Episode 77 - Bainz
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 77
Jan 4, 2022
w/ Bainz - Week 4
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Q: What is the pacing and schedule of your mixing?
Bainz:
It’s a little different every time. I’m not able to switch between work and chill as easily as someone like Teezio who has their setup in their home, but I take breaks whenever I feel that I need to.
In the last month I’ve probably mixed 4-5 entire albums and a bunch of songs.
As the album gets closer to completion labels generally throw in more last-minute songs to be mixed.
Q: What do you listen for in a rough mix before you start a mix?
Bainz:
It’s evolving. Every project is different.
I used to wipe the session clean and start from scratch, but lately people have been so tied to their demos that I start from what they give me. I’ll keep what they have.
I find that people will approve mixes way quicker this way.
If an artist trusts me to do my thing I’ll start from scratch.
Sometimes I’ll keep elements like their vocal throws.
Matt:
Quite often an artist sending your their rough is sending you their mixes.
The people who are best at this know how to use all of the tools and pick the best one for the situation.
Bainz:
If the rough has too much mixing done to it then it can be difficult. It’s better if they did too little work in the rough mix, because then I can do it.
When people send it, if they can back off of their heavy processing a little bit that will really help me do a good job.
When you get stems in and a whole track comes together through master buss processing, sometimes the feel changes and you have to be very mindful of that.
Sometimes the hi hat is very loud or changing the volume of the snare changes the whole vibe of the record. You have to be mindful of these things.
Matt:
The feel can change dramatically as you smash a master buss.
If someone has a beat that’s getting a lot of vibe from extreme buss compression, how do you like to receive multitracks in order to best maintain that vibe?
Bainz:
I want to hear what the artist is hearing.
People will sometimes trigger their buss compressor off of the rough mix as a key before they bounce down the multitracks, in order to preserve the dynamics from a smashed buss compressor.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this. It all depends on what the artist wants.
Q: What does Bainz do for his beard?
Bainz:
I’ve got a good barber.
I use beard oil a brush, conditioner, and beard balm.
That’s how you get rid of a lot of the harshness that comes with beards.
Q: How many songs can you engineer in a night?
Bainz:
My whole life is a marathon.
When you do all-night marathon sessions, we lose track of how many songs I do.
When you’re really tired but not asleep yet you’re in the zone of creativity.
That combination channels this real creative spot.
I’ve definitely tracked more than 10-15 songs in a night.
Usually these songs are the artists free-styling ideas over a beat.
A lot of the artists I work with write way quicker than other people.
Matt:
Are there many vocals that get recorded in the next days after these freestyle tracks are laid down?
Bainz:
Rarely. Once Thug is done with a vocal it’s very rare for him to want to come back and change something.
Oftentimes producers will try to change the stems they send to me to mix. This creates friction with the artist who doesn’t know that they’ve made changes. So it’s important to hold them to the original idea that they laid down.
My assistant will set up the sessions and compare back and forth between the rough and the mix session for every measure to make sure we’re not missing a sound or that anything has changed.
Q: How do I get beats to Bainz?
Bainz:
My email is full right now. When we get back into the recording zone I’ll throw my address out there.
Q: What’s the most important element in mixing vocals?
Bainz:
You work with what you get. Quite often I have to do a lot of clip gaining if the engineer wasn’t very detail oriented during the tracking.
The mic and preamp are the most important part.
The mic pre and the converters on the Digidesign Carbon are so different from the Apollo pres.
Carbon allows you to run AAX plugins on the way in.
It’s Digidesign’s answer to Apollo.
The BDE Distortion for saturation gets used all of the time.
Q: Regarding the tired zone you mentioned, how can you get into that creative space?
Matt:
Stargate would strategically play Ester Dean some warm-up beats at the start of the session and then as they got later into a long session they would bring out the A-Class beats once she was getting into the tired/creative zone.
Getting out of the analytical brain can take a while sometimes.
Bainz:
In my experience it’s more about what vibe the artist wants to hear in the moment. Ex: slow songs, hyped, smoother, etc.
You’ve got to judge the room and work that. Sometimes you have to keep the new beats in that same vein.
For every song of Thug’s that we hear there are probably 500 that will never see the light of day.
As the artist gets a higher level of accomplishment or skill the ratio of unreleased songs will drop. For Thug it may be like every one in 4 songs.
It’s impossible to keep track of all of the songs that we do.
Eventually everyone forgets about certain songs.
Whenever there’s not much going on we’ll go back and re-listen through everything.
Many of these old songs won’t ever be released because they sound very much of an era.
Q: How do most songs get leaked?
Bainz:
It used to be people who had a copy texting songs around a bunch. Nowadays people will try to hack you if they know that you’re affiliated with an artist at all.
You could be an assistant, mixer, producer, or anyone.
Now I’ve got protection against this, but I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to give anyone any ideas.
Q: Do you keep a consistent mix buss or do you switch it up?
Bainz:
The mix buss is usually very consistent.
There are a handful of ten things that I will normally use.
Adding something new is a little dangerous to do because of unfamiliarity, so I like to keep it consistent.
The limiter never hits more than 1dB of gain reduction. I barely ever see it.
Q: Clipping to get level
Matt:
The number one thing for getting loudness is to get an arrangement with everything in its place where nothing is competing for space.
Bainz:
Most of the clipping I do is clipping my Burl A/D on the way back into the session.
I’m barely doing anything on the Burl. It’s usually the snare that will clip things before the 808.
Sometimes I’ll use the T-Racks Clipper
I like the Mike Dean Gainstation to clip with, though I don’t use it too much.
I’m very mindful of gain-staging.
It’s not about the sound of the 808 as much as it is the note choice. That’s how you get 808s to knock..
Mixing is really about evening things out so that they work well together.
Q: Do you do much group processing? Vocals, music, busses, etc.
Bainz:
All of the verse leads will be processed on individual tracks, then when I run out of plugin slots I’ll use the group processing.
I’ll send vox, music, drums, and bass/808s out of Pro Tools individually and then they’ll all get summed back together on their way back into the session for the bounce.
Most saturation and gain-reduction is happening on individual tracks. When it comes to buss processing any gain reduction is very, very subtle.
If you think your mixes needs 4dB of limiting then you should re-assess your mix.
Q: How do you make the vocal feel up-front without sacrificing the track?
Bainz:
You have to carve out a lot of spaces to fit the vocal and solve all of the small problems with the vocal so that it’s not abrasive once you turn it way up.
All of the carving usually happens from 300-4k. Everything outside that will be heard, but the midrange is where it needs to happen.
The Waves Factory Trackspacer plugin is good for ducking individual instruments in the way of a vocal.
Matt:
I think people really underestimate the amount of clip-gain and gain-automation that goes on to get a vocal feeling right.
