Episode 13
Show Notes
Live With Matt Rad - Episode 13
August 11, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 12
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Q: As a mixer, do you need to buy the plugins from a client’s Pro Tools session?
Rent, buy, or ask the producers for prints of each track.
Guys like Serban just buy everything.
Jon likes keeping his tools to a minimum on his computer.
Spectre (Waves Factory), multi-band saturator/exciter. Jon’s is using additively. Rarely using EQ boosts.
Oeksound Spiff - For transients
Jon thinks the saturation/transient approach smacks harder than compression or additive EQ.
Transient shaping in multi band is difficult. Listen carefully when you do it.
Q: How do you deal with an over-produced song with too many parts?
Be reductive/subtractive when it comes to the mud and the redundancies in frequencies and parts.
Jon groups all of one instrument type. picks the “lead version”, then busses the rest that are less important and carves them out as a group.
This is a less common issue for Jon because the producers he works with already have that problem solved.
Don’t put the Maag air band on every single vocal track.
Don’t try to feature everything in a single track. You can’t do it.
The human ear can only pay attention to three things at a time.
Vocals, drums, and bass
‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ is one of Matt’s fav productions.
It’s simple and subtle.
The kick is where it’s at.
Matt will spend a few days working on the demo with an artist.
Write “drunk”. Edit sober.
Rick Rubin is credited as “reducer” not producer on his records.
Tube Traps:
Jon has 22 Tube Traps in his studio
They help Jon create a room within a room.
They’re working for Jon and he hasn’t had time to swap them out.
They only help in the listening position. They don’t do much otherwise. The create a very precise mix position.
Jon has no idea what they’re doing. They just make his life easier.
Matt has 6 in his studio. His were built to Eric Valentine’s design.
2-Buss Setup:
DW Fearn VT-5 and VT-7 on all of the time.
The Comp is just for tone. The needle never moves
On his master buss EQ, he has a 20 hz boost on bottom
16kHz boost on top. Anywhere from 2-6dB.
Hi cut at 27k at 8-14dB of reduction. Jon uses it to focus the high-end and reduce potential aliasing.
He uses this as more of a tone shaper than as a filter.
This setting is diff every song.
Jon maybe wouldn’t do it with a plugin. Worth a try though.
His mix buss chain is the only thing that he needs to recall for a re-mix.
Use the Ozone Vintage EQ to do this move. Jon thinks that could work on an Ozone Vintage EQ, although their hi-cut is too low compared to the VT5.
Ruby 2 plugin would work.
Q: Is it better to have saturation on individual tracks or on groups?
Use it to glue your bkgd vox together.
Jon tends to do it more on individual tracks.
He has very subtle group saturation on his template to keep it from peaking and give glue.
If you process things as a group you are going to sacrifice a little clarity between the individual elements. Sometimes that’s a good thing.
Q: Kick/bass phase?
Always check this relationship. Flip your phases on kicks and basses to ensure you’re not getting any cancellation that is sucking out low end.
Reverb/Delay/Time-based Effects:
No hardware stuff, because of the recall-ibility of hardware.
Liquidsonics - Seventh Heaven reverb.
Goodhertz - Megaverb - Rich and lush. De-ess and EQ before the verb.
Valhalla Delay - Instant vibe. Turn the drive up and mess w/ the filters and modulation.
Eventide H3000 - Jon loves it.
Matt and Jon use EchoBoy - But Matt’s moving to the Valhalla Delay lately.
Jon hasn’t used UAD stuff in a year
When there is a new tool. Just spend 5-6 hours playing with all of the controls to feel it out.
Read the manual.
Matt is using the Arturia plugins again.
Their tutorials are great.
Headphones:
Jon never mixes on headphones. He hates them.
A final mix should not be done on headphones. It creates a disconnectedness.
Everything sounds pushed back because you keep pushing elements up due to the Fletcher-Munson curves.
To Matt, two things are hard about headphones: Air and space. You are losing the high-end bounce. Low end is not resonating in your body, so it is hard to make a judgement.
Jon has a Subpac. Never uses it.
If you can’t afford hi-end monitoring, make an effort to have multiple reference sources that you can listen through to counteract their shortcomings.
$3k is the entry point to hi-end monitoring. If you’re a pro mixer you need to start there. Jon has a pair that he can refer to.
Matt loves the car test. Helps you to know if you’re missing any final details.
