Original subtitles

When I sit with the song, I'm just trying to figure out

how to make every single moment move you forward.

Every moment, you hear something almost new.

Every moment is complementing Abel's songwriting and feeling.

Hey everybody, I'm Illangelo and I'm here at OCL Studios in Calgary, Canada.

I'm really excited to be here sharing with y'all a breakdown

from The Weeknd, After Hours album.

This album is really special to me, comes from my heart to work on it

and share this with y'all.

I would have loved to have a resource like Mix With The Masters to be able to provide

content so I could really see what my mentors were doing.

I want you guys to be able to take advantage of all the things that I learned

over the last 10 years of dedicating my life to music production,

mixing, and writing.

Some things to maybe make note of is I normally use Cubase and I've been using

Cubase for as long as I remember, since I was a kid,

but recently in the last couple of years, I switched to Ableton. Unbelievable.

I mean, this sh*t is so fun.

So you guys are going to see a new DAW here, and let's roll.

Wow, there we have it.

So as you guys can see, I try to keep everything as live as I can.

I try not to freeze and bounce stuff because as we're working on songs,

there's so many changes that happen.

It's just a good idea to keep things as active as possible so that we can always

go into it later and tweak it as we need.

There's a lot going on here.

If you see on the master bus here, this is what we're working with.

So as I'm playing and going through things, just keep that in mind,

that there's a lot of stuff on the master right now.

I've decided not to bypass it because as we were working on the songs,

we started implementing sauce on the master and this all affects

how you work on it.

It affects how you hear it and how it sounds back

and so it's kind of like a marriage.

So I'm going to leave all the Master Bus processing on

and we're going to go through step by step

and take a listen to stuff and maybe dissect and jump in

a little bit in to see what I was doing.

I think it would be best if we go through what I have on the Master Bus first

before we dive into the song so we can see what we're working with

so when we're hearing playback, we have a little bit of an understanding

of what's being applied as well.

So the first thing we have is an audio effect rack with a reverb.

This effect is for the outro of the song and to give the tail end

and we'll touch on that when we get there.

This is followed by pretty much the main sauce.

The first plug-in we got is this wonderful plug-in called Gullfoss.

This is a plug-in that utilizes AI to balance the spectrum frequency content

of whatever is being inputted into it.

I love this plug-in.

It's very dangerous because it's so powerful.

So this is the first step, and we'll dive into this a little bit deeper later.

This is followed by StandardCLIP, which is one of my favorites.

I use this for the Soft Clip Saturator, and as you can see I just brought it up

just a touch at 4%, followed by Slate Digital's Tape Machine,

which is one of my favorites.

I use this on every song that I work on.

I find that when I put it on the Master Bus, it just makes everything kind of pop,

come to life.

It gives a nice boost on the low end, it brings some nice air off the top.

You can do a lot of great things with this plug-in.

I'm going to dive into this much deeper later in the session.

This is followed by Slate Digital's Mixbuss.

This adds great harmonic content.

This is followed by possibly one of my favorite plug-ins of the last few years,

it's from Leapwing and it's called DynOne.

It's an incredible multiband compressor, it's so transparent,

and you're able to get so much out of it.

This has saved me because usually on the individual tracks,

I would be doing a lot more work than I am already doing

but the Leapwing DynOne at the end just seals it all up

in a way that I've never experienced before.

I highly recommend you guys give this one a look.

This is followed by a second instance of that plug-in.

This one, I'm doing parallel compression on and blending it into the dry signal

and I'm doing it all within the plug-in here and more on that later.

This is lastly followed by a plug-in from Ozone called the Low End Focus here.

This is really helpful, especially when we're dealing with a song

or a mix and there's so many elements, things are moving and panning

and there's a lot of high-frequency content.

I find that the Low End Focus at the very, very, very end, just with a little touch,

it just brings a little bit more clarity out of the low end information

and I want that to be as clear as day.

And so this plug-in really helps.

It gives it just a little, little touch of clarity on the low end.

Let's jump in straight to the beginning of the song.

Let's start with the instrumental first.

One thing to make note of is there's a massive delay between the visual

and the audio we hear and this is because of all the latency

with the plug-ins.

There's really no way to work around this.

It was frustrating and it might be frustrating for y'all,

but this is just what it is.

Until there's a computer fast enough to handle everything I'm doing

and having it all be running in real time, this is just what it is.

Nothing is wrong with your computers, you guys are getting a first-hand glimpse

of actually the process and how it looks and how it performs.

So let's run it from the top.

So the first thing you're going to notice is there's that synth.

Let's just focus in on this one.

I got the sound using Diva.

This is the patch.

This is all the stuff right here.

I don't remember what was tweaked, what was what, but man, Diva, popping.

I could have left this as it was but I wanted to give it a little sauce.

So I use a great plug-in that I've been using from Cubase for many years

called Grungelizer, and all it does is it outputs noise and crackles.

It's one of my secrets that I've been using forever.

You can hear it as far back as "Crew Love."

I love putting this into my patches because it gives it a sound

that it's alive and it's moving.

This is followed by another secret sauce plug-in that I've been using

forever called Ohmicide.

This plug-in is incredible.

You can change the tone, distort, compress so drastically,

and it sounds so pleasant.

I think you guys are really going to love messing with that plug-in.

You guys should check it out.

So this is followed by a whole other gang of stuff, y'all.

I guess let's just take it as it comes.

The synth on its own, as you guys can see here,

this is the dry signal. Let's solo it.

So as you can see, it's pretty simple.

I performed it to Abel's acapella as such because I was trying to carve out

some new notes, some new movements and chord progressions within the piece.

And also, as I was working on this, I really wanted to take a step out of

looking at it like a song and instead, almost visualize it like I'm in a movie

or a whole new reality.

I wanted to really dive deep in there.

So that's where it started.

Now, let me show you guys how we kind of spiced it up.

I added the Valhalla Delay.

Kind of gives it that quick slap feel,

mess with the Feedback, just get it really... sounding special.

This is followed by Virtual Channel.

I love putting this on stuff when I can, if the computer allows it,

at the end of the session.

I just feel like it brings all the tracks, just makes it slightly or more 3D,

so I love using that.

And then I'm using Q3 just to clean up some of the low end.

So with the two effects, we have that.

Let's go ahead and introduce the second effects.

Now in this instance, used a quarter note delay but the big difference is

that the Mode is switched into Pitch.

So this is a really wonderful tool because now, I was able to do the octave up.

And as you can hear... now it's speaking, now it's speaking back,

now it's a little bit more of a conversation

between the initial performance and the delay.

Don't be scared to mess around with EQ'ing out some low end and high end.

You can't have all the frequencies in.

You got to choose what's where.

I just quickly messed around with this and carved it out

and I love the way it sounded.

So this is followed by this third effects track here and I think you guys

are really going to enjoy this one.

This is where, when I was working on this and I was just listening to it,

feels really good.

I feel like I'm somewhere else.

I wanted to feel that low end a little bit on this track.

And how I got that bass to be introduced,

I used SoundShifter to bring it down an octave.

I use this a lot because quickly throwing sounds up or down an octave

on a pitch shift gives it some sort of a grainy feel.

It makes it feel kind of cool.

It makes it sound lo-fi, and we also get to keep the original instrument

and base the lower harmonics off of that.

So it's the best solution to add low end to this patch.

But that's not all, that's followed by Q3.

And as you can see, I'm carving really aggressively.

I just want the low information here.

As you could see, I don't want anything below here.

One of the reasons why is because I believe you would want to trim

as much of the sound as possible.

That sound doesn't need to be below 46 Hz because on the second half

of the song, there's going to be a lot more elements introduced

and I want those elements to be the first time

that you really feel those extra low frequencies

and then you get introduced to the full audio spectrum.

So it's really important that you carve out and you give only what you need

for the right times.

So by doing that, we are focusing just on that frequency range.

And I followed this up with FabFilter's Pro-C 2.

I'm just grabbing it and I'm just making sure that it's front and center.

That's really all that's going on here.

Also, a lot of the settings and presets you see... well, not presets

but as you could see, it's loaded and this is where it's at,

I just tweaked this. It's just what sounds best.

These settings might not work on all sounds or all things.

It's tailor-suited specifically for the element that we're focusing on.

So this really just grabbed those bass frequencies up front and center

and then I followed up with Lowender.

So I'm going to go ahead and just solo this on its own.

Now, the Lowender just gives us some really good content on the low end.

This is followed by carving out everything on the top end, a little bit of Drive.

And I follow this up with Ozone Imager.

I know this is a big taboo.

You don't want to spread the low end.

Yes, it's true, but for this instance, I didn't want the low end

on this half of the song to be mono.

The low end on this half of the song, I wanted it to sound really 3D

and I didn't want it to sound super focused in the middle

as it traditionally would be.

I brought it up to where I felt it was right.

I turned on Stereoize.

This is where we have it at.

Now, when you combine all of these effects together, you get this patch that's...

...kind of bigger than life in a sense because you got a slap delay,

you got the low end, you got a high pitch delay

and it just creates this whole...

this whole conversation now.

As I'm producing and writing, because I'm able to, I just mix as I go.

It's the easiest thing I find to do because I like to have things sound

as great as possible in the moment, as fast as possible.

I know Abel appreciates that, I know I appreciate that,

I know when we're in the studio, when we're working,

we just want to hear exactly what it's going to be.

As we're working on these songs, I'm really going in.

I added this from UA, the Pultec, and bringing out some low end,

I'm just kind of making it feel good, making it a little sweet.

This is followed with Q3.

I want to get rid of some of that very, very, very, very top end noise.

I don't want that.

This is followed with the Virtual Channel and then followed by Utility plug-in.

I use the Utility plug-in all the time because it's the quickest way

to be able to automate volume changes and muting.

So that's something to keep note of when you all keep seeing Utility is open

all the time.

So if we play this back now...

...we have vinyl texture here going.

And as you can see, I decided to do a couple of things with this.

I decided to give it a little bit of a pump, 6 dB, I didn't want to go too much

on this, it looks like.

On the Width I also wanted to create it where it was coming mono at first

and then as the bar progresses, it's becoming stereo.

I do that because I feel like it's important to keep contrast in anything

that you do, whether we're talking about frequencies or we're talking about

stereo imagery. I think it's really important.

So if I can keep this texture noise, vinyl sound, mono at the beginning

and then at the end of that bar loop coming out to be wider,

then it makes the ear feel like it's coming into 3D and mono

and then it's going to 3D and mono

and it keeps this loop feeling kind of going.

So I love doing that kind of stuff as well too and that's what we have here.

And this is followed up with the standard cleaning up, getting rid of

all the low end content, and followed up by Virtual Channel at the very end.

There's all sorts of little sounds, bells, whistles.

So lots of small details that you guys probably never heard before

because the vocal is the number-one front stage center focus

but all of these things help paint the picture,

helps paint the movie that you experience when you hear this.

The reverse 808, nice, really helped bring this feeling

that something is kind of coming, coming, coming.

Boom, out, just enough to make you feel like, yeah, there's a low sub there

but you just get it a little bit.

Also, it helps a lot with transitions.

So that's at a moment where Abel is singing at a new register,

a new intensity and you want to help build that transition up.

So in a lot of ways, when I first started, when Abel first brought this song to me

to work on, it was different than this.

When I sat with the song and I sat with the record, I'm just trying to figure out

how to make every single moment move you forward.

Every moment you hear something almost new, every moment is complementing Abel's

songwriting and melodic range and direction that he's going in.

On this album, a lot of times, I did a lot of sprinkling little magic

here, there, lots of stuff just to help accent what I can, where I can,

and just to help move the song forward.

So I'm not even looking at the song like, "Where's the intro?

Where's the verse?" I'm not looking at it structurally.

I'm looking at it like more from the heart and how it feels.

This is really important, I want to share it with y'all

because I know very well that you can easily get stuck in that whole world

of perfect intro, verse, pre, chorus, verse, all that sh*t.

That's cool and that's real, that's real stuff you got to know

and focus and learn about, but also keep in mind that we're making music.

It's supposed to be resonating with us, with humans.

So it's feeling, feel with the heart, listen to stuff.

Don't look at things so structurally, just kind of approach it

like you're painting and that's a nice paint stroke, and oh,

that moment is cool and let's kind of paint it with this.

I find it also makes it really fun and it kind of takes the song into a new

stratosphere where it starts to feel just bigger, bigger than life because now,

you're starting to hear things and experience things and you don't know

what's where or where, what is this?

Is this the verse? You're just in it.

And that's the thing.

You want to get the listener in it, you want to be in it. The listener is you,

you want to be in it, you want to get lost in it,

you want to feel like you're in this world, you're captivated.

And so again, a lot of stuff you're seeing is just helping accent

these different parts.