I sat through a free 3-day Webinar showing how a Mixing Engineer polishes up a raw multi-track recording using a suite of audio plug-ins to add balance, transparency, spatial depth, dynamics and energy to the finished recording.
This 3-day event was sponsored by Focusrite and hosted by Caleb Loveless and Jake Kodweis at Mastering.com
Over 500 participants from all across the world joined in to this popular event.
You can watch the replay of this 9 hour Zoom Meeting split over 3 days.
https://courses.mastering.com/course/1739838809399x650290742962421800Here is a summary of what was covered.
Day-1Examine the raw multi-track recordings sent in by the client.
Rename each track based on content (Bass Drums, Snares, Bass Guitar, Electric Piano, Organ, Strings, Main Vocals, Background Vocals, etc.)
Group the multi-tracks (Drums, Guitars, Vocals, etc)
Normalize the volume of each track.
Use the PAZ Analyzer to get the frequency spread to match the reference as closely as possible.
I thought this was a very useful tool to get the volume balance between the tracks close to the ideal as quickly as possible.
Day-2Jake Kodweis walked us through all the steps on how to apply compression and equalization to each track.
Day-3Jake went through the process of cleaning up the vocals by manually fixing the pitches using Melodyne and FlexPitch. He explained how this is a standard practice in the industry. It was a laborious process of going through every syllable and graphically pulling the waveform segments up or down to match the correct pitch along the Y-axis.
Jake showed us his workflow and explained why he charges so much as a professional mix engineer. The final results were indeed stellar.
Caleb Loveless then took us through a suite of plugins for adding the final polish.
- Soothe2 Soothe2
- UAD Pultec Equalizer
- Clariphonic DSP
- Pro-Q
- SSL Native Bus Compressor
- UAD Precision Maximizer
- UAD Precision Limiter
- PAZ Analyzer
If you do not want to sit through the entire 9-hour presentation, just watch the 3-hour proceedings on Day-3. This included the most important tips and tricks of making a mix sound professional.
At the end Jake and Caleb played back the original mix sent in by their client and compared that to polished mix they created using the professional tools and plugins.
All they used was a single M1 Mac Studio, Logic Pro and a suite of plugins.
This was an excellent introduction to the world of professional mixing.
Focusrite gave away 2 prizes:
Focusrie Scarlett 2i2 2-in/2-out USB Audio Interface
Focusrite 18i20 18-in/20-out USB-C Audio Interface
You can access more free courses from Mastering.com at:
https://courses.mastering.com/I was fascinated to watch how this entire project was put together on a single M1 Mac Studio in a span of 9 hours.
It is quite a lot of work to polish a single song.
This laborious workflow made me appreciate my Genos2 a whole lot more!
On the Genos2 the Yamaha engineers have already applied the optimum reverb, chorus, delay, compression and equalization to every panel voice. The moment you select one, the appropriate effects come in as default settings. They are readily usable unless you have reasons to change them.
This makes the process of making music on the Genos2 so much fun and effortless. All the technical complexities are already taken care of leaving you free to unleash your creativity by concentrating on your playing style.
I like how any song you play on the Genos2 sounds like a studio mastered CD. I feel this is its strength. Of course one is free to edit each voice and dial down the effects to make it sound more like a Korg Pa5x if you are aiming for a live band sound.
Genos2 voices have that extra sparkle and shine thanks to the Steinberg REVelation Reverb that Yamaha has introduced in this model.
I have a whole stack of Sony outboard effects (DPS-R7 Reverb, DPS-D7 Delay, DPS-M7 Modulation) and the Lexicon PCM-92 Reverb. I no longer use them on the Genos2 voices.
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