Coming from a little bit of a different setting today. I just got done editing a video that

I'm about to play for you. One of my members over at themixacademy.com, Ross Galvin, took

advantage of my service where I get on kind of a Skype call, but it's a thing called Go

To Meeting, and we do a one-on-one training session, and he pulled open – actually,

he sent me a session, and I opened up his session, and we opened it up, started going

through it.

He asked about vocals and the stereo buss, and I went to mixing his song right in front

of him for an hour, and we recorded the whole thing. With his permission, he was kind enough

to let us share that.

So, I'm sharing it with you for free here on the internet. Davidglennrecording.com,

and the YouTube channel for The Pro Audio Files, and I hope that you enjoy it. All kinds

of gems in this one. It's a little bit hit or miss with some stuff. These are not typically

the plug-ins that I would use, but I wanted to make sure I used the plug-ins that he had.

A couple of paid plug-ins, but mostly stock plug-ins. I think you're going to get a lot

out of this.

It's free, I think it's about 45 minutes or so. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to share

this, spread the word. We would love for you to tell your friends if you think that this

could bring value to them. Thanks for hooking us up with more eyes on it and more views.

Feel free to leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you if you dig it, and we will

see you in lots more to come, from davidglennrecording.com and theproaudiofiles.com.

Thanks, guys.

So, the Pro-Q – okay, the first thing you're looking at here, let me pull in your Pro-Q.

This is your stuff here, right? And you pulled open a vocal preset, you're dipping out a

little bit of the lows, you found some harsh stuff you're getting rid of. You liked something

in the 5,400, and you've got another one here doing some stuff.

Do you want me to listen to this and mix it and talk to you while I'm hearing it and doing

my thing to it? Is that something that might be helpful?

Okay, I'll try to stick to what you've got available. I'm actually going to try to stick

to what you've got available. So I'm actually going to get rid of these both. I'm going

to put this back to the stock preset here. I'm just going to pull out the low kind of

like you had.

Okay, I'm going to listen to it

and see what we're working with here.

[song plays]

Okay, so you hear that, right? It sounds good? Okay, cool. I'm going to do my thing, man,

and I'll talk, I'll stop it, I'll listen for it to cut out on your end and I'll talk about

what I'm thinking.

The first thing is, I noticed that the vocal sat – did you record this?Ross: Yeah. It's

not in the best recording environment...

David: Naw, man, I'm not worried about it. We're going to work with it. This will be

super helpful for you. It's dark, you know, compared to what I hear that it could sound

like. It sounds a little dark to me, so my first – the first thing I'm going to do

is I'm going to dial in this parallel compression. You saw I kind of did that, just vibing to

it. Maybe even step it up a little faster.

I'm just going to listen to that, and then I'm going to make some EQ choices. So I will

clean up the low end a lot of times, but with multi-band, I don't know if you've seen me

do that, where I compress against the low end, so that if a singer goes to falsetto

and is singing high, and I've already removed all of the lows, well, they might need those

lows when they're singing high.

So, compressing against them when they're full and thick will control them, but in this

case, I hear that EQ is going to be good, because it sounds pretty consistent.

I'm all over the place a little bit here, but I'm thinking clean up the vocal and try

to get it to sound a little bit brighter and a little bit clearer by controlling some of

this stuff, and then I'm going to look to see how that sounds.

We'll go on here. So, I'm just going to try cutting some stuff out, and see what it is

that I don't like and move it.

[song plays]

Okay, so let's see. Do

I still have you? Okay, cool. So the first thing that I'm listening for is just trying

to make that microphone sound more like what I want it to on this artist. So, you kind

of were on the right track for this, cutting out some of the lows. I wanted to emphasize

– this is pretty common for stuff that I do, is I like to find a spot in this mid-range

between 800 and 2kHz, and I felt like 1021 sounded pretty good, so I brought that up

just a little bit right now. We may boost it more later, and we may even boost some

more up here later, but I'm just trying to make it sound a little more classy.

This may or may not be what you want, but what I'm hearing in my head is to clean up

the mic, boost a little top end – I'm thinking I mix a lot of Christian, LeCrae type stuff,

and people, whenever they come to me with that, they'll reference stuff like Rick Ross

and Drake, and stuff like that, so sometimes, there's a ton of top end in the mic, and sometimes,

there's practically none. It just depends on taste and style.

So, for me, I'm just trying to clean this up similar to what you're doing. 1KHz is the

sweet spot. I'm going to listen one more time, and I'm going to try to make sure that's the

one I like.

With the Pro-Q, you can hit this.

[song plays

There's kind of a honky tone right in there, so I'm going to try to pull just a little

bit out of some of those so that by dipping a little bit in here, we're obviously emphasizing

the stuff that's above it.

So, that's pretty straight-forward there. I think that already sounds a lot better.

Let's bypass it and make sure.

[song plays]

So, pretty straight. Just cleaning it up a little bit, and so we may take out more, but

right now, I think that sounds pretty good. This compressor, it's working. I think that

sounds great. I moved it a little bit faster, I may even push it a little harder.

[song plays]

So, what I did there, is I linked the threshold and the ceiling, so it's like a Waves L1,

so as I pull it down, we're getting gain reduction, but I'm also pulling down the output, so it

doesn't get louder or softer. The character is just changing, we're just adding compression.

I don't know how much we have there...

[song plays]

So, it's not always – it's just kind of like a last peak limiter. Anything that gets

through just a little bit, it's getting knocked off, two, three, four dB.

So, that's cool. Just flatten it out a little bit. Now over here, we've got some cleanup

EQ. If I heard the esses bothering me, I would pull in a de-ess here. With the stock de-esser,

it's cool. Just a male high frequency, but I won't just leave it like that. I'm going

to go find some esses.

[song plays]

It would help if I bypassed it. I'm going to look for esses.

[vocal plays]

“Sss, sss.” My name'Sss.

[vocal plays]

Make sure Loop playback is on. It is, so I just have to make a longer selection.

[vocal plays]

So really, that “s” is coming in at like, 7kHz. It's a little bit higher. So I'm trying

to find where the harshness is in the “s,” and now I can pull that back out, and I just

want to get this a couple. 12 is ridiculous. This is doing nothing now, and I'm going to

listen, pull it down, just to where it controls that a little bit.

[vocals play, adjusting de-esser]

So, that's quite a bit. So maybe even pulling that back, just touching it, and then I can

take that same de-esser and duplicate it, and throw it on this back-end here. I'm going

to bypass it for now, because I haven't boosted any more top end to need that necessarily.

Alright, so we've got it compressed, we've got it up front. The mic actually doesn't

sound too bad, I don't feel like there's any crazy room sound. I don't feel like there's

any crazy room sound, it's just a little bit honky and muffly in the 500-600 range, so

we dipped just a couple dB at that, but opening, this right here, boosting 10kHz was like taking

a blanket off of it. It just gives it that classiness, it just gives it that modern sound.

So, I'm going to hit play, and just kind of listen and see what else I hear.

[music plays]

That sounds pretty good! What was the reference that you're going for with this one?

Ross: To be honest with you, I don't reference anything on – this is my stuff, this is

my music, and to be honest, I don't reference anything directly, but if I did, it would

be something like, you know, like you mentioned, Drake, LeCrae, you know, Little Wayne, all

of that sound, you know?

I really like Drake's mixes. His vocal is just – I don't know, they stand out like

crazy. His vocals are just... That's really what I'm going for, you know?David: Well,

I've got Lord Knows, featuring Rick Ross. I think it's in my system here. I'm going

to – if you're cool with it, I'm going to reference, because I want to know what this

sounds like up against this. I usually drag it in, I call it “ref,” and then I stick

this bad boy at the top. I make it red and put it up here just above our libs, because

we have stuff.

Okay, and then I solo safe it. Are you familiar with Solo Safe-ing? Like I taught you with

the Aux tracks? Command+Click, so that even if we have something soloed, it will play.

I'm just going to drag it out to the right.

Okay, so I'm going to listen to a couple snippets of this.

[reference plays]

Okay, so now I can hear. We've got some more cleaning up to do. His vocal is still much

brighter than ours. Do you have the Virtual Mix Rack? The free

one that I told you about?Ross: Yes, but it's not working for some reason. I'm on [Pro Tools]

10, I've been using 10, Pro Tools 10, and for some reason it's not. It was working at

first. I've got it, I can get it, I just have to uninstall and reinstall.

David: Well, here's what I'd say. I'd say to come in here to the Virtual Mix Rack, and

to give that classiness, you're going to hear it, and then what I'll do is I'll show you

another option, like a frequency, but this is doing all kinds of stuff behind the scenes

that I almost wish I knew, because there's some secret stuff going on. It's boosting

top end, but then it's adding analog circuitry, like harmonics and stuff, so I would put this

on this vocal. I think it would do big things.

Actually, and I would put it after the compressor, so it's post-parallel compression. So, we're

sending a really hot signal into it, and then, we're going to get a nice, forward, Drake

type vibe. What I hear from him, I feel like this is a good option, so let's hear what

happens.

[music plays]

Do you hear that? That's pretty nuts. So, let's go back to him and let's hear it.

[reference track]

Okay. So, we've got the top end, but now I feel like we could use a little bit – some

of the warmer mids that I hear in his voice, so I'm going to go over here to Pro-Q.

Okay, so now, I'm going to try to find those frequencies that I hear in Drake's voice,

and I'm going to try to accentuate those in yours, and see what happens. So, something

I like to do, I don't know if you've seen me do this or not, but I'll come over here,

I'll use the Pro-Q one so it's the same concept.

So, I'll pull this up. Have you seen me do this? Pull stuff out. Okay, so, see what I'm

doing here? I'm putting filters on both the top, and the bottom. So now, if I hit play,

and Drake's our reference...

[reference track plays, low-passed]

I'm only listening to this frequency range.

[reference plays, band-passed]

So, I can hear his low end, and I can listen to his low end, and then I can listen to my

low end.

[low end of songs playing]

And so what I'll do, is I'll actually take this sucker, and right now, I have them both

selected. I just clicked around them like that. So, you could do it like that, and you

can get real detailed. How I start this process, I usually rough mix in the beat, the vocal,

I get everything in the mix, and then I leave the low end alone, but this again is on the

Master fader here. I'll pull in – if you double-click on the top, it creates that.

The high-cut/low-pass, and I'll take it all the way down to 15Hz, or 20Hz.

[plays reference track]

See, you feel him just shaking down there. And then, what is yours doing?

[plays song]

Not bad, right? You can hear the kick, but then you can't feel the low end, so then you

just have to think, well, okay, do I have 808s in at that moment, and just kind of think

about your song versus theirs, and listen to what the low end is doing, and if you don't

hear enough low in your bass or your 808s, then you know you can go in, and you've got

work to do. You've got to boost it below 25Hz.

The Pro-Q2, they changed the way it looks a little bit but... Okay, so then I'm going