this is gold! I've watched seriously SO many videos on youtube about mastering and different techniques but this is honestly professionell and very very helpfull
Thank you so much JC. Brillant video. So many great ideas and information.!!!!!!! Make sure to watch the full video but in case you want to go back to the specific parts here are a few (list not complete): Masterchain 10:30 Kick 29:51 Snare 35:31 The importance of understanding your plugins 38:12 Bass 39:24 Pad 46:13
Wow, this is just excellent. In 45 minutes, you can find out how much you know, *really* know (everything should be pretty familiar) and you can learn some new techniques for doing things you already understand. But, I wonder how many people really understand saturation. It works by *distributing* some of the transient energy (the peaks) as upper harmonics. That's why the peak of a saturated signal is lower but the sound actually seems louder: it is "louder" in the sense that the RMS level has been increased at the "expense" of the transient level. Now, there are many, many kinds of saturation. Even clipping is essentially just saturation (unless you get rid of the aliased harmonics with high-degree over-sampling). Even the tape-machine emulations achieve their "compression" through what is essentially saturation (you lose peak energy but get it back as harmonics). And, of course, taken to the extreme, saturation becomes audible as distortion (instead of that "warm," louder sound).
"It works by distributing some of the transient energy (the peaks) as upper harmonics. " that is a fantastic way to think about it!! that actually makes it so clear and concise. thanks for that.
I liked how he explained that the use of compression is to even out the levels in live recorded audio and then how it relates to sampled music/midi where fader levels could simply deal with that issue but compression could shape the sound of the sample or could be used to add more or less attack thereby controlling the bottom----a question I always had-----thanks for this!
Yes, and he *showed* a real, useful example of serial compression and why you would choose different compressors (including a tape-machine emulation to achieve compression instead of thinking of it only as adding saturation).
Loads of good information. The audio levels are not matched at all, so he is adding about 2db which does not make for a good objective comparison. Always volume match your plugins when you mix to avoid falling in the loudness trap!
This was good. One thing ive learnt the hard way - if you eq a kick before compression, don't ever touch that eq without checking the compression is ok afterwards. Better still put another eq after the compressor.
My question is about the automations. Should I add all my reverb, filter, panning in the production before I bounce audio? Or should I do the processing on the audio?
When the track speaks back I know I no need changing anything, also since b+never worked with refference tracks, I kind fo feel what I need and ways to move myself unconsiously in the direction of the sounds/melodies location :D
Intersample Peaks only occur when bouncing to mp3 for example. If you export to wav then there are no intersample peaks so it doesn't matter how loud you bounce your track for the mastering engineer as long as you don't clip.
34:08 where am I supposed to be looking? I see on the bottom left a dial at 50 above the "BELL" button. Is that the boost he is talking about? Where am I supposed to look for the dip/cut at 200hz he talks about?
Hi Will. Really glad your enjoying our content and are interested in investigating our full courses. If you need any help at all you can speak to a course advisor using the phone numbers or contact form here: www.pointblankmusicschool.com/contact/
no idea how he is using the dimension D, since roland has dropped support for the UAD platform, I would love to use it, but I have to constantly look for some other cryptic name to find it now ;)
I almost always start to tweak (mix) as I produce. You cant just lump a bunch of sounds together and expect them to sound good. For me tweaking the sounds as I go will allow me to see if they fit or not. I have an idea of what I want and then start to audition sounds which everyone knows can be a grueling process. Once I decide on a sound i.e. synth, drums etc. I remove the frequencies that are not supposed to be there (just as a starting point and not to every sound yet). I noticed on many synths each sound has FX and is beefed up. The manufacturer does that to make the sound more appealing in solo. In reality if you leave it alone your mix may start to sound muddy. So I pretty much remove any unwanted frequencies right out of the gate. I do not go too heavy as if you remove the lows from everything your mix will start to "thin" out. The mixdown process is ALL about balance and its absolutely crucial to getting a great sounding final product.
Hey point blank team, I have a question. What is the advantage of doing all that processing on the mix buss in the “mixing stage”? Why not do that kind of processing in the mastering phase?
Benedict Noakes because you want to give your own final character and touch to the overall wall of Sound before another technician will bring out the loudness out of it. Mastering engineers have a different point of view than you do, so you want to reach the best result before they touch it.
apagaelmovil depends if you know what you're doing, a limiter is a form of compression after all. You can use a compressor (MJUC from Klanghelm is great) to have your whole mix down groove with the kick/bass but you REALLY have to watch and listen to what you're doing as you don't want to add "colour," and it's best to do this from the start of a project as it can sound a bit weird if you just throw it on at the end. There's a thread on subsekt all about this :)
I normally have my RNLA (small cheap external compressor) on parallel through my mixing desk but nothing on the master bus. I've always been advised against it. When sending music to a mastering engineer they are very specific on that matter. Also, I like colour. It all depends on the situation though.
So that can be true if you don't want certain sounds and effects to happen to your mix. But putting a Limiter or Maximizer is compressing it. So my main thing is to not use a full spectrum compressor, use a multiband and that effectively helps with the negative effects that compression can cause in a master chain. But also I use compression all the time in a master depending on what the mix needs and how the eq is being affected. The tiniest bit can have a huge difference in lushness and presence.
Exactly the bass and low end definitely mono, then the high end can be as stereo/wide as you want but it should sound good in mono as well - sometimes the stereo frequencies start to cancel each other out so in mono it will sound thin for example in the club.
I see JC did not do any balancing or panning in the mix all the faders have been on 0db all the time, is this how a club mix should be or the mix was balance when it was bounced to stems?
It was premixed in another session by one of his previous students. Those stems are a submix - things have been panned/leveled (if you saw the older session, faders would lower/higher, etc).
@@officialsumming6813 No problem! I did submixes for a couple songs earlier in the Fall and that's exactly what it looks like when I put those files in a new DAW session.
Hi! Where can i find this plugin meter named "LEVELS"? I love that interface and have been unable to find it online as the word "LEVELS" is too broad of a search. Thanks! Amazing masterclass btw
QUESTION!! : All Mastering engineers ask to turn off everything on master channel. What about all these plugins in master buss on this video? It's a big difference in my mix with these plugins and without. Shall I turn them off all before sending or I can keep it and there is still room for mastering even with them?... or maybe to turn off some of them and some of them to keep????
@@jackcarlu just sow your reply, thanks, unfortunately it's not answering my question :) the question is - If need to render final track for mastering with plugins ON in master buss or OFF
@@Jenia_Clouzer from my perspective of view, you certainly need to turn of all sort of limiter and clippers and leave decent amount of headroom. But it is ok to leave some sort of plugins that can change overall sound tone and you want it to be in that way for example some vintage saturation effects or a bit of glue compression etc. Only you as an artist can know how you want you master to sound creativity and good master engineer should ask for it and references and do all sort of tech job to make sound as best as it possibly can 😀
I don't to see any UAD Plug-Ins. You could as well show hardware. Yes, it sounds good but most people can't afford to buy extra DSP hardware. I have a few plug-ins that aren't cheap, like Sonnox and Flux. And if I ever have the income from music, then I will get a UAD interface, I suppose. But at the moment I don't have one and I am more interested what is possible with native plug-ins.
native plugins haven't done the non-linearity modeling very well yet last I was working with a DAW. just a matter of time before good non-linearity modeling comes to native plugins though
I think this whole video is not about the plugins, but more about the theory behind the mastering. You could also use your own stuff, and just as the teacher said, learn them and experience with them, to achieve the same result. This tutorial is gold, because it points out the things you need to be aware of when mixing - in a way that is really understandable - and the road it's taking is not the only way - plugin-wise. :)
Essentially they do the same thing. Reasons why you may want to use a compressor instead include that a compressor can add character, warmth/brightness to a sound. A compressor can also be more musical/natural opposed to a transient shaper.
Amazing tutorial as always. Question: Anyone know a great alternative to Black Box? Would iZotope's exciter working in a similar way, considering it has "tape saturation" options? :)
Exciters pretty good, you could really use any saturation plugin, ableton has a good setting in its stock saturator called "a bit warmer" idk about other daws tho. Exciters dope tho cause you can change the type of saturation for each band of the frequency spectrum between tape or even diode like on that black box
Why on earth would you need a plugin to A-B your mix to a reference track. You can always load up the reference track onto a separate audio track and send it stereo output, while your entire mix can be sent to a separate buss with all your mastering plugins before being routed to the stereo buss. This way you can A-B between your mix and the reference track by simply soloing and muting the ref track as you go along.
Pretty sure he gave you the processed stems and not the raw unprocessed stems. Production not just about the song parts and structure, its also about sounding good. So the producer of that track didn't give away his secrets.
I keep hearing that my mix will sound awesome in stereo when it sounds good in mono... so I mix my stuff up in mono, open it up again but parts in my mix now sound muddy, are too loud or too quiet. Am I the only one?
the mix process is a lot bigger of a process than mastering - mixing gets the sound right, mastering is more to do with getting the right levels and fine tuning.
![Electronic Music Mixing Masterclass with Matt Lange [mau5trap records]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HwZaRP-lbzg/mqdefault.jpg)
It’s so hard to devide good stuff from the ‚TH-camr-Knowledge‘ you find everywhere. Anyone wondering, this is gold !
this is gold! I've watched seriously SO many videos on youtube about mastering and different techniques but this is honestly professionell and very very helpfull
Pre-mastering
Agree
Thank you so much JC. Brillant video. So many great ideas and information.!!!!!!!
Make sure to watch the full video but in case you want to go back to the specific parts here are a few (list not complete):
Masterchain 10:30
Kick 29:51
Snare 35:31
The importance of understanding your plugins 38:12
Bass 39:24
Pad 46:13
Wow, this is just excellent. In 45 minutes, you can find out how much you know, *really* know (everything should be pretty familiar) and you can learn some new techniques for doing things you already understand. But, I wonder how many people really understand saturation. It works by *distributing* some of the transient energy (the peaks) as upper harmonics. That's why the peak of a saturated signal is lower but the sound actually seems louder: it is "louder" in the sense that the RMS level has been increased at the "expense" of the transient level. Now, there are many, many kinds of saturation. Even clipping is essentially just saturation (unless you get rid of the aliased harmonics with high-degree over-sampling). Even the tape-machine emulations achieve their "compression" through what is essentially saturation (you lose peak energy but get it back as harmonics). And, of course, taken to the extreme, saturation becomes audible as distortion (instead of that "warm," louder sound).
"It works by distributing some of the transient energy (the peaks) as upper harmonics. " that is a fantastic way to think about it!! that actually makes it so clear and concise. thanks for that.
I liked how he explained that the use of compression is to even out the levels in live recorded audio and then how it relates to sampled music/midi where fader levels could simply deal with that issue but compression could shape the sound of the sample or could be used to add more or less attack thereby controlling the bottom----a question I always had-----thanks for this!
Yes, and he *showed* a real, useful example of serial compression and why you would choose different compressors (including a tape-machine emulation to achieve compression instead of thinking of it only as adding saturation).
Brilliant teacher! Love these tutorials! Thank you for sharing!
Buij
This is one of the best tutors I've come across. Really relevant and clear. This guy needs to do more mixing courses
"lil bit" - probably the most favourite phrase of everyone involved in sound engineering.
Super helpful! Always wondered why my tracks sound way quieter than pro tracks at the same volume
I love how he was about to say "now let's have a listen now that we have all that shit on" 😂
He said it
A ton of GOLD here! Well done JC, thanks for sharing this great insight
This one was awesome! Never thought i would watch it entirely... very useful i have learned alot.
That thumbnail is a work of art
This was such a great video
Loads of good information. The audio levels are not matched at all, so he is adding about 2db which does not make for a good objective comparison. Always volume match your plugins when you mix to avoid falling in the loudness trap!
Is this because he's gaining in one of the plug ins ?
This was good. One thing ive learnt the hard way - if you eq a kick before compression, don't ever touch that eq without checking the compression is ok afterwards. Better still put another eq after the compressor.
Yep.
I always EQ FIRST before doing anything else.
when it sounds fine, I gate it, if the gate fits, than I put a compressor on it.
Man, funny dude! I'm really thankful for that lessons. Was exactly what I need!
21:23 Almost slipped!
All that ish Hahaha
Yea I noticed that aswell ahahahaha all that shiiiiitufff
hahahahahaha
My question is about the automations. Should I add all my reverb, filter, panning in the production before I bounce audio? Or should I do the processing on the audio?
totally, because u would think if u did it before - all the comrpessors and limiters would affect it?
Love this guy
When the track speaks back I know I no need changing anything, also since b+never worked with refference tracks, I kind fo feel what I need and ways to move myself unconsiously in the direction of the sounds/melodies location :D
Jc Concato! I`ll just like the video and watch it later when I grab a time.
BEST BEST BEST BEST. FINALLY SOMEONE WHO MAKES SENSE !!!
4:50 wtf this song sounds almost identical to - Animist x Tin Head (Marcus Jakes remix)
yeah but it looks like animist released after that
He is wonderful period
Love this guy. Thank you so much for the clear and well explained lesson
Always good with JC !! Keep it up
Intersample Peaks only occur when bouncing to mp3 for example. If you export to wav then there are no intersample peaks so it doesn't matter how loud you bounce your track for the mastering engineer as long as you don't clip.
I love this guy! He has some mind chaning tricks that will give alot of help for me when I mix! Awesome!
34:08 where am I supposed to be looking? I see on the bottom left a dial at 50 above the "BELL" button. Is that the boost he is talking about? Where am I supposed to look for the dip/cut at 200hz he talks about?
Ross thank you!
This guy was brilliant. Really informative and easy to follow. Thank you :-)
Very insightful. Definitely looking into their proper courses in the future.
Hi Will. Really glad your enjoying our content and are interested in investigating our full courses. If you need any help at all you can speak to a course advisor using the phone numbers or contact form here: www.pointblankmusicschool.com/contact/
At 8:36 he says something about an old say among engineers and for the life of me, I can't make out what he says.
Very informative glad I found this
Good information
perfect lesson for that amount of time!
Great video!!! Fantastic instructor!!!
Mr. JC Concato where can I find that LEVELS Vst?
Absolutely amazing tips. JC , you are the master! :)
Oh this helped me finish up a mix. READY FOR THE CLUB. I miss you Cluby
JC is the JC of mixing!
Wow.. superb... really helpful...Thanks
very great seminar, thanks for uploading!
Amazing masterclass!!
yes absolute gold indeed!! THANK YOU!!!!
Such a great teacher
JC is the man!
very well explained!
Consummate professional this guy.
that Levels plug looks sick! thanks for the great presentation. would love to see something similar with a track that could use a lot more work.
Thank you, i will take into acount !
Great explanation as always, I love Concato he's awesome !
no idea how he is using the dimension D, since roland has dropped support for the UAD platform, I would love to use it, but I have to constantly look for some other cryptic name to find it now ;)
Studio D ....such a bummer about Roland & UAD
Amazing content. Thanks!
Thanks, this is absolutely brilliant, great work! Thanks for this.
This was absolutely brilliant, loved it! Well explained!
Very nice video! This is very helpful.
Very useful! Very good teacher!
Can someone explain what the change in threshold does in the drum bus and kick compressor?
Tet more of the signal is getting compressed. It is essentially the input level
I don't know about you guys, but I'm struggling to finish tracks.. (My biggest weakness)
Yeah, me too. I get unmotivated when it's time to mix & master.
Same here 😧
Force yourself to finish tracks even if you hate it - sadowick
dk if this is still a problem but youtuber elephnt did a good video on how he learned to finish tracks
Great stuff.. Love this
I almost always start to tweak (mix) as I produce. You cant just lump a bunch of sounds together and expect them to sound good. For me tweaking the sounds as I go will allow me to see if they fit or not. I have an idea of what I want and then start to audition sounds which everyone knows can be a grueling process. Once I decide on a sound i.e. synth, drums etc. I remove the frequencies that are not supposed to be there (just as a starting point and not to every sound yet). I noticed on many synths each sound has FX and is beefed up. The manufacturer does that to make the sound more appealing in solo. In reality if you leave it alone your mix may start to sound muddy. So I pretty much remove any unwanted frequencies right out of the gate. I do not go too heavy as if you remove the lows from everything your mix will start to "thin" out. The mixdown process is ALL about balance and its absolutely crucial to getting a great sounding final product.
Hey point blank team, I have a question. What is the advantage of doing all that processing on the mix buss in the “mixing stage”? Why not do that kind of processing in the mastering phase?
Because he's tweaking individual sounds!!
Ann Other I’m talking about the mix bus / master channel, not the individual channel processing.
Benedict Noakes because you want to give your own final character and touch to the overall wall of Sound before another technician will bring out the loudness out of it. Mastering engineers have a different point of view than you do, so you want to reach the best result before they touch it.
What's the key to house samples. Is that sample from packs, or is there a good go to for this type of singing samples. So sick !! 🔥
Nice work.
this was excellent
I always heard never to put a compressor on the master bus when preparing the mixdown for mastering. Im confused here.
apagaelmovil I just use isotope for mastering tbh
apagaelmovil depends if you know what you're doing, a limiter is a form of compression after all. You can use a compressor (MJUC from Klanghelm is great) to have your whole mix down groove with the kick/bass but you REALLY have to watch and listen to what you're doing as you don't want to add "colour," and it's best to do this from the start of a project as it can sound a bit weird if you just throw it on at the end. There's a thread on subsekt all about this :)
@Lil Saf I hope you are trolling. Otherwise stop doing that and send it to someone that knows what they are doing.
I normally have my RNLA (small cheap external compressor) on parallel through my mixing desk but nothing on the master bus. I've always been advised against it. When sending music to a mastering engineer they are very specific on that matter. Also, I like colour. It all depends on the situation though.
So that can be true if you don't want certain sounds and effects to happen to your mix. But putting a Limiter or Maximizer is compressing it. So my main thing is to not use a full spectrum compressor, use a multiband and that effectively helps with the negative effects that compression can cause in a master chain. But also I use compression all the time in a master depending on what the mix needs and how the eq is being affected. The tiniest bit can have a huge difference in lushness and presence.
Great vid! love this guy
A true master, thanks!
Am I right in saying that keeping the bass and low end mono then hi hats and stuff more stereo not too stereo tho ??
Exactly the bass and low end definitely mono, then the high end can be as stereo/wide as you want but it should sound good in mono as well - sometimes the stereo frequencies start to cancel each other out so in mono it will sound thin for example in the club.
Great info. Thanks for sharing
Amazing video!
I see JC did not do any balancing or panning in the mix all the faders have been on 0db all the time, is this how a club mix should be or the mix was balance when it was bounced to stems?
It was premixed in another session by one of his previous students. Those stems are a submix - things have been panned/leveled (if you saw the older session, faders would lower/higher, etc).
@@odumabekah4000 oh I see. Thanks for the clarity my bro!!
@@officialsumming6813 No problem! I did submixes for a couple songs earlier in the Fall and that's exactly what it looks like when I put those files in a new DAW session.
@@odumabekah4000 oh ohk I see, I was surprised why it looked like that but yet sounding well balanced. I will keep that in mind!
Hi! Where can i find this plugin meter named "LEVELS"? I love that interface and have been unable to find it online as the word "LEVELS" is too broad of a search. Thanks! Amazing masterclass btw
www.masteringthemix.com/products/levels
great stuff!!!
QUESTION!! : All Mastering engineers ask to turn off everything on master channel. What about all these plugins in master buss on this video? It's a big difference in my mix with these plugins and without. Shall I turn them off all before sending or I can keep it and there is still room for mastering even with them?... or maybe to turn off some of them and some of them to keep????
I guess after that you should export everything as a unique track before sending it to a mastering engineer. Most of them don't like stem mastering.
@@jackcarlu just sow your reply, thanks, unfortunately it's not answering my question :) the question is - If need to render final track for mastering with plugins ON in master buss or OFF
@@Jenia_Clouzer from my perspective of view, you certainly need to turn of all sort of limiter and clippers and leave decent amount of headroom. But it is ok to leave some sort of plugins that can change overall sound tone and you want it to be in that way for example some vintage saturation effects or a bit of glue compression etc. Only you as an artist can know how you want you master to sound creativity and good master engineer should ask for it and references and do all sort of tech job to make sound as best as it possibly can 😀
@@zmln6968 that make sense, thanks for the opinion!!
This guy is awesome.
That short room on the rim-shot is a little bright/harsh. Thanks for post!
I don't to see any UAD Plug-Ins. You could as well show hardware. Yes, it sounds good but most people can't afford to buy extra DSP hardware. I have a few plug-ins that aren't cheap, like Sonnox and Flux. And if I ever have the income from music, then I will get a UAD interface, I suppose. But at the moment I don't have one and I am more interested what is possible with native plug-ins.
native plugins haven't done the non-linearity modeling very well yet last I was working with a DAW. just a matter of time before good non-linearity modeling comes to native plugins though
I think this whole video is not about the plugins, but more about the theory behind the mastering. You could also use your own stuff, and just as the teacher said, learn them and experience with them, to achieve the same result. This tutorial is gold, because it points out the things you need to be aware of when mixing - in a way that is really understandable - and the road it's taking is not the only way - plugin-wise. :)
I would spend months learning from him...🧐 Thank you
for controlling your drums whats the difference on using a compressor vs a transient shaper ? i never kinda understood this :s
Essentially they do the same thing. Reasons why you may want to use a compressor instead include that a compressor can add character, warmth/brightness to a sound. A compressor can also be more musical/natural opposed to a transient shaper.
Whats the intro tracks name? Sound fresh!
Muy bueno Gracias
Amazing tutorial as always.
Question: Anyone know a great alternative to Black Box? Would iZotope's exciter working in a similar way, considering it has "tape saturation" options? :)
Exciters pretty good, you could really use any saturation plugin, ableton has a good setting in its stock saturator called "a bit warmer" idk about other daws tho. Exciters dope tho cause you can change the type of saturation for each band of the frequency spectrum between tape or even diode like on that black box
I wear an arm band that says "what would JC do?"
I would pay to be taught by him and point blank, seems a cut above the rest!
Excellent, superbe résumé, merci!
Amazing .....this was the best
is that the bass track in stereo tho ??
brilliant!!!!
this j makes me wana buy a bunch of plug ins
He’s a good tutor
Why on earth would you need a plugin to A-B your mix to a reference track. You can always load up the reference track onto a separate audio track and send it stereo output, while your entire mix can be sent to a separate buss with all your mastering plugins before being routed to the stereo buss. This way you can A-B between your mix and the reference track by simply soloing and muting the ref track as you go along.
Some people dnt like the hard way especially new school i guess
so this was mixing, not mastering? even if he putted stuff on the master? because he still got that 3 dbs of headroom.
That's right
Can someone tell me how the original producer got all his track levels where the faded is zero and mixed.?
Choosing the right sounds that complement each other, then good gain staging, equalising and compression - good practices in mixing.
Original producer has bounced all his tracks out into stems at mixed levels
Really helpful masterclass!
Pretty sure he gave you the processed stems and not the raw unprocessed stems. Production not just about the song parts and structure, its also about sounding good. So the producer of that track didn't give away his secrets.
I keep hearing that my mix will sound awesome in stereo when it sounds good in mono... so I mix my stuff up in mono, open it up again but parts in my mix now sound muddy, are too loud or too quiet. Am I the only one?
Mix in stereo and occasionally check to hear how it sounds in mono..? 26:40
wait... are all these plugins placed on the mix output before its sent for mastering?
Yes
the mix process is a lot bigger of a process than mastering - mixing gets the sound right, mastering is more to do with getting the right levels and fine tuning.
Great 👍