and see we are at minus 3 because of the ceiling
[17:24.920] right so this is way too much of course but we can drive the kick drum up a
[17:29.520] little bit into the clip into the limiter clipper but not too much because we
[17:35.160] want to do this multiple times on some of these busses so you keep it just
[17:41.200] attached maybe 1 dB
[17:45.440] also gives some nice harmonics sometimes for the kick drum right so you
[17:52.720] get some upper harmonics for the kick drum and it sounds more full and more
[17:59.360] fat but it all depends on what kind of kick drum you are going for so this is
[18:05.760] basically creative decisions and mixing at the same time so you need to make a
[18:12.440] creative decision if you want to have this kick drum that distorted but you
[18:17.920] also have to make sure that you can hear the kick drum on some smaller speakers
[18:25.280] or some headphones right so we need some upper harmonics some saturation on there
[18:30.680] and if you think the hard clip sounds too hard then you can of course use in
[18:35.560] front here some soft clipper or maybe saturation, saturator of Bitwig here
[18:45.080] dial in a bit of roundness here at the top maybe get this like this so
[18:55.080] get a bit of harmonics in there a bit of soft harmonics or you can also use the
[18:59.400] amp device
[19:15.320] and then use the clipper here to make sure everything is at 0 dB so the kick
[19:21.360] is pretty important because it's usually my loudest part in the complete track so
[19:26.400] this is my my key point my key mixing anchor and and this is coming from drum
[19:35.800] bass that's my habit it's probably not usual when you do ambient or chill out
[19:41.000] but I'm using this basically as my main goal this is the loudest part kick drum
[19:46.440] and also gives the pools the rhythm of the track and everything else is below
[19:52.720] the kick drum so I make sure this is very peaking at 0 dB and it has
[20:00.800] the right fatness the right overtones and yeah so now we have to set 0 dB here's
[20:08.000] nothing there's nothing on there and also on the all tracks nothing so nothing
[20:11.720] changes the loudness of the kick drum you can see here at the master it's still
[20:18.920] at 0 dB so the clap sound here is
[20:28.800] yeah as there's reverb on there all the times we I remove this and I have a
[20:35.320] random a random reverb trigger here that I made so every time this is the snare
[20:45.480] drum place we have here a probability thing this probability thing triggers
[20:51.120] basically this ADSR and this ADSR opens up then here the reverb mix down so we
[21:01.160] have sometimes a reverb on the clap and most of the times not so this brings in
[21:10.080] a bit of interesting variety over the course of the song and that's also not
[21:15.440] something I can sequence it's just random right and I like to have it that
[21:23.640] way so every time you bounce the track it's it the reverb is in a different
[21:27.520] position so then I don't like the clap itself it's basically just white noise
[21:36.880] it's okay but maybe I want to group this here in the instrument layer and I put
[21:41.680] in here a sampler and the sampler I'm probably want to use your rim shot I
[21:46.920] always using rim shots as you can see so let's listen to some stuff here
[21:54.840] maybe it's something like this disabling here the key-tracking and this is of
[22:04.560] course the quiet maybe you do this a bit quieter here and then we put also here
[22:16.880] in a hard clip and I wish we could introduce you some visuals in the
[22:25.320] bitwig you can see the clap is not really peaking at the Rode B so you can
[22:28.680] increase and drive this a bit into the clipper
[22:35.680] ok so we have here the clap rim and then we have the hi-hats here these two
[22:59.320] may bring up yet also everything to 0 dB you can see we need 16 dB here to
[23:13.400] reach the ceiling with some of the hats so I'm using also your hot clip and dial
[23:22.120] in 16 dB and bring this back so instead of running this into a limiter I'm
[23:29.320] running this in a clipper and delete this okay so this is nice also the same
[23:43.280] here with this one see we need here 11 dB to do the same so hard clip is
[23:57.920] usually really nice on drums move this nice we can remove this and because we
[24:13.280] have everything at 0 dB this busts a lot louder now because some of the
[24:18.200] elements are overlapping maybe there's a bit too much here
[24:39.120] okay so the hi-hats I usually want to have a bit quieter so I'm having no
[24:44.320] full control over the hi-hats because I know all of these hi-hats buzzes here
[24:49.840] are peaking at 0 dB nothing goes above 0 dB and there are barely scratching the
[24:55.480] surface of 0 dB because all my tracks here at 0 dB I can completely
[25:01.200] control now with this slider here how loud or where my hats are peaking I can
[25:06.760] say minus 4 and now I know all these hi-hats are peaking at minus 4 okay
[25:12.040] because everything in here is limited exactly or clipped to 0 dB or maybe go
[25:25.760] to minus 8 still too much so now on the drums I can do something like a transient
[25:48.120] control and can bring up the sustain what this means is basically everything
[25:53.120] between the kick and the snare is pushed up which has some kind of gluing
[25:57.840] effect that's basically what you do when you use a compressor and then or a gluing
[26:02.600] compressor where everything in between the drums are getting up in loudness and
[26:07.240] you have this feeling that the snare and the kick is everything at the same
[26:11.440] loudness and goes through the same bus or processing so we making basically the
[26:29.600] heads quieter here which brings everything down in loudness but here the
[26:34.880] transient control brings up the loudness of the hi-hats in between the kick and
[26:38.960] the snare but when the kick and the snare plays the hats go down so you
[26:43.480] have this pumping effect on the on the hi-hat automatically just with the
[26:48.000] transient control and using the hi-hats here a bit driving the hi-hats a bit
[26:52.120] quieter into the bus so if I turn this off you can hear it doesn't sound
[26:58.320] different so you can see everything kick snare everything between is pushed up
[27:13.680] in loudness and then I'm doing most of the time some limited some balancing of
[27:21.480] frequencies and I used to use your FX3 and pick limit pick limiters in there
[27:28.440] right I can see in the low part here we have the kick drum most of the
[27:37.480] times of course it's the most of the low frequencies and I push this up also your
[27:43.520] the 0 dB line also the mid-bass and the high part and then I put also here
[28:06.760] odd clip at the end so this is basically a cueing here what I'm doing here and if
[28:13.080] you put in a cue plus you can see it's pretty straight a straight line
[28:18.800] maybe put this decrease it ends up here straight line and it's a straight line
[28:26.720] on the tilt setting of 4.5 dB per octave I think 3 dB per octave is pink noise
[28:33.320] you can see it's even more straight there so it's pretty much pink noise ish
[28:38.520] curve, curve, cueing and limiting at the same time so it's more or less I'm super
[28:46.320] lazy and I want to have consistent effects or consistent loudness on
[28:52.680] things and balancing things easy so instead of going in with the cue here
[28:58.240] and you know going out these holes and correcting this until it's happening
[29:04.040] here I'm just pushing everything up to the ceiling of this limiter without
[29:10.760] limiting too much but still limiting in a way and then ending up with a nice
[29:17.760] frequency balance and also all of all of these bands are compressed or limited in
[29:24.760] a way so I'm pretty sure nothing goes above this straight line here and you
[29:30.960] can drive it even more so you can put in here more rock and make a creative
[29:37.200] decision there something like this
[29:45.520] you can still see it's still an even line so that's what I used to do and you
[29:53.440] can also do that that's pretty fine but nowadays I'm using here this crossover
[29:59.440] module which is a VST plug-in without an interface and there's also preset on
[30:05.560] there I made myself and this is basically an FX5 so instead of three bands I
[30:10.560] have five bands here one two three four five yeah five bands you can also limit
[30:16.720] this to three if you want to and there's a layer here for each band on there and
[30:24.600] on each band there's a db meter which basically analyzes the loudness and then
[30:29.600] I can normalize the signal by peak and make everything peak at zero db by just
[30:38.360] with just one click and then after this there's a hard clip and just a limiter
[30:44.400] to check if everything is okay and I basically just analyze you the drums a
[30:51.400] bit and the db meter here measures the loudness also the peak limiter and then
[30:57.680] when I hit this button on all of these bands all of these db meters are
[31:02.200] normalized here to this M button which is the true peak max
[31:10.120] right so now I know on each band everything is peaking at zero db
[31:15.680] it's basically the same thing I did before with the FX3 and limiter but
[31:21.680] here I don't need to drive basically the input to the limiter the db meter
[31:27.760] does this automatically so now I'm I know exactly everything is at zero db
[31:33.080] without clipping because this db meter is pretty exact and then I can use this
[31:39.840] clip thing here and this increases the input on all of these hard clip modules
[31:45.560] inside these bands right so I can clip multiple bands at the same time but the
[31:50.080] same amount so the balance is the same but I can clip or multi band clip
[31:56.440] basically and I can decide if I want to have distortion on there or not I can
[32:09.280] also go in the negative way so I can keep the balance keep the same balance but
[32:15.840] I can decide to back off from the limiter at all right
[32:28.080] and then the hard clip is not needed here anymore cause at the end of this one
[32:33.480] it's also hard clip here to just limits off basically zero db
[32:40.640] oh this delay is thanks a bit too much
[33:10.640] maybe the reverb is also a bit too much
[33:23.200] that's okay
[33:38.160] Ah, it's okay.
[33:52.320] So I'm trying to mix basically at first the drums
[33:57.920] in the bass because it's the,
[34:00.280] it's the fundament of my track.
[34:03.800] It leads to everything basically
[34:07.440] to the rest of it because it's all about,
[34:12.080] it's all across the whole frequency spectrum.
[34:15.200] So the sub is in the lowest frequencies,
[34:18.200] then we have the kick drum on top of that,
[34:20.160] then we have the snares, the hi-hats covering
[34:22.680] all the high end.
[34:23.520] So the drums in the bass, basically this bus here
[34:28.280] decides on how my whole track is balanced in the end
[34:33.200] because it's, yeah, it's ranging over all these frequencies.
[34:37.680] So it's pretty important to me.
[34:40.080] So now that we have the drums in the bass in there,
[34:44.640] the mix down is quite okay, I think.
[34:47.760] The drums are not too much compressed
[34:49.640] and the bass is also not too compressed.
[34:53.200] So I make sure I have this, I get this right.
[35:01.200] And here on this bus, which is the drum bass bus,
[35:03.840] I also maybe can use a transient control.
[35:06.680] I don't do this all the time,
[35:08.200] but sometimes it works pretty well.
[35:10.600] So we do basically the same here,
[35:12.560] open up the sustain a bit, which does the same.
[35:15.960] It brings not also the hi-hats up,
[35:18.760] but also the bass, which is the bass.
[35:21.600] But also the bass, which is between the kick
[35:24.320] and the snare or between the kick.
[35:26.600] And it's kind of gluing the bass and the drums a bit together.
[35:32.800] So it's important that you don't overdo this here
[35:36.040] on the drums itself, because here you do it also.
[35:40.960] So maybe you have to dial this a bit back here.
[35:43.360] And then we do the same thing, but cross over.
[35:54.520] And sometimes I would say don't overdo
[36:00.520] or don't be too precise with all the settings.
[36:04.080] As you can see, I quickly move on.
[36:06.000] It's the same with the draft for me.
[36:09.000] I just dial in some parameters.
[36:10.560] I know that works.
[36:11.920] I know that this is probably too much.
[36:15.160] Then if I need to dial in something like this,
[36:17.440] then something is wrong.
[36:19.360] And so I have this experience of all these parameters
[36:25.360] I've dialed in before and used before.
[36:27.320] And I see at certain points when something is off
[36:30.920] or when I need to make some drastic changes.
[36:34.800] And I know instantly something is wrong
[36:36.840] on some other channel.
[36:38.480] So if you do this all the time,
[36:41.400] then you get some numbers in,
[36:43.280] you remember some numbers and you remember
[36:45.520] and you see instantly when something is happening wrong
[36:48.440] or something goes in the wrong direction.
[36:50.960] So yeah, I'm dialing also this a bit in
[36:53.440] and then I'm using cross over here,
[36:54.960] analyzing the bass, the drums again.
[37:12.480] So now what you can do is here,
[37:14.080] also bring in some kind of side chaining.
[37:18.800] And I use the note side chain and we can use
[37:24.640] from the DB track drums here, the kick outboard, right?
[37:28.520] It's a MIDI trigger or a note trigger.
[37:30.840] So we can use this note trigger every time the kick comes in
[37:34.120] and you want to bring down the volume of the bass.
[37:38.440] It's probably too much, but...
[37:50.720] Sometimes I don't even want to remove the bass completely
[37:54.280] like here.
[37:55.120] It's going straight up down to minus infinity.
[37:58.920] That's maybe too much.
[38:01.000] You just want to go down a bit, right?
[38:04.080] So just move the bass a bit out of the way.
[38:07.000] You don't want to remove it completely.
[38:08.920] Like a lot of kitchen producers do this
[38:13.120] and it's kind of the sound design process
[38:16.320] or the style of the track.
[38:19.080] But I think sometimes you need to leave
[38:22.680] some overlapping frequencies in there
[38:25.040] to clue them together.
[38:26.160] It's pretty dumb to actually cut everything out
[38:30.600] and then you put a compressor or an odd OTT
[38:34.040] on some of the buses just to clue everything together again.
[38:38.040] It's, you need to overlap frequencies to say to the listener,
[38:44.160] hey, these songs or these sounds belong together.
[38:47.680] They are meant together, right?
[38:49.760] If you cut everything out,
[38:50.880] then it sounds like a chopped, I don't know, sausage.
[38:53.760] So it's okay when frequencies overlap.
[39:09.560] So you have a pretty clean, solid drum and bass bus here
[39:14.560] and it's probably also pretty loud.
[39:19.760] So we can measure this here.
[39:21.560] Short term loudness max minus 11 already.
[39:24.960] And you can easily increase the loudness
[39:27.960] by just driving this into the clipper here.
[39:44.960] See, it doesn't sound that distorted at all
[39:47.960] and we are at minus 6.9 here.
[39:56.960] So I keep it a bit picky.
[40:00.960] And also here with the CP meter,
[40:05.960] it's a very handy tool actually.
[40:11.960] And I use this tool because it has only numbers
[40:16.960] and it seems like a lot of people like the visuals
[40:20.960] and so when you have these lines moving around
[40:25.960] but for me actually, if you look at this all the time,
[40:28.960] you remember certain numbers
[40:30.960] and you see exactly when something is off
[40:33.960] or when something is at the right level, right?
[40:37.960] So for instance, short term loudness max
[40:40.960] is basically a short term loudness like this
[40:43.960] but it only remembers the last biggest number.
[40:48.960] So it tells you basically where,
[40:51.960] when you analyze the whole track,
[40:53.960] you see here the loudest short term number, right?
[40:58.960] So it's the loudest part basically that's remembered here
[41:02.960] and this is the short term loudness I usually use
[41:05.960] but short term loudness max is pretty nice.
[41:08.960] I analyze then over a longer period of time
[41:11.960] and then I use this here to tweak something
[41:15.960] to this number basically.
[41:18.960] Then there's also the loudest range
[41:20.960] which is basically the same thing as an RMS,
[41:25.960] the crest value and this is the difference
[41:30.960] or the distance between the RMS level,
[41:34.960] the meat, the loudness of the track
[41:37.960] and the highest peak.
[41:40.960] So it tells you basically how dynamic your material is
[41:47.960] and when you put this for instance on drums,
[41:50.960] the other drum bass bus,
[41:52.960] you can see we have here a loudness range of eight, seven,
[41:57.960] seven loves and you make for instance an album
[42:02.960] where you have multiple tracks on there
[42:04.960] and you probably had this issue before
[42:06.960] where one track sounds completely fine,
[42:09.960] the next track sounds,
[42:11.960] even it's the same loudness and it's the same frequency spectrum,
[42:14.960] it sounds completely different, right?
[42:16.960] And that's mostly because you have
[42:19.960] a different compression or dynamic range on the drums,
[42:22.960] on different tracks,
[42:24.960] so on one track you have super compressed drums,
[42:27.960] but the rest is peaky and on the other track
[42:30.960] you have peaky drums and the rest is compressed
[42:33.960] so it sounds completely different and off.
[42:35.960] And here you can put this on the drums
[42:38.960] or on the drum bass bus
[42:40.960] and you can remember certain loudness range numbers
[42:44.960] and you can tweak to that.
[42:46.960] You can say, I make an album
[42:48.960] and on this album all my drum buses
[42:52.960] have a loudness range of 0.6 loves, okay?
[42:56.960] And then you can tweak everything to this loudness range
[42:59.960] and you know exactly on every track you do
[43:03.960] that's kind of similar loudness range on the drums
[43:07.960] so the tracks don't sound too different each time.
[43:13.960] So this is pretty important sometimes
[43:15.960] when you do an album or you want to do multiple tracks
[43:18.960] and like I said, if you watch all these numbers
[43:23.960] all the time on different instruments and buses
[43:26.960] you can remember these numbers
[43:28.960] and you can see instantly when something is wrong
[43:31.960] instead of having this line,
[43:33.960] this nice line over time in the visualizer,
[43:36.960] I think this is much, much better.
[43:40.960] Okay, now also can resize this here, which is neat.
[43:44.960] And then again, Ibu mode is the mode you want to use.
[43:48.960] RMS is the old world basically.
[43:52.960] It's even older than, it's not older than the VU meter stuff.
[43:57.960] So VU, RMS stuff like this you don't need actually anymore.
[44:03.960] So if you don't know about RMS, you don't need to learn it.
[44:06.960] Just go for Ibu, remember the love stuff here
[44:10.960] because there's not only the peaks and the RMS levels in there
[44:14.960] there's also a weakness curve of the frequency spectrum in there.
[44:18.960] So it depends on how, in what frequency something is louder or quieter.
[44:24.960] So it's all integrated in this kind of standard.
[44:28.960] So use Ibu, it's the only thing you need.
[44:33.960] Okay.
[44:44.960] So now we have to the rest of the song, Atmospherics.
[44:51.960] Okay, and there's everything in there.
[44:56.960] Usually on this type of buses here,
[45:01.960] I don't use what I use on the drum bass bus
[45:04.960] because it's way too harsh and it's all tailored to drums
[45:09.960] and keeping it loud.
[45:12.960] Here I am using most of the time something like GoFoz.
[45:17.960] Something like Live, if I want to play it.
[45:19.960] Sometimes I use just a normal GoFoz.
[45:23.960] But here you can just remove some resonances pretty easily.
[45:34.960] And maybe a peak limiter.
[45:36.960] Also drive it up to zero to B.
[45:47.960] You can see the piano here is picking sometimes.
[45:52.960] That's okay.
[45:55.960] So here you can also use a compressor.
[45:57.960] Maybe the Smart Comp by Sonable.
[46:06.960] You have some nice profile here.
[46:09.960] Mix acoustic maybe, electronic.
[46:15.960] Let's use acoustic here to have more dynamic range in there.
[46:25.960] So you have a bit of compression here also.
[46:27.960] There's the spectral compressor in there
[46:31.960] which ducks a bit of the harsh frequencies
[46:34.960] or kind of remove resonances.
[46:36.960] It's basically the same as the GoFoz here.
[46:39.960] We probably can remove this.
[46:42.960] It would be fine.
[46:48.960] If you do this too much or if you overdo this
[46:51.960] then you can completely remove the character of the sound.
[46:54.960] So you have to be cautious with this.
[46:57.960] So leave in a bit of characteristics or resonances.
[47:03.960] Just balance it out a bit.
[47:07.960] So now this is scratching here also zero to B.
[47:11.960] It's balanced with the Smart Comp also with the GoFoz.
[47:21.960] And then we need to mix it in.
[47:32.960] So this is completely taste thing what I'm doing here
[47:35.960] and try to find the right balance between the atmospherics and the drum bass bus.
[47:48.960] And maybe we need to low cut here the bass out.
[47:56.960] So the kick and the sub as free room here to unfold.
[48:01.960] And also I like to use your two pole EQ curve
[48:06.960] just to make it smooth.
[48:08.960] I just want to tame a bit.
[48:10.960] I don't want to clinical remove everything.
[48:13.960] I just want to make some free room.
[48:17.960] This is too cold.
[48:39.960] So of course this is in the mastering section.
[48:44.960] The master itself is a bit too harsh.
[48:47.960] It's too cold, too bright.
[48:50.960] But I like to have it that way because I can have everything picking at zero to B
[48:56.960] and it's pretty straightforward.
[48:58.960] I don't need to think about everything.
[49:00.960] I just have these numbers and I know I'm good basically.
[49:06.960] So to remove this harshness I basically do on the master.
[49:10.960] I do an EQ curve or you can use an EQ plus here for instance.
[49:20.960] And remove some of the harshness here
[49:25.960] or some kind of tilt EQ and you can
[49:32.960] tweak it the way you want it or the way you like your end result.
[49:40.960] Just to tame the high end here.
[49:42.960] So this is something you can do.
[49:44.960] What I like to do is again using a dBm5 here and say I want to have at my master
[49:50.960] I want to have minus 12 loves.
[49:55.960] So this is my target volume basically for this track.
[49:58.960] It's an ambient track or a chill out track and minus 12 is pretty loud.
[50:02.960] If you make drum bass you want to probably have here minus 4 or something like this.
[50:07.960] But I am going for maybe minus 12.
[50:10.960] Sometimes I go for minus 10 which is also pretty loud.
[50:13.960] But I come from drum bass so I like this.
[50:16.960] I can also go to minus 16.
[50:18.960] I think Spotify is minus 14.
[50:23.960] These are basically numbers you have to know.
[50:27.960] So I am going to minus 12.
[50:30.960] And then I am resetting this here and then analyzing basically everything.
[50:37.960] You can see the dot term loudness max is at minus 10.
[50:41.960] So it's already too loud.
[50:46.960] So when I push here this M button, match loudness,
[50:49.960] then you can see the gain is removed probably two loves.
[50:53.960] I mean minus 1.5.
[50:57.960] So turning down the volume on the master
[51:01.960] to reach this minus 12 loudness level here.
[51:05.960] Maybe let's go to minus 10.
[51:11.960] So it makes it a bit louder so it increases the volume.
[51:20.960] So now we are peaking here over the 0 dB line as you can see.
[51:24.960] And before we put the limiter on there, I am using a DSEQ3.
[51:29.960] DSEQ3 is here exactly at 0 dB, the threshold.
[51:35.960] So everything that goes above 0 dB is going into this resonance filter
[51:43.960] which is kind of something like Gullfoss.
[51:46.960] But with Gullfoss you don't have a threshold.
[51:49.960] Gullfoss is analyzing the whole signal all the time
[51:53.960] and you just dial in the amount how much you want to change the signal.
[51:57.960] But here you have a threshold.
[51:59.960] So if you don't surpass this threshold, nothing is applied basically.
[52:05.960] So now we are driving here basically of course the high end
[52:10.960] more into this DSEQ3 than the low end
[52:13.960] because we have this pretty bright signal.
[52:16.960] We have evened out everything.
[52:19.960] And here we have also a slope of 3 which is the pink noise curve.
[52:23.960] You can also dial in here 4.5 if you want to tame this a bit.
[52:29.960] So now even more high end is removed
[52:32.960] because this is a more gentle curve.
[52:35.960] You can see curve.
[52:36.960] But having this here at 0 dB, it removes all the harsh end,
[52:41.960] harsh, top end.
[52:46.960] Where I see the bypass.
[52:54.960] Right you can hear all the hi-hats on top
[52:56.960] and when I disable bypass you can hear it goes away.
[53:06.960] And then having here also attack and decay.
[53:08.960] So it's working like a compressor.
[53:10.960] So you have more influence on how
[53:13.960] you can also leave here some frequencies through in the attack phase
[53:18.960] or completely remove everything.
[53:29.960] This is removed.
[53:31.960] This is the delta.
[53:42.960] So having this removed I put here an elevator.
[53:46.960] Newfangled elevator.
[53:48.960] And also this one here is at 0 dB.
[53:50.960] As you can see because I'm having all these numbers and at 0 dB
[53:54.960] I don't need to think about gain
[53:56.960] and how much I want to drive something into it.
[53:59.960] I just have my numbers and leaving everything at 0 dB
[54:03.960] at blocks basically like automatically.
[54:07.960] So I have the input gain here at 0 dB
[54:09.960] because I only want to remove or limit stuff
[54:15.960] that goes above 0 dB.
[54:17.960] And here we are at 3 dB over 0 dB.
[54:21.960] So everything above 0 dB gets tamed by the filter bank
[54:26.960] and the limiter and the clipper here, the spectral clipper.
[54:34.960] You can see the yellow thing here is what goes in
[54:37.960] and the blue is what goes out.
[54:39.960] So there's a bit of limiting and compression
[54:42.960] or lipping happening.
[54:46.960] Of course you can check out how it sounds when you drive it more.
[54:51.960] But I leave it here at 0 dB.
[54:59.960] Here's the ceiling at 0.2 just to have a bit of room at the top
[55:04.960] to prevent clipping when you upload it to Twitter.
[55:09.960] Spectro clippers also at 0 dB.
[55:12.960] And everything works out.
[55:14.960] So I can dial in here basically the loudness I want to have
[55:17.960] which is minus 10.
[55:19.960] And then everything that's peaking above
[55:22.960] it's taken care of by the DSEQ3 and the new fangle limiter.
[55:26.960] Now I put this here at the end to check the loudness.
[55:39.960] You can see we are at minus 10.5.
[55:44.960] So it's basically the loudness we want to have here at minus 10.
[55:58.960] And also EQ plus, frees.
[56:10.960] Tilt setting of 4.5 dB per octave is pretty straight.
[56:15.960] Maybe we have to remove here some mid frequencies at certain points.
[56:20.960] But it's pretty evened out.
[56:25.960] So that's basically what I do.
[56:27.960] But it took much longer to explain everything what I do.
[56:31.960] But you can see I have a lot of 0 dB settings everywhere
[56:35.960] which push things to my gain staging point
[56:40.960] which is not minus 12 dB.
[56:44.960] It's 0 dB.
[56:46.960] And I take care of the dynamics pretty easily.
[56:51.960] Bring everything up to level.
[56:53.960] And then at the end here I've taken care of all the harshness
[56:56.960] with the DSEQ3 and limiter at the end.
[57:00.960] And the dB meter basically controls my loudness level.
[57:05.960] I can dial this in here and have every level I want to have
[57:10.960] and reach this pretty easily.
[57:14.960] It's also pretty clean.
[57:16.960] Everything is in its place.
[57:18.960] And maybe I have to make some creative decisions here.
[57:22.960] Maybe the pad sound isn't the same octave than the drone maybe.
[57:26.960] There's some overlapping there so I put down the pad maybe an octave lower.
[57:31.960] Something like this.
[57:32.960] So this is then the experience and how you want to have your song sounding.
[57:39.960] Okay.
[57:40.960] This is probably a one hour video now
[57:43.960] and it's not about arranging at all.
[57:45.960] A bit of arranging.
[57:46.960] Maybe I put this in the next video, the arranging.
[57:49.960] Maybe I leave this at this point
[57:52.960] so you can think about it, can replay the whole video
[57:57.960] and maybe ask some questions about this process.
[58:00.960] And then in the next video I show you how we can develop this into an arrangement.
[58:07.960] We touched a bit of arrangement here with the grouping
[58:12.960] which of course is the first part.
[58:14.960] You have now here these big blocks you can move around
[58:18.960] and we just duplicate basically all these blocks here
[58:21.960] and in these kind of blocks we add iterations
[58:25.960] or its alternations of the first initial 8 bar loop
[58:30.960] and then bring in modulations and automations
[58:34.960] and transitionings and make a whole arrangement out of this.
[58:40.960] Okay.
[58:41.960] I think that's it for this video so far.
[58:44.960] If you have some questions, leave it in the comments.
[58:47.960] Subscribe to the channel.
[58:49.960] Also make sure you hit this notification bell.
[58:52.960] It's pretty important on YouTube for some reason.
[58:55.960] And subscribe on Patreon
[58:57.960] because you can download on Patreon this project here
[59:00.960] and can try it out for yourself.
[59:02.960] I hope I made everything clear how I progress with this.
[59:08.960] There's also some differences,
[59:13.960] small differences between different genres,
[59:15.960] how I approach this.
[59:19.960] On drum bass I do something more drastically
[59:21.960] than on ambient, sometimes on ambient or in chill out.
[59:25.960] I don't do all these groupings here.
[59:28.960] I have maybe just all these tracks in one bus
[59:32.960] and leave it there
[59:34.960] because I want to have all the dynamics in there.
[59:37.960] So it's not every time the same.
[59:40.960] It depends on the track itself
[59:44.960] but the overall workflow is basically the same.
[59:49.960] So it's gain staging, frequency balancing,
[59:53.960] bringing all the elements into the right frequency spectrums,
[59:57.960] EQing, and then on the master bus
[01:00:02.960] I add some finishing touches
[01:00:05.960] and make sure nothing goes above zero dB.
[01:00:08.960] Okay.
[01:00:09.960] Thanks for watching this video.
[01:00:10.960] See you in the next one
[01:00:11.960] and I hope you liked this video.
[01:00:13.960] Bye.