Hey Tony!
First off this video was so great and I really appreciate your time telling the story at the beginning.
I wanted to ask about what kind of techniques you are using for in the box mixing in terms of getting the same level of overall tone and weight that the console seems to be adding. I was struck by how simple your approach was with the processing in this mix , and it seemed to come together so quickly on the console, while sounding fantastic.
I wonder do you find yourself having to do more in the box, with layering plugins to get the same sound, say, focusing on dialling in a strong mixbuss, or layering compression and saturation on individual tracks that are each doing a little bit? Or do you also try to keep things relatively simple in the computer?
Thanks!
Hey Tomas!
So the thing I figured out over the years is that the more crazy and complex stuff you do, the likelihood of the mix sounding small and 2 dimensional increases. Of course there are at least a million exceptions to this but I always start simple and try to get the mix sounding good without getting fancy straight away, pretty much what I did with the Air song. I’ll then start getting into more complex methods as needed to get things to bend to how I want them. In the case of the Air mix, I tried getting a great balance but I needed to blend in some drastic compression and distortion/grit to get things to sound better. I didn’t start doing that right out the gate.
As far as the tone and weight from a console and not having that 'in the box’, I do use tape emulation plugins which help a bit with that (UAD Studer A800 and IK Multimedia Tape Machine 80). I also find myself spinning in more lows/low-mids from time to time to get more weight. -Tony
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