BILLY DECKER: Winning the Loudness War, Why Pros Ignore “Sample Guilt”, and Nashville Mixing Secrets

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by STA Audio. Sta Audio creates zero compromise Recording gear that is light on the wallet only. The best components are used and each one goes through a rigorous testing process with one thing in mind, getting the best sound possible. Go to audio do com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:28):

Alright, welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. We have a very special edition of Mix Crit Monday today. We're actually doing this on a Wednesday, so mix crit Wednesday with one of our favorite people and mixers on earth. Mr. Billy Decker, welcome. How are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:49):

Good morning fellas. I'm doing great. Happy Wednesday to you. Happy

Speaker 2 (00:53):

Wednesday. Are

Speaker 3 (00:53):

We going to drink whiskey on this or what we did that last night? We'll wait, we'll wait until

Speaker 4 (00:58):

The podcast is over.

Speaker 2 (01:00):

Alright, perfect. Well, I

Speaker 4 (01:02):

Feel like a mix criting would be more fun under the influence, but what do I know?

Speaker 2 (01:07):

A few weeks ago we did one where we were drinking beer and we kind of got carried away.

Speaker 4 (01:13):

Oh my.

Speaker 2 (01:14):

I had a great time though.

Speaker 4 (01:16):

Wait, was that the one with Brown?

Speaker 2 (01:17):

Yeah, the one we did with John Brown where we did the Miss Sugar Tunes. Oh yeah, we definitely had a few. It definitely makes the critiques funnier. I'll say I'll that much, but either that or Dream Kill or turned angry. Yeah, well I don't know if we went into anger mode or anything, but I could definitely see how Dream Killer turned angry could happen, but I think that honestly for me that would be more of a whiskey thing because we had a saying on tour, which was

Speaker 5 (01:54):

Whiskey

Speaker 2 (01:54):

Makes tours disappear and basically it also made things like stop signs disappear out of the ground and I've actually seen four dudes rip a stop sign out of the ground and if you've never seen that before, you might not realize how hard that is to do. But those things

Speaker 4 (02:20):

Like a concrete base or something holding that thing in.

Speaker 2 (02:22):

Yeah, I

Speaker 4 (02:24):

Think that's a felony, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (02:26):

Hey, I didn't do it. Yes, I think that's a felony too. I definitely didn't do it.

Speaker 4 (02:32):

I'll have to stop doing that every day then.

Speaker 2 (02:34):

Yeah. Well hey man, it just means you're strong.

Speaker 3 (02:37):

I have a question for you fellas. How many people submitted mixes to be critiqued and how did you wind it down to just three? Pick your top three. You're

Speaker 4 (02:46):

Going to be disappointed. You're going to be very

Speaker 2 (02:48):

Disappointed.

Speaker 4 (02:49):

Yeah, we have a group called the Octagon that's subscribers only and we usually just go through there and sometimes it's like you click on three random posts

Speaker 3 (02:58):

And

Speaker 4 (02:59):

We grab those three mixes and it's crit City.

Speaker 3 (03:01):

Oh, that's cool. Okay. Well that kind of makes it even more interesting then you really don't know what you're going to be listening to, right?

Speaker 2 (03:08):

That's right. It's like death from above. It's totally, it's it's random. I just picked three and go and it's cool because everyone who puts a mix up in the octagon knows that this might happen and that's kind of what they agree to by posting in the octagon, but so they're going to wake up one day when we publish this next week and realize that their mix was being created by the three of us.

Speaker 3 (03:40):

Gotcha. So for Country month four people submitted mixes. Why didn't you just do all four instead of pick three out of four?

Speaker 2 (03:48):

No, I actually think that we're going to probably have a few hundred submitting, we've had over 500 mixed submissions the past few months and it's too early to tell right now because what right now is the 12th, so we're not going to know till the 22nd how many people are submitting. But people are having a lot of fun with these tunes, which I'm really, really happy to hear. A lot of people who don't even listen to country are saying that they're having the most fun they've ever had. And I guess because the tracks are so well recorded, and that's one thing that's blowing me away about these tracks that I put them in was just like hit play faders up. Oh my god, this sounds incredible.

Speaker 3 (04:42):

Yeah, that's really, in all honesty, I mean literally that's Nashville. That's what I see almost every day, whether it's a demo, an independent record or a full blown major label thing. I mean, we're music city, we've got world-class studios, there's world-class engineers that have been doing this from day one, so it's fantastic World gear. I mean you name it, it's really easy and really fun to get up every day and come to work.

Speaker 2 (05:11):

The standards are so damn high and I think that that should be inspirational for anybody no matter what genre you're in, because for you that's every day. But for us, that's definitely not an everyday thing.

Speaker 4 (05:27):

If we get a good mix that's prepped and labeled properly and the symbols don't sound like they recorded in a 10 by 10 room on $50 microphones, that is a great day. You call the engineer that did the work and you're like, thank you. You are my favorite. Let's work together again. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:44):

The worst thing I may get is maybe one mic, like the snare bottom mic might be out of phase or something like that, which is almost irrelevant. That's like,

Speaker 4 (05:54):

Ooh, so unacceptable.

Speaker 3 (05:56):

Yeah, that's the worst thing that'll ever happen. Other than that, it's like great. I mean it's never distorted. The tracks are never damaged or weird waveforms or crack. I mean a lot of times it's even cleaned up. Even when I do a demo, it's cleaned up ready to go for me just to mix a demo. That's how much prep work they take. So it is really cool and fun to work here.

Speaker 2 (06:18):

It's really eyeopening and it goes to show that everything that we've always said about taking the time to prep everything, how the engineering makes a huge difference in how good of a mix it's going to be, the better the source, the better the final tone, all that stuff, how arrangement makes a big difference in the mix, all that stuff, which I've been preaching literally since day one of doing this educational stuff. Sometimes it gets lost with the metal stuff because some of it's not recorded great. Or sometimes the arrangements aren't awesome because everything's in the same range or whatever. But now doing these country tracks, it validates all of that because it's a perfect example of all those things coming together, arrangement, songwriting, engineering, editing, prep work, and that's why you can just bring the tracks in faders up unity, and it sounds almost done.

Speaker 3 (07:25):

Exactly. Good point. Good point. So we ready

Speaker 4 (07:29):

To rip some mixes

Speaker 3 (07:29):

Or what? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (07:31):

Okay, so first mix first up is by our subscriber Fabio Deus, and this is his version of Rodney Atkins. These are my people.

Speaker 6 (08:01):

When we grew up down by the railroad tracks shooting bbs at old beer cans, joking on smoke from a lugg strike, somebody lifted off of his old man. We were football, funky southern rock junkies cranking up the stereos, singing loud and proud to give me me three steps, simple man and Curtis Low. We were got some discount knowledge at the junior college where we majored in beer and girls. It was all real funny until we ran out of money and they threw us out in the little world, had the kids thought they run. This town ain't a running much of anything where we check in all week on a gym with a GR until we make it to Friday night and it's church league softball, holler by the back call, bridge up the fight at the Green Tavern, everybody's friends and all over again and these are this, I come, this is where I come from. Everything we've

Speaker 2 (11:35):

All right. That was by our subscriber, Fabio de la Loose, Rodney Atkins, these are my people, and man, what a catchy song, but I thought those balances were weird. What did you think, Decker? I want to defer to you first because you are the expert.

Speaker 3 (11:52):

Yeah, well, I'm far from that. I got a lot of people fooled, but here's my 2 cents. I would say I don't dig and I don't think the artist would the big harmonizer on the vocal too. There was some weird spatial effect he had on that lead vocal and instantly I was like, whoa, what is that? Also, I think Fabio really needs to work on compression and limiting just on each individual instruments to get the whole mix up louder, and he definitely needs a lot more base in that.

Speaker 2 (12:25):

Did you think that the balances were kind weird? I was hearing the acoustic guitar, for instance, the acoustic guitar on the left was just equal volume as the vocal almost. It almost sounded to me the vocals were not up on top of the mix. I would want to hear in a pop song or something. I, yeah, I almost feel like the vocal was kind of riding underneath some of those background or supportive instrumental elements at times and that kind of bugged me. I felt like that was more of a metal move than, because sometimes when you have certain types of vocals and metal, you want to, maybe you don't put the vocals up as loud as you would in a vocal heavy genre like this. So that kind of bugged me a little bit. But

Speaker 4 (13:20):

I think what it comes down to, for me at least, is that he needs to do a much better job of prioritizing elements in sections. For example, maybe the vocal drops out and then the mix is kind of static. There's a couple of instruments and little fill-ins there and the ear can only pay attention to a couple of things. I think the max is about three, and so everything else is kind of fillers. So you got to pick what's the main element and what's the supporting element and what's kind of just there in the background as hanging out, not doing much other than just being background music. So when he keeps the belt elements all upfront and there's a lot of different things going on, there's too much stuff competing to draw your attention. So in each little section, because of the density of a track like this and there's all these little fills and different instruments and different parts that come in and out, this extra ear candy, it makes it really hard to balance the mix because there's a lot of things you have to prioritize and what might work in one section when you hit a transition or a different section may not work there.

(14:18):

So that's something I thought that he really needed to spend a lot of time working on was highlighting the correct elements in each section that need to be the star when they need to be the star.

Speaker 3 (14:29):

That sounds about right. I just had trouble wrapping my ears around it. It was that effect on the lead vocal threw me when it came in and the mix was so low in volume.

Speaker 4 (14:42):

Yeah, he needs less. I agree. The whole verse reverb, it kind of came in and it's got a very distinctive type of reverb delay kind of sound thing, and I think it needs a lot less of that. It definitely kind of didn't gel with the track if that's the best words for it. So it was kind like, here's the vocal, here's the track, but the vocals kind of sounded like near a different ambient space than the rest of the song.

Speaker 2 (15:05):

I want to key in on something that you've been saying, Billy, because if I am correct, you don't master your own mixes. Right?

Speaker 3 (15:16):

How about on the major label stuff? Not usually I send that off, but on the indie stuff, a lot of demos, stuff like that I do just because when these people are going in for their song pitches at record companies and whatnot, loudest wins. I know that's not necessarily politically the correct say, but

Speaker 2 (15:37):

It's true

Speaker 3 (15:38):

When you're coming in after another songwriter to pitch their songs, if you're as bigger, wider, or deeper, the person sitting there listening all of a sudden takes notice and goes, oh my boy.

Speaker 4 (15:48):

Hey man, you got that labrot plugin or what, Billy,

Speaker 2 (15:55):

This is a perfect situation for the Labros plugin. Is

Speaker 3 (15:58):

That the infinity one?

Speaker 4 (16:00):

Yeah, I'll send it to you. I mean you could just go download it for free, but I'll send it to you anyways. You just leros the mix next time and you're guaranteed they have the loudest mix

Speaker 2 (16:09):

Period. It literally just turns it up. Six db. Oh, that's

Speaker 3 (16:13):

Hilarious.

Speaker 2 (16:14):

Well, so what I was curious about what you we're getting at with volume, because normally when talking about mixes, we're not critiquing the overall volume, but are you talking about having a pseudo mastering chain at the end or are you talking about the individual getting the individual volumes of the individual tracks up and just having a louder mix pre, pre any sort of mastering chain?

Speaker 3 (16:43):

Both to be honest with you, and when we do the nail the mix at the end of the month, you'll see what I'm talking about. But I use a lot of compressors and limiters, but I use a little bit of each one rather than just using a couple and smashing them. I use a little bit from each one and it just seems to sum up and make the whole mix just kind of grow. And then by the time I get done, I'm bringing down my master fader, everything is so hot. I know that's probably backwards and wrong, but I've just been doing it for so long that way that it's just I'm comfortable. But if I hear something that isn't like jumping out the speakers at me, I have a real hard time going, okay, let me turn that up and let me start digging through the mix. It's almost like I expect it, you know what I mean? If I pull on a CD off iTunes or just pull up any tune, there's a certain professional standard you're just used to hearing and that to me that just equates with knowing how to use compression and limiting the right way.

Speaker 4 (17:50):

Definitely.

Speaker 3 (17:51):

Does that make any sense?

Speaker 4 (17:52):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (17:53):

Okay. Okay. Because a lot of times you'll hear a demo and it's like I get people sending me stuff all the time just going, Hey, can you put your ear on this? Tell me what you think I need to work on. And it just sounds like somebody was messing around in a home studio and just pushing up faders and didn't really know how to get the full dynamic range out of something and really make it pop and hop and I'm like, well, here's a good barometer. Turn on the radio or go to iTunes, download your favorite song and put it side by side. Does it sound like that? Is it as wide? Is it as deep as as big? Is it as loud? Look at the waveform. Most of the time nowadays you look at waveforms and everybody looks like just a piece of duct tape because that's what we're so used to looking. I love it. And if you're mixed, doesn't look like duct tape, turn the damn thing up if you want it to be that way. If not, then don't do it.

Speaker 4 (18:49):

So we've just established one thing here just to set the record straight publicly, while the rest of the industry is trying to combat the loudest wars, Decker and I are still trying to win it.

Speaker 3 (19:02):

We need, along with my kick drum cell records, we need some kind of duct tape slogan.

Speaker 2 (19:08):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (19:08):

Duct tape mix. Duct tape af. There you go.

Speaker 2 (19:11):

Well that's why I guess we didn't know this at first, but it all comes together. It all makes sense now we have duct tape in our logo for nail the mix mix. We have had it all the time. Maybe that's what we were doing without even knowing it. So alright, let's move on to the next mix. This is by our subscriber Michael Nolasco,

Speaker 6 (19:55):

Where we grew up down by the railroad tracks shooting bbs at old beer cans, joking on smoke from a lugg strike. Somebody lifted off of his old man. We were putting my funky southern rock junkies cranking up the stereos, singing loud and proud to give me me three steps. Simple man and Curtis Low. We were million old, got some discount knowledge at the junior college where we majored in girls. It was all real funny until we ran out of money and they threw us out in the little world. Had kids that thought they ain't running much of anything. 11. And we call it all this where I come from, we giving this life, we've got in ain't, but it's, we take it all week on the chin with a gr, we make it to a Friday night's church league softball, hollerer by the bad call preacher, breaking up the fight. And we friends born and we started it all over again and these are my, this is where I come, we giving life everything we've got and it ain't any and we walked and we, this is where I come.

Speaker 2 (23:30):

All right, that was subscriber Michael SCOs version of These Are My People by Rodney Atkins. Joel, what do you think?

Speaker 4 (23:38):

Holy shit dude. Kick drum fricking city. Is this a country song or a kick drum solo? I couldn't tell man. Kick drum is just cranked and it is super metal. I feel like this guy took Billy's advice when he said, kick drums, sell records. But reality is this kick drum I don't think is going to sell too many records. I dunno what you guys think.

Speaker 3 (23:59):

I would say first things first, clean up your intro, meaning let's cut out the clicks and the talking and whatnot. You never want that unless it's like a special effect or something. But I mean we got to put a tail or a head and a header and a footer on this song with a fade. So definitely clean the top. You want to get rid of all the talk and the clicks, the garbage. And then he used another effect similar to Felipe. It was almost like a doubler or something on the lead vocal. Did you guys hear that?

Speaker 2 (24:34):

Yeah, I couldn't tell what it was. I just hear all kinds of weird vocal artifacts in there almost. Yeah, there's something weird doubling the vocals.

Speaker 3 (24:47):

Yeah, I wasn't sure what it was. And those are cool. A lot of times if I do a pop thing, I'll do the doubler thing, not so much in country. And if you do want to use it half that level so you can use a doubler, but just use it on like an acoustic guitar, not a vocal. Most people in this genre usually stay away from the doubled lead vocal electronically. They'll do it real when chorus hit. A lot of times I'll get a true double or a true triple, you know what I mean? You've got the lead vocal and then you've got two doubles that have been lined up and are the same thing. You can hard left and hard ride, but the fake stereo spread thing, yeah, use it real sparingly. That's my, I guess best advice on that thing.

Speaker 2 (25:34):

I believe in using that real sparingly period.

Speaker 4 (25:38):

Do you guys think this mix is kind of on the thin side?

Speaker 3 (25:41):

Yeah. Yeah. It needs a little more low end. Once again, that whole compression limiting thing, just dude, best piece of advice to get you going. Just grab, if worst case scenario, get an 1176 plugin, open it all the way up, as slow as it'll attack and as fast as it'll release and just start hitting everything probably four to one and add a couple db, a compression on everything, you'll be shocked at what that'll do. That'll at least get you going. You know what I mean? Good

Speaker 2 (26:12):

Starting point.

Speaker 3 (26:13):

Yeah. And keep you out of trouble. Then you can start messing with your tack and releases for different instruments. But just to get going, just throw it on there and start getting your volumes up and some warmth and some squish on some stuff.

Speaker 2 (26:26):

So I noticed a couple more things and I, I'm going to not repeat the stuff that we already said that was in my notes. So the base felt way too mid heavy. I almost felt like he was trying to get that mid range of a bass that you kind of try to dial in on a metal song

Speaker 5 (26:46):

To

Speaker 2 (26:46):

Come out. So I'm hearing that a lot more than the low end of the bass. And I also feel like if I was a common lay person who couldn't identify what instruments were in the mix other than the basics, I would tell you that this was pretty much drums, bass vocals and shaker.

Speaker 4 (27:09):

There's one more element though that you missed. What about those odd left pan harmonies that just show up

Speaker 2 (27:14):

In super? Yeah, but see a lay person wouldn't, wouldn't point that out. But yeah, I noticed that for sure that those left pan harmonies just come in and out and they are really, really loud. And then that shaker, which I believe is on the right, is at times it's so loud that it sounds like it's the only thing in the right channel. I know it's not, but it's so loud, so much shaker.

Speaker 3 (27:41):

Shaker. You know what else is funny is, I explained this to a couple people, but when this album was made, I actually didn't mix. These are my people. The album version, they had me remix for radio. So the one everybody heard on the radio is the one I did, the one that showed up if you bought the physical cd, was a friend of mine named Julian King. He actually mixed that and then I mixed the rest of the record. And what's funny is I listen to nail the mix and see everybody talking about the metal thing. Everybody's all way into samples. Kick snares. Toms and I use samples all over the one that I did for radio on this song. And every submission that I've been hearing so far or seeing nobody's using any samples at all, they're trying to mix just the real drums. And I'm like, wait a minute, I thought you guys are like sample kings here.

Speaker 2 (28:33):

Alright, so it is funny you bring that up. Let's just say that in the metal community there's something called sample guilt. And I don't want to get into political or sociological terms of what I'm basing that off of, but there's a lot of self-imposed guilt that metal dudes throw around about the use of samples. There's a lot of shaming when it comes to samples. I don't understand why, but yeah, but there's this weird Joel, you know what I'm talking about, right? Oh fuck yeah, I know. There's this weird, weird,

Speaker 3 (29:15):

I don't get it

Speaker 2 (29:16):

Either. I don love my samples.

Speaker 3 (29:18):

That is my favorite part of the format is the drum sounds. I love the sample sounds, you know what I mean? That's what makes the format the format. Agree

Speaker 2 (29:27):

Grip racing in my opinion. Agree, agree, agree, agree.

(29:31):

Dude, I agree. And not just that they're pretty damn necessary. I mean here and there you'll get a really badass metal mix where the guy's, I didn't use samples and you know what? In the Taylor Larson nailed the mix. He barely used them. I mean barely. And it sounded great. So I mean you can do it, but it's a minority of mixes in metal that get away with not doing it. It's got to be recorded just right. And the mixer has got to be a fucking ninja. But even so, they just add so much power and consistency and that's what this genre needs in mixes power and consistency. But there's just this stigma that it's cheating. And I don't know where that started, but it's not cheating as we know.

Speaker 4 (30:23):

Dude, I'd sample a jazz recording. I don't care. Just biggest, baddest drums. Let's go.

Speaker 2 (30:28):

Yeah. Well the thing is, I think that a lot of these guys are,

Speaker 3 (30:33):

I literally do not mix without 'em. And I've been asked a couple times and it's hard, really hard to mix without samples and make it sound good.

Speaker 2 (30:41):

Completely. And then you just

Speaker 4 (30:42):

Sample them and don't tell the band.

Speaker 2 (30:45):

Yeah, I mean how are they going to know unless you're not adding any dynamics to ghost notes or something. So I think that they probably think that they need to try to get it all natural and therefore they're forgetting that what they really need to do is to get it to sound great.

Speaker 3 (31:08):

Yeah. Doesn't care how you get it there. Just make it sound awesome. Who cares? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (31:12):

Exactly man, I hope all you sample purists are listening to this and you can put your guilt aside and just try to make the best sounding mix possible.

Speaker 4 (31:22):

Al, you just created an SJW problem sample justice warrior. It's about to happen, dude. It's

Speaker 2 (31:28):

Unavoidable. Oh my god. We're screwed.

Speaker 3 (31:29):

I've never seen an award given to best mixed album without samples. Best mixed album with samples. It's just best album. I mean, to me that's just idiotic. It's like make it sound good. Seriously.

Speaker 4 (31:44):

Oh my god, it's great.

Speaker 3 (31:47):

That kind of reminds me back when I was starting out, I had the same type of shaming. I jumped on pro tools before a lot of other people did and made it my format. And boy I took some heat for mixing records in pro tools

Speaker 2 (32:01):

Opposed on a console as opposed

Speaker 3 (32:03):

A console. Same exact thing. It was almost like cheating. And I got shamed and all that and I'm like, Hey, you can laugh all you want, but I'm laughing all the way to the bank and I'm getting home at five o'clock at night, so I'm going to keep doing this. And look what happened. Almost everybody mixes in pro tools now. There's still consoles and there's still consoles that people mix on obviously. But I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, I'd say over 75% of the music these days is mixed in the digital format on a workstation. True false.

Speaker 2 (32:36):

Oh, probably. Yeah, definitely. Probably higher than that.

Speaker 3 (32:39):

Yeah. Yeah. So see who gets the last laugh?

Speaker 2 (32:43):

Well dude, it's a very, very similar sort of thing. And people, they just are this way for some reason it's like amp sims versus Amps Mac versus PC samples versus not digital versus analog. It's so annoying. It's like people are forgetting what's important when they make these arguments, which is your output and your workflow to get to that output. That's all that matters. Is your workflow good? And does it allow you to make the best possible final product? And if so, it's awesome and is your final product great, great. Who the hell cares how you got there?

Speaker 3 (33:20):

Gotcha. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Speaker 2 (33:22):

Alright, cool. Let's move on. This is by our subscriber Johnny Ragin,

Speaker 6 (33:40):

Where we grew up down by the railroad track shooting bbs at old beer cans, joking on a smoke from a lucky strike. Somebody lifted off of his old man. We were football, funky southern rock junkies cranking up the stereos, singing loud and proud to give me three steps. Simple man and Curtis Lowe. We were good. Got some discount knowledge at the junior college where we majored in beer and girls. It was all real funny until we ran out of money and they threw us out in the world. He had the kids that thought they'd run this town. Ain't no running much of anything, just 11 and 11 and busting our backs and we call it all living the dream. These are my people, this is where I come from. We're giving this life everything we've got in them. Some, it ain't always pretty, but it's real. It's the way we made, wouldn't have it any other way as are my people.

(34:53):

Well, we take it all week on a chin with a grin till we make it to a Friday night and its church leak, softball, holler about a bad call preacher breaking up a fight. Then later on at the Green Light Tavern, everybody's gathering as friends and a beer's born until Monday morning and we start it all over again. And these are my people. Hey, this is where I come from. We're giving this life everything we've got. And them some, it ain't always pretty, but it's real. It's a way we were made. Wouldn't have it any other way. These my, we fought down and we, we walked around and we talked to, we got and we got nerve. We

Speaker 5 (36:01):

Come on.

Speaker 6 (36:06):

These are my people. This is where I come from. We're giving his life everything we've got in themselves. It ain't always pretty, but it's real. It's the way we were made wouldn't have any other way. Oh no. These are my people.

Speaker 5 (36:32):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:13):

All right. That was by our subscriber Johnny Ragin. His version of These are my people by Rodney Atkins and definitely the best one of the bunch. Don't you think?

Speaker 3 (37:23):

I agree, Johnny? I don't have a lot of notes. Yeah, he knows how to use compression eq. The spatial elements are real good. I did notice one thing on my end, what I was listening to, and it may have just been a bad MP three burn, but is this mixed distorted?

Speaker 2 (37:41):

Oh, that's what I heard too.

Speaker 3 (37:43):

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Hey, Johnny Tip. I learned from a producer engineer here in town that's been doing it for a long time. The only time you're ever going to hear distortion is at low volumes typically. So a good thing to do is if you're mixing loud and proud, a lot of times it'll get by you because can't hear it. So hit the dim button on your console or your workstation, turn it down real low, and if you're hearing little crackles lower that two bus dude, bring everybody down. That would be my best advice is to monitor loud, get the base, feel it, and then turn it down and just make sure it's clean before you send it out. You don't want to have to say, for instance, this was actually going to the artist or the client and say they are taking it right over to the record company. You are as good as the last thing anybody hears. So you can't afford to make a mistake. Dude pops it up in his record company. Hey, listen to Johnny's Mix. We just tried him out and the president of the record label's, like, that's distorted. Johnny is not working for us ever again.

Speaker 2 (38:49):

And it's just that brutal.

Speaker 3 (38:51):

Yeah. Yeah.

(38:52):

So just remember, you're as good as the last thing you've done. Take the extra time, do good work, make sure it's clean, follow all. Get your music, get everything that makes you happy. And then go back and make a checklist of all the technical things that aren't going to snag you on your way. Make sure it's not distorted. Make sure the intro's not clipped. Make sure your fade is clean. Make sure there's no noise at the beginning of the song. No pops in the vocal. Make sure you go through and decl stuff. Just do yourself a favor, you know what I mean? And approach it like this is the last mix you're ever going to do every time you mix and trust me, it will pay off.

Speaker 2 (39:36):

And these are all things that you can fix within 15 minutes.

Speaker 3 (39:40):

Absolutely. And it'll keep you working for the next 15 years.

Speaker 2 (39:43):

Yeah, exactly. And honestly, man, I didn't really have too many notes on this one.

Speaker 4 (39:49):

I have a couple of small things.

Speaker 2 (39:51):

My main thing was the distortion and I hear some pumping, but really overall I wanted to say a pretty good job, man. I feel like you're approaching good mixes here and basically working out these last few elements. I'm going to start to have some pretty good stuff here.

Speaker 3 (40:14):

Yeah, he's got a future as a mixer. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (40:18):

I think so too. I think so too.

Speaker 3 (40:19):

Yeah. Good job, Johnny.

Speaker 2 (40:20):

So what did you think, Joel? What were your things?

Speaker 4 (40:24):

I'm going to be the nitpicky now, Bob. That's okay. So I thought the acoustics were just a pinch too muddy. And some of the dubs that were coming in the mid range was masking a little bit. So something would pop in for a second and then it would be like all of a sudden there'd be a huge influx of mid range and then it would kind of add a little bit of a layer of a sheet of cloudiness to the mix. So you got to watch that kind of stuff. Just the accumulation of the mid-range, especially when you're dealing with a lot of dense elements and there's so many different things in little pieces of ear candy, and then suddenly something comes in and it has just a little bit too much, and then that just accumulates and compounds across all of the other elements in the mix.

(41:00):

So that was the main thing. And again, I'm just being nitpicky here. The other thing I thought is he should watch some of the hard pan dubs because they're pulling away the attention from some of the vocals, meaning he had a couple of the candy elements, I feel like a little bit too hot at certain places. And when it comes in, it pokes out of the speaker too much and it kind of like I'm listening to the vocal, all of a sudden I kind of drift off to that left or right speaker and I'm like, oh, dub. And then I'm back to the main line. And I feel like in a song like this, because it's meant for radio, you should just be laser focused as a listener solely on the vocals. You shouldn't be jumping around with your brain and your attention and your concentration if the guy's singing. So it didn't happen often, but every once in a while

Speaker 2 (41:40):

I hear what you're saying. I agree with you.

Speaker 4 (41:42):

Am I allowed to

Speaker 3 (41:43):

Say what I would do to fix some of those or should I save it for nail the mix? No,

Speaker 2 (41:48):

No, please say what you would do.

Speaker 3 (41:51):

So as far as that muddiness Joel was talking about for country acoustics, a lot of times they're doubled. So I'll get a mono guitar and then dude will double it and play the exact same thing. So most of the time I'll hard pan 'em left and and I always put a high pass on about 1 25 and then around 2 40, 2 50, I take about 60 B out and just carve that out where that muddiness seems to be, a lot of times everybody in town puts mics on the neck and on the body. And so I'll get two mics per pass. So if that makes sense, I'll actually have four mics, four tracks of a stereo. And I usually kill the necks too bright and I like the body, but I always have to chunk some of that low mid out that Joel was talking about.

Speaker 2 (42:43):

It's interesting that you say that because every single time that I've tried doing two mics like that on an acoustic, I end up ditching the neck mic

Speaker 3 (42:54):

As

Speaker 2 (42:54):

Funny.

Speaker 3 (42:55):

Well, yeah, I just think the body sounds good. And everybody always uses those thin pencil mics. I forget KM 80 fours.

Speaker 2 (43:03):

KM 80 fours.

Speaker 3 (43:04):

Yeah. So they always put one on the neck and one on the body.

Speaker 2 (43:08):

Now I will say this, there are times when I have put a KM 84 on the neck when I'm recording an acoustic that I know is going to go as a layer behind a wall of distorted guitars. And in that case it tends to be a good choice because it's easy to just cut out all the low end anyways. And just when you just really kind of want the pick attack really to kind of have, it's just a background element and you really just want almost the texture of the strumming in that case. I've noticed that the KM 84 works really nicely if I record it with the mix in mind. But in general, if there's going to be acoustics playing by themselves, I find that it's almost too thin and sounding.

Speaker 3 (43:59):

Gotcha. And as far as those background vocals jumping out, I always, and I'm sure you guys probably do too, but I always subgroup all the background vocals and just clamp 'em down. I've got a compressor with kind of a super fast release and a medium attack, and then I can speed that up if they're all over the place to clamp down. And then I'll literally hit 'em with an eq, another compressor with a slower attack, and then I'll put that Ren vocal on and lock it down. And then I'll usually put a limiter on it after that. And then two DSRs, hell yeah, they ain't moving. You know what I mean? So that way if a lot of times people come in and they won't realize that I'm putting the background vocals through a sub or busting 'em through a channel that's just got 'em locked and they'll be like, yeah, go ahead and just turn those backgrounds up one, and I'll take my background channel and I'll lift it up like 60 B and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Or turn it down that much. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. They're getting just crushed in that thing. So in order to really either lower 'em or get 'em up there, you got to just either feed 'em in there super hard or lower 'em 60 B,

Speaker 4 (45:15):

I got to introduce you to L one, man, I got a much better setting. You got to use all those plugins. You just take the bar, you grab it, go all the way down and then close the plugin.

Speaker 3 (45:24):

That's what I do. That's what I do on the two bus. I don't need that on the background vocals. I love it. There's my duct tape.

Speaker 2 (45:31):

I love Ren v, by the way. I love that plugin.

Speaker 3 (45:34):

Yeah, that is a good plugin. That's a lifesaver. So I use that on lead vocals too.

Speaker 2 (45:38):

That used to be one of my go-tos. And for some reason I think someone made fun of me, like someone I respected for using it. And then I stopped using it a long time ago, but then I came back to it and was like, why did I ever listen to 'em? This plugin's great.

Speaker 3 (45:55):

Oh yeah. I love the one knob things that you don't even know what they do, they just do. Those are the best.

Speaker 2 (46:02):

As long as it sounds good.

Speaker 3 (46:04):

Yeah. And then when somebody asks you what it is, then you can make up this super cool thing that has to do with like, oh, it goes through ball bearings and the flux capacitor. Then it does all that. And then they think you're either an idiot or really smart. All you do is pull one lever down. Anybody can do it.

Speaker 2 (46:20):

Yeah, but you would be amazed because I've seen lots of people pull the lever down on L one for instance, and just totally botch it.

Speaker 4 (46:29):

Really?

Speaker 2 (46:30):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (46:31):

I have a trick. I haven't disclosed it, but that's why only I know how to use it correctly.

Speaker 2 (46:37):

Alright, I want to know what this trick is, but Billy, thank you so much for coming on Mix Grip Monday and sharing your expertise with us and creating these mixes.

Speaker 3 (46:51):

Well hey guys, happy to do it. And like I tell everybody, I don't know everything, but I probably know someone who does. So I can always get an answer.

Speaker 2 (47:01):

If you guys liked what you heard and you want your chance to mix this song by Rodney Atkins, these are my people. And also get a live mixing class from Billy Decker as well as Mix Drive Me Away by Jess Mosca. Luke, take it on home by Genevieve Fisher and think of you by Chris Young and Cassidy Pope. Sign up for Nail the Mix this month, April, 2017 at nail the mix.com/decker. You'll get the multitracks for all those songs. Get to enter our competition for a stem audio engineering 10 73 MP, a dual channel preamp or essay, 73 single channel preamp. And these are Neve style and they're badass. Dude,

Speaker 4 (47:49):

How sick of a prize is that? Can I just,

Speaker 2 (47:51):

Those pretty great.

Speaker 4 (47:52):

I kind of want to enter the mix competition incognito just so I can get a pair of STEM audience.

Speaker 2 (47:58):

They are pretty great and everyone I know who owns one says nothing but great things about them. So should hey, and you get Neve style preamps as a prize for doing a badass job mixing and having

Speaker 4 (48:11):

Fun. Yeah, you're going to have enough Neve in your studio. It doesn't matter if you have a rack of 10 80 fours, you could always add one or two more. There's always something to use it on.

Speaker 2 (48:18):

Yeah, there's never enough Neve.

Speaker 4 (48:20):

And as

Speaker 3 (48:21):

An added bonus, how about Billy Decker takes a stab at mixing cognizance and I'll let the metal kids critique my mix. How about that?

Speaker 2 (48:30):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:31):

So

Speaker 2 (48:33):

Just as a show of love for our metal audience, because hey, I mean we primarily do rock and metal. We threw in a metal song just because, just for fun by British death. Metal band cognizance with Alex Rudger on drums song is called Aon of Creation. You can look it up on YouTube and it's pretty damn speedy stuff. And yeah, and Billy will mix that one as well. That's a bonus. And it'll be fun. What can I say?

Speaker 3 (49:09):

It'll be awesome.

Speaker 2 (49:10):

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming on.

Speaker 3 (49:11):

Thank you for having you so much. Thank you, fellas. Look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:14):

Can't wait. Can't

Speaker 1 (49:15):

Wait. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by STA Audio. Sta Audio creates zero compromise recording gear. That is light on the wallet only. The best components are used and each one goes through a rigorous testing process with one thing in mind, getting the best sound possible. Go to sta audio.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit URM academy slash podcast and subscribe.