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Cleanup Overview and Printing Down Tracks

Lesson 11 from: GearGods Presents: Mastering Metal Mixing: Prep & Setup

Eyal Levi

Cleanup Overview and Printing Down Tracks

Lesson 11 from: GearGods Presents: Mastering Metal Mixing: Prep & Setup

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

11. Cleanup Overview and Printing Down Tracks

Next Lesson: Prep Mix Q&A

Lesson Info

Cleanup Overview and Printing Down Tracks

This is ah, you know, this is where you start to really get rid of everything that doesn't need to be there and, uh this is not editing this is, uh editing should be done before prep editing is like uh drama edits or something um yeah, that should be done before you even track guitars. Um this is this is ah this is getting rid of just useless garbage that's going toe cloud the mix and, uh there you go. You know, getting rid of inserts, audiophiles, playlists, automation tze and uh, let me show you guys how to do that stuff. So first thing you want to d'oh as far as getting rid of automation goes select all and then you zoom in, you know, so you get the whole thing and then make it really small and then you see where I selected all right there because I'll see that ok? Cool. And now that I selected all in the group's, I'm going toe select all with my cursor. Now go down and make sure that everything selected edit clear special all automation gone it's that easy I kind of sat all the wor...

k just gone like that so again, center edit well, I got to select something so under edit clear special all automation and, uh, you know, was cooled here is that you have different options like say you want to keep your volume automation but you have blood and automation like stuff gets bypassed or whatever you know different different settings are being tweet like mixed levels on a delay uh or whatever you that's what you want to get rid of, you can get rid of just plug in automation just pan automation or whatever so you know everybody please remember the clear special part of the edit menu people write it down um us don't have to but uh everyone and internet phil remember clear special is your friend alright now faras audiophiles go scare rid of let's pretend like some of this stuff in here just isn't necessary so I'm going to take I'm going to make a bigger thing they get rid of the all ok so let's just imagine for a second that uh I don't like these samples skin good it's gonna, you know, delete them escalator and uh I don't even want samples on the tones, so select them and good track and believing whatever and maybe, you know, using this fifty one fifty three's track to lead yeah, I'm just kind of arbitrarily picking some things and two leading them uh these guitars are muted, so we'll get room to ok so let's just say that I actually went through and got rid of the tracks that you don't belong in the song anymore they're not actually out of the file there's still adding size to the session they're still making it take longer to load up and it's just bulkier and the more the more I guess space that the session takes up the slower is going to run basically the more way files that are in there that's the reference a slower is going to run even if they're deleted from the from the actual edit window so you got to actually remove them from the session entirely quickly did you it is shift command you shift command be ok and here I'm going to show you visually oh how that works I think you guys deserve it if I could uh ok so sorry I'm a little blind okay, so it right here is the clips menu you can bring it in with this little error right here so um okay so shift command you that selects all the unused clips so like tae like for instance in a tracking session all the times that you delete a take that you know use or say you edit something and you cut off like the beginning of the end you have to lead all the stuff I just lied id everything those air clips that are unused so shift command you selects them shifter man be gives you two options you really careful with this either remove them from the session meaning they're gone from this protocol session but they're not deleted from your hard drive or you move them to the trash which means you're gonna delete them permanently don't delete them permanently he just remove them from the session uh trust me on this one multiple reasons for why you don't wantto really ruin them from the hard drive um so use it removed gone so that is how you get rid of unnecessary audiophiles uh, playlists makesem playlists we already did automation we did audiophiles let's get rid of playlists me find some playlists to get rid of, we'll make some playlists, then we'll get rid playlists. Now you guys all understand what playlists are basically like say you want to have multiple takes of something like say you have a drummer who is just so happens to be good enough to play a song and one take and so you say, well, let's, do another take so use new playlist to record him again um and or like I said, you know you have your unedited drums, you duplicate them onto new play list and then you added them, so you're too playlists unedited and edited or you have to play list with vocals on tuned in to see if you're on tuned vocals you duplicate them to new playlist and tune them uh now what you want to do is you want to get rid of any play this you're not going to use again if the ship is tuned well then and you know it doesn't sound like t pain then you're not going to go back to the un tuned vocals so just get rid of that stuff just anything that you need to get rid of get you know you're not going to use it again get rid of the play list so I'm going to duplicate the's playlist just for example right here so you can see right here on this little arrow we've got two different playlists options here and I'll uh I'll make them look a little different so you see what I mean when I select a different playlists one has that weird at it and one doesn't want to keep the one with the weird at it because I like weird at its so I'm on the one with the weird at it and now when I go toe delete unused ok here we go here are all these unused playlists like across the whole track so a lot of unused play that's a lot of stuff so selected all delete but that again doesn't get rid of it from the session so you got teoh got to still do this shift command you should community be move yes good bye all right now that's clean. Um you might want to keep the dyes though even if you hide those uh because you might always want to revamp again um again if if the vocal tuning is questionable keep theon tune vocals if the drama dating his question just like anything you think you might need keep it otherwise just get rid of it completely you don't need it in there you're just going to confuse the mixture and you're going to bog down the uh this session so well that makes sense to everybody cool I'm glad. Um so let's talk about printing down some tracks to someone asked earlier what printing down tracks wass yeah, well they're about to find out I love it yeah so unless he sometimes this is why we don't ask you questions when they come up because we know you talk about him later yeah, well yeah yeah you have tio talk about them at some point but I am open to questions because, uh you know, this is what I'm during a lot of stuff out for sure pretty fast. Um okay, so pro tools ten I don't know how many of you guys used totals ten yeah, you pretty crashes a lot horrible on the cpu um and ah, lots of thirty two bit dogs like that they just they don't manage they don't manage through their ram usage very well and uh have you ever used eleven, ok anybody here use approaches eleven after using pro tools stent okay, pro tools eleven is way way better about it cpu usage is efficient and you don't need to worry about it quite it's much but in pro tools ten for instance you notice you just add a couple of virtual instruments and suddenly stuff's just crashing or you you know, like slate compressor and then suddenly you can't mix anymore or whatever so the idea is to basically print the effect or, you know, a virtual instrument print what's coming out of it the audio that's coming out of it or going through an effect to a track and then disable the cpu hog and that's it and you don't need to delete it you can just disabled it um I want to shave as I do that it's really, really simple and while I'm setting that up do you do that stuff from your your stuff down pro? Uh like sitting in which tracks anything like is that a normal thing you do? Um like sam sample tracks probably, but that's about it. I know some people who never do it trouble you don't only do it if I have to, you know, yourself it's a virtual instruments well, yeah actually prevalent that stuff down for sure because pro tools is very glitchy with virtual instruments on I don't know why it just is sometimes the buffer settings you can screw around with like limiting the amount of course pro tool sees and then it just mess around a little bit like if you I found some of the east west stuff is really, really glitchy if you let pro tools see all of your cores in ten in armies and nine actually you know it's all it's always been that we have a pro tools just doesn't like it's much better in eleven yeah um ok, so let's say that uh that we think that this base tone is perfect even though it's not let's just assume for a second that it is so you're going to print that down and then I'll disable these base tracks because they're not needed anymore so instead of having a ox track that they go to I am going to just make an audio track was called I'm just kidding we're not gonna call audio one uh base print come on yeah, I know how much uh ok, so you know ok, so we're gonna route the base we'll just say, uh I don't need enabling new bus okay, so but I owe nailing a few okay, so are some sending these out bus five he's three bases and in two bus five on this new base print track and just for the sick of listening a solo them hit record and so we don't need to do the whole song but now oh, you know that complete bass sound is now printed in no longer need those three base tracks because we have this so in case I needed to week it I'm not going to delete them and make them inactive and I'm gonna hide them and ah, this is where you hide them see how I have these selected you on the tracks menu right here and you see how they came up right there just see it click the little circle and they're gone so did that method makes sense to everyone. Does anyone everyone and I want to ask the chat room this specifically it's okay, there's a delay? Do people see how that applies to virtual instruments or do they need me to do an example of that with, like, virtual instruments or or something else like do people see? Do people understand or do I need to give another example basically because this super important cool uh so yes. So when your cpu is, uh, not being nice or, you know, you have an effect that you definitely want like we talked about with josh know like, uh there's uh, there's an effect you definitely want and, uh you're sending it to a producer I mean, a mixer who's in another dog you don't even know he's got the right plug ins anyways and if he was in your dog you print it there it isthe it's done if you've got too many plug ins running, you print it there it is it's done and ah a lot of people like to mix like this you know this called mixing two stems they will take uh you know, howyou got your guitar bus and your drum bus and all that stuff they'll actually makes everything down tio individual stems like that like stereo stems or mono stems and then go from there I know a few popular metal guys that do that and they'll keep it they'll try to keep it down tio eight tracks or something that they actually use which is told about my style but that's ah that's some got some guys can do that it's interesting and response yet on that to come in we have someone we have I understand cool seems simple enough easy one request for an example so I'll do it okay your petitions the mother learning into your instrument track if you're about to do an example is like sometimes saying using the comedy sphere or something and they have a cool pad sound where coming out of the synth ok that's pretty cool but I'm going to filter it and then maybe put a little bit of reverb on it afterwards and then change the stereo field a little bit with a little chorus or something you know sometimes will have like a chain of four five plugs after the actual since plug um so when I'm ready to print that sound down all actually drag all of those plug ins a copy him to the track I'm about to print the since two and then turn them off from the since track and then print the sent into the audio track so that I'm hearing that same effect on the audio track instead, you know, basically giving myself the ability to change those plug it after the fact and then if I do need to go back to the synth track, you know, turn those plug ins back on so I can hear the same thing really time through the do the effect change the only thing that's important, teo and I'm sure you do this, but the only thing about that is to make sure that you're gagne structure is exactly the same. So there, it's says, hitting the plug ins, right? Yeah, the same with the same levels, especially if you're doing dynamics base processing. Yeah, I do that too just do anything to get the virtual instrument out of the way exactly because lots of times e cues and stuff don't take up any real cpu righteous those virtual instruments are tremendously just selfish maybe throw like one plug on after whatever virtual instrument you're about to do demonstrate that sure let's pick a virtual instrument well uh I'll make some tracks that tracks so stereo instrument and then just bounce it down to a stereo audio track that one on uh that balance ok, so first things first let's just find a virtual instrument I'm just going toe put in some random maybe notes somebody get song like that song yeah this is yeah it's a little part okay, so um his pick a synth uh howbout expand oh yeah all right good. Okay it's stupid but all right, so what you're saying is and I I've done this lots of times so basically you know, you can end up having I'm just going to repeat what you're saying just so that people definitely get it uh you couldn't have you know, since sound and then a bunch of plug ins afterwards and more often than not the scent is going to be the memory hug. So the idea would be to print down the sense sound not the plug in because you can mess with plug and later you may not want to you know, you may end up in mixing be like and what she didn't have much of urban that same thought I wantto turn down the saturation of a little bit, you know, so I don't always just commit those however I would never wish for less of this because I think this is a work of art ok so first thing I would do is route you know route the instrument track teo say seven and eight and in two seven eight and I'm going to grab this plug in and physically move it to here so now you could actually copy it so leaving on the original track but then just turn it off all the way so you yeah that's what I would do released you crazy crazy completely disable it they're going crazy bro so all right so yeah so you'll hear the plug in on the track that's being recorded into but the only thing that's actually going to be sending to that track is the seth so we'll record it real quick that I bounce didn't look I get it did it I mean that doesn't look like that doesn't look like fat bound student but hang on it did it was just very quiet so and say how would we have heard it otherwise um ok so now fat one could be disabled it is no longer a memory hug not only can it be disabled but it can be hidden there's no longer clouding of our lives if I were doing this I would leave the synth turned on on that track but then just disable the entire track and hide it over the way you just did was that let's just because then if I'm if I'm ever going to turn the instrument track back on I'm definitely gonna want the instrument on you know so there's not any reason at least in my mind to disable the the instrument plug itself if the track is also fair enough yeah pretty smart man I don't care what you say that yeah you know who cares what they say um ok so then you got this it's a good song all right doesn't uh I'll sell it to you for one ninety nine so all right so but yeah I mean that's the same exact method that you would use your using pot farm or whatever you know whatever sort of amp simmer anything that's exactly what you would do right there we just happened to do it with like next year summer hit but that's ah miss the methods that makes sense out and aaron neville yes sir. Hotels eleven doesn't have bonds in place what's that like logic where you can sponsor it in place you have to actually bounce it in place I know I know what you mean that sounds like a dream come true no not that I know uh yeah um q base also has something kind of like that it's called freeze track yeah, how cool would that be? It pro tools is supposed to be like the industry to finding standard software and it doesn't have that amazing feature yeah, yeah, no. Well won't work a lot it in pro tools. Fourteen. Yeah, but there is one thing that this version of pro tools does do. That earlier versions didn't do which israel time. Yeah, yeah, not real toe offline bounce, which is pretty cool, at least there's that, but no it's. They still haven't figured out what you're talking about, and I wish they did.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Eyal Levi - Mastering Metal Mixing - Mix Prep Slides.pdf
Eyal Levi - ProTools Batch Track Rename.qkmx
1-on-1 Mix Critique with Eyal Levi.pdf
Eyal Levi - Mix Template Routed.ptx
Eyal Levi - Mix Template Routed.ptxt

bonus material with enrollment

Eyal Levi - Syllabus.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Boring subject but Eyal delivers the material in an entertaining way. He really does a great job of showing why the prep and organization are crucial to a solid end product. This is much more important to get than the latest and greatest plugin, and is easy to implement and will ultimately save you time and money down the road. Its a no brainer to listen to what Eyal is saying and to apply it. This has been a great confirmation on some of my workflow and has revealed some new methods I had not thought of. Thanks for the great class! cant wait for the next two days. Always impressed with you and the creative live team.

Student Work

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