Episode 12
Show Notes
Q+A
Live With Matt Rad - Episode 12
Aug 4, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 11
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Mix Buss:
No mid-side processing on mix buss. Ever.
Jon doesn’t want to induce phasing on the last stage of the mix by doing mid/side. If he’s going to do this, it’s going to be on the fundamental source, not the mix buss. He doesn’t want to lose information.
The phasey-ness gives a queasy feeling in the belly when it’s removing information from the mix. Jon thinks doing this on the mix buss is the worst idea that you can have.
Jon uses H-3000 micro-shift if he wants to do widening. He’ll use subtle Ozone Imager on group busses sometimes. The phasey-ness will smear things. Transients disappear right away.
The smeariness can give a nice bokeh effect if you want something to feel out of focus. This can create contrast between two sounds.
Jon will sometimes use mid/side processing on bkgd vocals.
John uses his DW Fearn VT-7 as mix buss glue. Not for Gain reduction.
John never uses the SSL compressor. He thinks there are a ton of better tools to get that same glue.
Low End:
What are better ways to get glue?
Saturation.
Sensitivity of arrangement.
Kick and bass relationship/nesting.
Balances create glue.
Jon never compresses his kick or his bass.
Jon will drop the kick by a semitone to get it to fit better in a mix. With the client’s approval, of course.
Check phase between all kick layers, and bass. If you check all of that no EQ needs to be done and it will make them tall.
Sometimes you need to flip the phase or nudge it on individual hits.
Jon wants to do the opposite of what other people are doing. It’s his best chance to stand out. Doubling down on yourself is your best chance.
Jon doesn’t parallel process. People used to do it split things out to certain frequency ranges and effect them, but now multi-band tools can do this another way.
If you want that EDM loudness on a mix. Go for it, but you’re sacrificing true low end in a mix. Nothing needs to be at -6 LUFS loudness. By doing this you’re sacrificing low-end for midrange.
If Tony Maserati gets a super squashed mix from a client he get good results from turning down their demo to compare it to his mix, when he sends it to them for approval.
If you have a live bass there is fundamental difference between that and something that is programmed. You will need to be more mindful of phase and attacks.
Unfairchild tubes on live bass = Good combo.
Jon boosts low-end on bass and kick. Every mix. He’s additive aggressively for bass and drums.
Jon likes Acustica Ivory EQ for the low end. He also likes the Ozone 9 Vintage EQ. He used to really like the UAD Helios 60Hz bump. Fab Filter Pro-Q3.
Volume and Automation:
Jon does lots of clip gain. He’s mostly using that. Sometimes he does faders. But he hasn’t used his fader bank in a long time.
Jon puts the Unfairchild and his Siemens EQ on the vocal chain right away. It’s a very clean saturation in the feedback mode. Not the feed-forward mode.
The Unfairchild and the UAD Fairchild sound nothing alike.
When Jon automates it is mostly for throws and reverb.
Jon keeps all faders at zero. Then he adjusts the output on a plugin or through clip gain.
Jon thinks Pro Tools sounds better. It used to be that you get the full 32bit resolution at fader unity. He’s unsure if that’s still true or not.
If a fader is at +6 then he brings it to unity and clip-gains up +6dB to compensate.
You want to keep the vibe that was there, but still give yourself headroom to make moves. Trying to do a faders-down mix and beat the vibe that was already there is probably a losing battle.
Plugins and Tools:
Jon doesn’t like the JJP, CLA, Greg Wells plugins by Waves. He thinks you shouldn’t rely on it. It’s too heavy handed. Find your own way. Challenge yourself to find another way. Jon is pleading with everyone to not use them.
Jon thinks it’s not made for engineers. Build your own chain. Take a half hour and make that for yourself. He thinks they sound terrible and that we’re prematurely closing ourselves to other possibilities by locking ourselves into the sound of these plugins prematurely.
His grievance is that these plugins are always on. There is no value setting of “1”. It’s too heavy-handed. Once you get proper monitoring you can hear these things.
Monitoring:
Monitoring. Monitoring. Monitoring.
If you cannot hear something you can’t fix it.
Saving, Labeling, and Workflow:
‘Save As’ your sessions all the time.
Always change playlists when you’re manipulating an edit. Don’t make edits without saving a playlist that you can recall.
Being annoyingly over-organized will save your life at some point. That’s why people hire you, for being reliable and responsible.
Backup at least 3 times. Jon only does hardware backups. Matt does cloud backups now.
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Jon uses the Wow Ctrl from Goodhertz for tape effects. Never for saturation.
Try this on hi-hats that suck.
