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Sends and Groups

Lesson 10 from: GearGods Presents: Mastering Metal Mixing: Prep & Setup

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

10. Sends and Groups

Lesson Info

Sends and Groups

Figure that uh you guys get this whole routing thing and uh maybe we skip over the rest of this we can get to the other stuff because you're going to see a bunch at least six different riel life versions going through entire mixes tomorrow so like you know you'll see this in reality so I feel like there's some there's some stuff that we definitely should get teo right now um sends um and uh let's talk about those real quick because some people may not get how to do those uh there's a very good reason to use sense which is tio save your cbu and also toe have life for instance with an effect it to have like one general effect on a group of tracks also for those of you with less powerful cp use instead of having eight instances of a reverb you can have eight vocals for instance going toe one reverb so basically uh you make sonic adjustments of meaning like how much you send to them that we shall show you in a second and ah there's just a few different ways to use them use them the way tha...

t I showed you guys earlier in the template for bouncing out this stems and all that those air all on sends and then there's the way I just showed you had earlier of ducking the base on kick it there's a bunch of different ways to use them but the one way that we have not talked about yet is using it for like a snare bus and uh I mean a river bus and that's the way that I've knows most people met is this stuff up so let us discuss and this will be quick because I said so so well I'm setting this up maybe you can tell me are you familiar with how to do this? Is this something that you do not grab the microphone yeah let's have a quick conversation while sense how do you normally affect your vocals? You know typically just send all the backgrounds tio sub that leads to a sub and then those two this sub mix and what about the effect? Um the facts are all sent to the the effect buses good so yeah, I'm pretty much set up same way you are she got nothing new to learn right now. Yeah all right, so uh but you say my congratulations I mean that because uh because that I mean so many dudes who don't do that and, uh act like this is, you know, the most amazing new thing ever sudden is going to do a quick them of it. So rso just because there's four vocal tracks right here so I'm going solo this made for mono audio tracks and then to stereo locks tracks ok, one of the stereo boxes will be for delay they're all day for a river coal cool so create all right now just for the sake of ah getting through this uh I'll just name these you know one block two okay and I'm gonna put thes right there okay set of curiosity I just want to see if a one and two gives us any audio and not know what to do and it does cool okay so got blocked a labor here in vodka for so basically on the vocal tracks and open up ascend the way to do it quickly is to shift select them all then shift option selective send good bus we'll find an available one might need to create an available one. Yes all right. So basically what I just did was I went to the I o menu and you see where all these buses air just italicize that means they're not working so I'm just gonna check him off and now we have now the work at least they should um okay so shift option click on the bus let me click on the send a bus and yet bus one into is now active see how it created it all of them then hit towards zero and you'll see that did the same thing all these okay, so plus one and two will be the one that goes to the delay so as you could see right here on this delay track put an input a bus input of bus one into I c plus twenty two goes to plus one into four lots we'll make another one for three and four go to the river so again shift click this these tracks so you get them all selected then shift option click on the send a bus a bus three four click it and then on the verb track but input on bus three and four you guys realize that the way that I'm doing this is I'm not going through a plug in or an interface internal bus routings go so out from here and into here so fucked delay who's going to pick a delay a normally use like say uh eco boy all right now on these senses when you're doing a vocal send or any sort of sent to in effect was just have the mix all the way wet and uh you know sink it to the temple of song maybe depending cutouts of low end put it to al auge this is a good way to start I don't know if you want a note they do it to allow echo or something a little saturation well feedback I feel like I'm on a cooking show um and uh let's see way have delayed and then as the river same idea so make a river by like vintage verb and keep the mix of one hundred percent um let's just see what this does just that and there you go that's the thing that a lot of people don't get the mistake that people commonly make is putting these these effects like delay and reverb on each individual vocal channel and that's just going to eat cpu and uh and can get kind of weird every once in a while ah there will be a good reason to do that for like an individual effect or something like that prefer and overall reverb delay that you know that's just part of the overall vocal sound better just send the vocals to these and and be done with this same with you know when you have a drum for or lead guitar verbal whatever you send them to these overall effects and uh you know so that easy o tio way already covered the other uses of sands we covered side chaining uh and then we also covered using them to send for ah you know, for bouncing stems and different versions and yeah so let's move on unless if anyone has any questions about that all right let's talk about friends of yours groups they're your friends have you set them up correctly so I'm going to do something revolutionary right now uh I'm going to delete all of the other groups that I have in this file right now and just start from scratch so I could show you but groups basically should correspond to how you do your automation in my opinion I feel like they're there to make automation easier uh and also, you know, to be able to solo things together mute things together pan things together turned them up and down together miss with plug it settings together is basically all these things that you really automate uh you can make your life a lot easier by putting them into a group and have them all do that one thing like, for example um okay, so a good example that is uh during a blast beat say you have three sample snares and three natural snares now blast beats air one of those instances where sample snares consent really fake and, uh machine gun e and just wrong just not what you want and a common trick during blast pizer even fills is to bring down the samples and bring up the natural snare. Now say you have a record by a band like black dahlia murder or something where there are a lot of blast beats or you know any number of the death of all bands that fort with words, lots of blasts and then lots of half time and lots of blasts it will take forever if you had tio tweak every individual snare every single time you wanted to bring it up or bring it down to get the balance is straight for the blast beats so by group making a volume group of the sample on the samples and then making a volume group on the natural snares you can do all of it in a you know one fell swoop uh so the another thing is you kind of want to go in order and make your drum groups first and then you're based groups think guitar groups so that so the list is organized because as you're seeing pro tools you get a list of groups right here um as you make them and then if you do them out of order is just going to do be kind of like a session that I showed you guys before where things they're just convoluted and hard to read and like I said the idea of prep is too reduce complexity keep things simple easy to navigate so I'm going to just save this is a different name justcause I messed with this file so much and uh and delete all groups wow freedom it's weird uh ok so let's start with let's start with a different types of groups can you show you guys different different things that I would do with grouping um so I'm just going to go through some instruments and give you different ideas so tom's you guys saw before they've got a lot of times in this got that tom tops tom bottoms and then the samples and you want those all be pan to the same place what I don't mean that tom one and two and three new pan to the same place but you want tom one top tom one bottom and tom one sample to all be pan to the same place and, uh it's a lot easier if you just have tio move one pen on rather than all three s o you know for instance pan settings on tom's and their samples that's one drum group idea so it's really simple to do that so so we're gonna we're in a mess with tom tom one so tom one top right here select that tom one bottom and then the tom one sample saying that's all selected and then the shortcut for group is command gene and then we'll call it tom one pan all right, so look right here see these air you're available tracks just all the tracks there active and healthy and happy and the song and this is what we're currently in the time one pan group someone talk toem on bottom tom one sample all right, get uncheck follow global's you gotta attributes you see all this stuff that's checked off these air all the settings that any group together so as of right now the volumes be grouped together and all the plug in settings and bypasses I don't want any of that so option click gets rid of all of that and then I just like pan that's it on ly setting that's uh selected there so now if you notice how when I hit this little arrow it gives me an all automation lane it gave it to me down there too for the uh for the sample is gonna pan rhinos panned hard left for some reason but uh see moving together or you know done here on the mixer see how that all uh moving together boom that's one drum group idea for you getting your tom pans together it's important um it's another one what we already talked about the separate volume groups on the snare samples and the natural and there's but I'll show you how it's done you see me do this enough times when you don't know exactly how to do this um so back tio pro tools and I'm gonna put the view on a narrow mix because I hate wide mix there we go all right so I've got these three natural snares and all these samples and I'm just going to assume you have already got them relatively balanced out the way I want them and there's already some automation on them and uh I'm just going to be the guy that goes through and deletes whatever automation is there so we start from from scratch um okay so about this area a cz you see a shift selected the three natural snares command g and we're gonna call it natural not nati snare volume okay uh you go here two tracks again as you can see currently in the group sneer fifty seven snare I five near bottom uncheck follow global's attributes volume boom and then you do the same thing for the sample suit hear about the snare samples should select them that's all of them command g snare sample volume on chek followed global's volume has already checked there. Just go two tracks right here. Double check that it's the snare samples and you're good. So now no solo the scenarios real quick. All right, so knows that that sounded like garbage. Um the first thing I'll do as you can see, I'm selecting the samples. The snare samples was against you since I got the group on it's elected all of my snare samples at once and I'm bringing them down and volume considerably. I could barely see what it says. So just saying nine point eight point three whatever I'm feeling generous today and then as you can see because I have the other group on the natural snares it selects those what are turned up a few tbe legacy that was more natural um you know and what what the final blend would be is it's up to you and how you mix it but that is a very useful grouping trick um another one would be your plug in parameters on overheads for instance because uh let's see if we've got a stereo overhead or to mom knows okay yeah right here so we've got you know crash crash those air the two or asking one second yep ok so these air you two overheads right here no snares no with this I wouldn't group the volume because sometimes I'm gonna want to automate one side of the overheads louder than together I give I want to bump up certain symbol hits that air on one side I don't need both sides to come up so I'm not going to touch the volume automation but one thing is that I want to say me q on on these like I want to roll them off the same way so I mean make a group so crashing crash command g and uh we recall this overhead plug and get rid of follow global's good attributes get rid of volume you syria hears his insert controls on bypass this means plug ins check that up boom now you can control to plug in settings on both of them so for the sake of being really really cool and I make new settings so pull up I need you on both of them something easy and the easy like uh where is it oh yeah I see em I'm in eleven still throws me off sometimes looking for ah certain plug ins that don't exist in pro tools eleven some said pulled up this plug in on both of the overhead is turning on the q and uh you could see turn it on on both of them and turned one of turning both so yeah when I cut off so lows on a sure just guessing you go to the spot with more symbols and that's the same kind of group that you do on rhythm guitars because you want them to have the same he accused generally at least I would so that's another idea I wonder I wonder nothing and ah reverb send level groups um like for instance if you want uh if you want all like your snares tio to go to the drum ary reverb louder and softer together uh here's a way to do it like uh like select the samples actually put that into this pre existing snare sample volume group so press down on it it modify goto attributes yes you were says send level from now I'm going tio you send them to the drum verb find the drummer first and what do you know the bus is called drum verb so I'm moving in up here just for so it's easier for us to see but ah so I'm gonna select the sand the snare samples now open up a sand and I'm going to find the one called drum verb in here somewhere sure it exists here it is what upsets person the wrong button try it again okay and so you can see the send level going to the to the drum verb are now all controlled by this anybody have any questions on those uh animation groups for ah drums sounds good right now cool fantastic so you know, same types of stuff for these other instruments on guitar groups that would do volumes on rhythm guitars um and then I would do edit groups which is different uh thing where we were just doing we were just doing mixed groups now edit groups or when you want tio you know say you make a cut to one track you're making the same cut to another track so you're editing and amped guitar track you're also editing it's respected die at the same time you select that kind of group and then of course volume parameters on this so once again we'll go through the same thing just tio give you guys a little bit of repetition and uh you have ah anybody out there and audience phil has any questions? I'm here for uh come here all week or something basically kind of make a group apple jean I'm just going to call this guitar volume and I don't want to follow the global's and then you know what? I was going to call this rhythm guitar actually and I'm gonna add to plug in parameters into that as well so that way I can control all the volume moves on the rhythm guitars are the same and all the plug and moves with same so you can see you know I get some sort of plugging happening on this why would I do a thing like that? E q a guitar nice so that's a great e q curve right there for a guitar you do that all your target weight and that's and I mean that that would be the way teo teo e q guitars because we really weird if you did one side and then the other side was left unaffected uh so that's ah, those air my ideas for making rhythm guitar groups and you know, it would be the same thing for lead guitars I would affect I wouldn't do the volumes the same because I wouldn't want to have the harmonies be the same volume is the main leads but definitely the plug ins, you know, so that they all have the same accuse um it's easy and I've heard that you can't do this stuff in logic, by the way um kind of strange but of her that you can you can not group these settings of logic does anyone in here whose logic does is this true? Uh I I haven't gotten too deep into it? I mean I was mainly using logic for years just as a song writing tool like a sketch pad from but now I'm starting to get into this and that's something I'll look no look at tonight actually yeah I'm curious I've heard it doesn't do this which I think it should I've heard a lot like it would but I don't know you know well check it out we'll all the logic users I know like pro level larger users when I'm like so do you uh you know group your plug and sayings of quiet so yeah speaking alien gibberish that there was something so I don't know if it does it or not but it's a nice feature uh in logic basically you would just have to copy stuff over um I said one question assuming all four guitar tracks there like the cnn amp and tone and all that stuff what's your reasoning for running like the same plug in chain on each individual track instead of like a stereo bus with them all panned to it because you have like two panned left in two panned right? You know because a lot of times I'll create like a stereo bus from my rhythm guitars and then just have like one basically one e q processing all four of them on the bus I guess it just depends it's not like he used a very taxing on your c p I was just curious what you know why you did about the individual track level instead of it well because in this particulate song uh I have different amps like I have these muted but um you have four tracks the guitars right here yes, I see you have two tracks of the one fifty and yeah, two tracks of something else yeah, whatever that is for god but sometimes I'll have a little bit of u q on the individual tracks but then still some overall guitar busey key was well, I do the exact same thing but still you know you've never heard of a little you should group it s o this same but I wouldn't group this other amp to this one so like the fifty one fifty three would have its own thing and then whatever this was really don't remember would have its own thing and then they would go to the guitar the rhythm guitar bus right here and kind of get like the overall flat thank you. Um but ah, I mean, a lot of times I find that one of the reasons to do that like before you're sending it to a bus lee a little bit of the accused because maybe you want to get like, say like you're putting a compressor on the bus or something like that uh maybe, uh there's some nasty frequencies and some of the guitars that you don't want blending in and then hitting the compressor you know, like, uh, you I don't want to bring those out so I see it kind of like going this way is you making corrective moves with the q prior to hitting the a bus in the run presser so if you have like, chugs there a little bit to wolfie and like you know, one hundred fifty here its range or something like that do you have individual multi band compresses on each guitar track and the last level you guys do it both ways I've kind of I've done both to have kind of settled into doing it at the bus level but I mean it can't works either way it works either way I just I feel like um the thing is I feel like with uh regular compression like if you're compressing to get more attack uh it really doesn't bother me at all to do it at the bus low she works nicely tio can make the like say like the first chuck gonna break down really have more attack but if you're feel like you're trying to get more wolf I mean less wolf out of out of something uh I'd prefer to let each multi band control the low end of each guitar individually you have more control that way because each one was going to be a little bit different yeah it and uh I feel like I feel like bringing like when you're compressing guitars to bring something out you need to add like touch because you had too much going to ruin it so you do that the bus love understand just the tiniest amount will make all the difference in the world but when you're correcting low and problems I think you need a lot of control and like uh one you know I mean in an ideal world all the like say you're quoting it all for them will have the same amount of sustained problems on sand creek attack yeah, but like, you know everyone's worked that way yeah, now she's eventually funded track it and it's you know the performances on his consistent maybe as you would have for someone to have yeah, exactly. See access s o c the multi band on guitars as like a muse for corrective stuff for or at least controlling stuff not so much as an enhancement so that yeah that's why would go individual like individual tracts of that makes sense yeah it's cool it's cool, bro, bro. So all right um yeah let's see what else we got as far as that's concerned? Uh, yeah edit groups to see if I've got the dies in this even though I said no how to delete that yes, here we go here some dies ok, so you can see throughs dies right here corresponded these and tracks right there I'm going to make them active, okay I'm going to make an edit group so that I can uh yeah fix these root these amazingly tight looking guitars um all right, so first thing I would do is I would group the respective d I track two respective amped track um and this case there's two yeah, two for die so we got this one and I was select this groups and that because as you can see this the's amp tracks corresponded this die apple jean and right here all right, we'll call this, um gtr left at it and you see right there how you see at it mix or make slash edit put it at it and that's it so now um see, when I select that you you see the among the dive animals on the amp tracks so you know or cut that and move it and have fun with life and make a really good sounding bad at its that's the way to do it it makes sense to everybody the defense doing a mixed group in an attic group cool. I wonder how by the time I'm done with this on her belly and ever ruin this song was cutting it up completely all right? Cool and ah, you guys understand why in this particular situation you wouldn't do mix slash at it right? Because you don't want to apply mixed settings to the d I tracks so, um, we already have volume and plug in settings, so basically you've got the rhythm guitar tracks have, like the amp tracks, have their own group for volumes and a mixed group for volumes and plug ins. And then we have a separate group for the amtrak's and their respective d I, uh oh, we're just for edits and, yeah, that's it cool, nice meeting you guys. All right, what's. Next. Definitely. You want a group plug in parameters on similar vocal tracks, because if you have eight eight lead screen vocal tracks, you don't wantto, you know, you want to be able tio tweak a compressor once and have it move all eight of them.

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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