Transients, rear bus, chili peppers

Videos Andrew Scheps Mixing in Atmos
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Hi Andrew. Thank you for taking the time to engage with the community. Got a few questions on the back of the many series you’ve done for mwtm/your past work which I look up to.

  1. Would you say that transient retention is one of the main strengths of your template since there’s a heavy reliance on parallel compression via all of your sends including the rear bus?
  2. Speaking of which, the rear bus, what’s your process right at the beginning of the mixing session in terms of levels. Is your first move to balance all the elements of the song with the rear bus on from the get go? Do you leave the 1176 on during this time? Because my understanding is that if you were to do a balance with the rear bus off, then once you bring it back on, everything that goes to it will be really loud.
  3. I must ask what is happening on Dani California around 0:57 when that first chorus comes in? Is it just some clever guitar fade-ins or some sort of parallel bus automation? Feels like the whole song is elevating. One of my favourite mixes to reference.

Thanks again for all the time you put into teaching.

Bogdan

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Hi Bogdan,

I’ll answer in order.

  1. That is definitely one of the good things about parallel compression. The fact that the uncompressed signal is still there gives you the natural transient.
  2. I add sends to my rear buss to all of the audio tracks except drums/percussion/etc at 0dB. Until recently the return would be at 0 so I started with lots of Rear Buss. Then about three years ago (or maybe more) it just felt like way too much, so I added a master fader to my template so it was really easy to turn down the return (I’ve never really felt the need to adjust the input level, that settled in years ago). Then two years ago I decided that I wanted to start with no Rear Buss at all, so that master fader is all the way down in the template, and sometimes I bring it up. I’d have to say that in more than half my mixes now there’s no rear buss at all. TO your point, if I think I’m going to use it I’m turning it up pretty early in the process. Trying to bring something like that in later destroys the balance.
  3. It’s hard to remember really, but certainly some of it is the arrangement. I’m sure there are parallel compressors being added or turned up, and possibly the entire mix buss is getting turned up. It wasn’t an easy mix, but certainly all the component parts were there.

Thanks!
Andrew

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Thanks a lot Andrew!