Original subtitles

hi this is justin colletti of sonic's

group thanks for joining me for this

week's episode of the sonic scoop

podcast

and today we're going to be giving you

the three

insights my three key takeaways from a

excellent mixcon master class

that just went down with one mr brian

vibert if you don't know brian vibberts

he is a

seven time grammy winner that is pretty

impressive in my book he's actually

worked on many more grammy winning

projects than that

starting as a runner his assistant back

in the day and then as an engineer a

mixer

producer he's worked with michael

jackson and mariah carey in green day

and metallica

and billy eilish and so many others too

many names to count

and he actually probably gave us the

most in-depth and detailed mixcon

presentation we've ever had it's about

two hours long and it's worth every

minute but in case you want a short

cliff notes version of some of the key

takeaways there

i'm going to give them to you right now

let's get right into it before we do the

quickest of shout outs to this week's

sponsors on the podcast

number one being antelope audio because

they sponsored

the presentation from mr brian viveritz

and i'm actually talking to an antelope

audio microphone right now

this is the axino it is the most

affordable standalone

modeling microphone on the market one of

the very few standalone modeling mics in

the market

right now i'm talking into a neumann

m103

recreation and a summit audio tla-100a

emulation for the compressor but it's

got an re20 in there and a u87 and a

short sm7b and so many other things

and they all sound pretty good in fact

when i was talking to brian

he was able to pick out the mic model

that i was using without even hearing

he's like oh that's one of those neumann

m series i'm like how did you know

so he's got good ears and apparently the

mic models are pretty darn good too

if he's able to pick it out sight unseen

also big shout out and thanks to

soundtoys sponsoring this podcast in the

beginning trout anything they make for

free for 30 days over at soundtoys.com

making some of my favorite creative

mixing effects in the known universe

last

certainly not least fabfilter sponsoring

this month check them out over at

fabfilter.com where you can try out all

their stuff for free as well

all right without further ado let's get

right into it my key takeaway number one

from brian vibrates there is so much

overlap

between what i heard from brian in this

presentation and what i've heard

from so many of the other great mixers

we've had

at mixcon and one of these first things

is something that i heard in a

presentation from michael brauer i heard

a presentation from jeff ellis i've

heard again again

and that is that brian's first and most

important job in mixing

isn't to make things sound better that

sounds kind of weird right

it's what we think about mixing being

the most important thing

but for him that's not thing number one

it's closer to thing number two

thing number one is enhancing the

emotional impact of the song

and the decisions he's making are

focused primarily around that

it's about following the narrative arc

of the lyric about following the

emotional arc of the song and

the arrangement first and foremost even

ahead of an

enhancing the sonic impact of the song

and enhancing the sonic impact of the

song does happen and

in a way it's a byproduct of that first

focus in a way it's a separate process

but just having that in your mind as

we're not trying to impress other audio

engineers with a kick drum

we're trying to make the song feel

better to the end listener

we're helping them connect with the

lyric connect with the emotion

the mood whatever we're trying to

conjure out of the end listener and

bringing more of that out of them and

out of the track

so i think that's a big thing and we've

heard that with a lot of the biggest

mixers

and this brings me to takeaway number

one and a half which is one of the key

ways he does that is with

automation which is something i can't

recommend enough it's one of those

things

that takes you from being a good enough

mixer

to starting to be a great mixer is

knowing how when and why to use

automation not only to even out things

on a technical level or a sonic level

but to enhance emotional impact and make

sure the listener's attention is going

to the right places

and he does that just as i'd recommend

first getting a good mix without any

automation

he actually gets pretty much his

instrumental mix going first then brings

in the vocal and then starts in

working with automation once that basic

skeleton

is there and it's a super essential part

of his process

super essential part of enhancing the

emotion of the track

now this brings me into thing number two

where i talked about there's so many

similarities he has with other

producers and engineers i can go on and

on about other similarities and

maybe i'll bring up a couple more but

there's also some big differences

one of the things i've observed a lot in

people who have made the transition

to digital in the box mixing is a lot of

them are very

bus focused they'll do a significant

amount of processing

on their mix bus and they'll often do a

significant amount of processing on

their sub

instrument group buses so rather than

just doing

a ton of eq on each guitar or on each

individual drum

they might do a lot of say compression

and maybe to some degree eq

on a bus that all of those instruments

of the same group would feed to

and brian doesn't really do either of

those things he

doesn't use pretty much any mix bus

processing there's a little bit of

limiter there

so that he can bring up the level just

for client reference but he's not really

doing mix bus

compression eq too much of that stuff

and he's not doing too much individual

bus processing he's doing a lot more

processing on individual tracks

and parallel treatments and he does a

lot of really cool parallel treatments

here parallel vocals and kind of

distorting them you know

parallel basses and you know treating

them separately and those kinds of

things

so you find a lot of parallel processing

you'll find a lot of individual track

processing but in his style

not too much bus processing and the

point here being big take

away number two is there are so many

different ways you can get to great

results while mixing

and just because one particular person's

approach

sounds like it should make sense doesn't

necessarily mean it's the best approach

for you just because

there's some other approach that a lot

of people are doing doesn't mean it's

necessarily the right approach for you

and

brian is very familiar with other

people's ways of working

he talked about you know how kevin

killen is known for starting with the

vocal first in his mixes and doing a lot

of bus processing and

you know he talked about mikkowski's way

of working which is very different

than kevin's and he has yet still a

different way that's

different from either of theirs or is

relying less on the bus

processing and ultimately

you've got to find what works for you

you can try to copy people who you

really

love and want to emulate but you know

ultimately it comes down to creating

your own path and he goes thing

through things in a different way than i

often recommend saying my mixing

breakthroughs of course

he'll often go through kind of track by

track first doing drums then bass

then guitars you know and then finally

getting to the vocals and

he's made that approach work for him for

you know a long time now

it's a slightly more old-school super

large console

way of working but he's adapted that and

made that work for him

in the digital domain the third big

takeaway here

i get from brian is that he clearly

really loves variety

in tools and he loves having fun with

gear and he

really does he spent a lot of time

selecting exactly which

interfaces and 80d converters you want

to go with antelope audio

exactly which uh summing bus you want to

go with uh

uh it was the chandler stuff and i think

he demoed with one of his friends

18 different summing systems you know

doing kind of blind a b testing to hear

which ones they like the sound of the

best and he really nerds out and geeks

out about you know

different plugins and he uses a big

variety

of a lot of different plugins including

the antelope audio effects and a whole

bunch of others wave stuff plug-and-line

stuff sound toy stuff

and you can tell that he really enjoys

and has fun with gear

and for him that seems to be a healthy

relationship as long as the gear is

there as

an inspiration to kind of keep you

curious keep you motivated keep you

trying things

he seems to have a a good set of

relationships and trade-offs with and he

likes working with a lot of plug-ins

and this is again a totally different

piece of advice and we've gotten from

some of the other mixers in this

series who like to hand just use a

handful of things and keep on coming

back to them

so that's another one of my key

takeaways from him there's so many more

i could go into

i could go even further into the idea of

enhancing things one of the things i

love is

when he's taking his initial notes one

of the main things he's looking for

is which lyrical lines need to stand out

some more which ones could we add some

delay to that's a very

michael brower way of thinking and of

working of

looking at one of his responsibilities

of being little call outs and little

flourishes that he could add to the

vocal because he knows that's something

that the end listener is going to think

is really important

he has an approach that's similar to the

one that we saw cohn heldens do in his

mixcon presentation from

earlier this year where when he comes to

processing on individual tracks

he's really doing his correction first

and then his enhancement so he's going

in and doing things like

eqs that are subtractive and trying to

notch things out and tighten things up

and

things like that he's doing his

corrective processing first

and then once he feels like he's really

corrected to sound then adding

enhancement afterwards

and a lot of his most bold enhancement a

lot like we saw in cohen helden's recent

mix in mixcon

his most bold enhancement is often done

in parallel processing where he might

push a vocal into distortion to where it

would sound terrible by itself

but he's folding in a little bit of that

to give it a little bit more body edge

and character in the context of a full

mix well i hope some of these ideas and

insights were useful for you big thanks

to brian vibberts

he goes into supreme detail in his

mixcon master class

almost a full two hours where you can

see practically every last little

knob he twiddles inside the mix it's a

great sounding one

so definitely check that out we'll link

to it in the show notes below

and here on screen remember if that you

want to enter to win thousands upon

thousands of dollars worth of free gear

you can check that out at the mixcon

mega giveaway at sonixgoop.com

slash mixcon giveaway that sonic's

group.com

mixcon giveaway to enter for your chance

to win

big thanks again to antelope audio for

sponsoring brian's presentation

and send me this lovely axino microphone

super affordable

modeling microphone with all the major

mic models you'd ever want to check out

and some great add-on effects as well

compressors preamps eqs

all processed inside of the microphone

to take the dsp load off your computer

you can even track with that processing

big thanks also to sound toys

making some of my favorite creative

mixing effects check them out

soundtoys.com

and fabfilter making some of the most

useful plugins out there

check them out fabfilter.com if you want

some more free stuff we've got tons more

mixcon videos we've also got the free

workshop the five habits of every great

mixer which you can check out

sonicsgoop.com

that's sonicsgroup.com mixhabits where

we tie together the common threads that

you'll find in

all the major mixers who have done all

the major mixcon presentations

i've also got a free primer to mastering

for you if you want to check that out

over in mastering 101

that's sonicscoop.commastering101 where

you can get a

40 minute primer on everything mastering

what's about

how to do it how to get started yourself

what to listen for what kind of

processors to use

and so on of course you want to go

deeper we've always got the full length

horses

mixing breakthroughs with yours truly

now in its 2.0 iteration

and the full length course on mastering

mastering the mystified roy tell you

everything i know about mastering

thanks for hanging out with me this has

been justin coletti of sonic scoop

see you next time