I would love, love, love to see a video on Top Down Mixing!!! I understand the concept but I love seeing everyone’s approach to it and you, Mr. Sturgis, are one of the few I have not gotten to see your approach to the mix buss anywhere other than this video.
JST Maximizer is a fantastic tool. A little on the drum bus and a little more on the mix bus and my mix is banging in the truck. I'm ready for you and Miami to put out more content on it. Plugin of the year imo! Let's go!! 🔥
In 1961 we didn't need ANY of this stuff. I've seen the industry become more and more dependent on needless gear, techniques, etc. Learn how to record correctly in the first place. One mic., one 1/2 track MONO tape machine, one basement, and people who can actually PLAY MUSIC. Bill P.
This is THE channel. Everything that I've learned about mixing and mastering came from here. Joey and Miami just know how to explain their knowledge and make it simple for beginners. And everything I use for mixing and mastering is from JST. It's just fun and amazing to hear what a damn plugin can do to a mix. Especially the Howard Benson Vocals plugin. That's just next level stuff.
Excellent explanation ! One question, to be able to relate/translate it correctly to the DAW (Ableton Live) I'm using: does a mix buss correspond with Ableton's "Master" track and "Group" tracks ?
There is no difference other than everything has to end up in stereo (or mono if you like). It's all bogus. There are no rules for mixing. Essentially, one only needs a limiter on the master bus. And then they wonder why everything sounds the same nowadays. There are no rules (for what is in the mix or master) other than taming peaks to make things louder on the master bus. But that is like kicking in an open door. No rocket science involved. Think of it.. the whole sound comes from the master bus.. so what's on the master bus determines how the mix will sound. Now.. let's say I have 100 eqs on my master bus.. do I have more or less control over my frequencies than when I have only one? See? It's all bogus for clicks.
I love your tutorials, and also some of your mixes that I've seen at Urm Academy, and I would love it if you always did them in Pro Tools, which is the Daw I use😇😇😇
Since you have or maybe using two(2) Mix Buses, How you suggest that they blend them together for the best results on the mix. I'm not referring to the Master. Blending them together
This is great! I do a fair bit of rock recordings in my little bedroom studio. It's just me on everything but I want my songs to rock out and sound great! I just bought Waves Magma BB Tubes. What do you think about it?
Saturate will usually partly destroy dynamics so distortion always comes after compression in my opinion. That said, I’m sure if you looked at some of my sessions you might find a very subtle warmth or saturation plugin before a compressor on vocals. That’s no difference than tube distortion in the analog world or even a preamp adding some light harmonics.
I still dont get something, you say different versions of the song, but do you route every component to your mix bus? Isnt that what you already do on your master (depends on the daw) I thought mix bus as in creating a group mix of certain elements routing to their own groups.
So is the mix bus the same as the master track? I am _really_ confused about the different terms that are being thrown around, and few people take the time to shortly explain them.
Master bus = the very last bus in the whole daw (often blank on my sessions) Mix bus = a collection of other tracks routed into a single bus. (In my sessions, one of these mix busses would be called “master” and would actually contain the master) This is done this way so that your whole session doesn’t just represent one version of the song (master bus), but it represents every version of the master (master mix bus, instrumental mix bus, louder vocal master mix bus, louder guitar mix mix bus, acapella mix bus). If you print them all, you do it once and you’ve got every version for the label.
Master would be defined as “the very very very last bus” but a session can have several mix-buses. Like an instrumental mix-bus and a full-mix mix-bus or even a “heavily compressed” mix-bus all in the same session that you can select between or bounce them out together for alternate mixes.
