Page 2: Inside Track: Dave 'Funky Friday' & 'Black'

Black Tracks

'Black' Written by David Omoregie & Fraser T Smith.

Produced by Fraser T Smith & David Omoregie.

The final mix session for 'Black', the lead single from Psychodrama, is one of the smallest sessions from the album, partly because the strings were bounced down. The 60 tracks comprise 14 drum tracks, two percussion tracks, two bass, eight piano, eight instruments (mostly strings), two special effect (a vinyl track and an aux), five vocal tracks, 10 aux effect tracks, six VCA tracks and a master track. The drums, percussion, bass, piano, instrument, vinyl and vocal audio groups each have one or two aux group tracks, with the name of each aux or bus track marked with an equals sign.

The structure of the session has similarities with the Tinchy Stryder session that Fraser T Smith discussed in SOS in November 2009, which is not surprising, given that Grandjean learned many of her mixing skills from Smith, and that the session is based on a recording and mixing template. "I always have the aux effect and VCA group tracks in the session when I start, so they are ready in case I need them. The same with the aux bus tracks, like drums, parallel distortion, bass, instruments and vocals. Fraser and I refined this template, so we know it works well, and I'll then add or take out tracks and plug-ins, as needed."

The Pro Tools mix session for 'Black' contains a total of 60 tracks, including numerous parallel and group aux channels. You can download a ZIP file from the righthand Media sidebar, which contains a hi-res large version of the mix session screenshot.

Drums

Grandjean: "There are not many plug-ins on the individual drum tracks, because as I mentioned before, the sounds that Fraser gives me are always carefully selected by him, to makes sure they work well together. So most of the time I don't have to do much on the individual drum sounds. In general, I don't listen a lot to individual sounds, other than occasionally to EQ something. I tend to listen to things in context, because otherwise you're sort of working in the dark.

Among the plug-ins Manon Grandjean used to add grit to the drums were Waves' NLS......and the UA Thermionic Culture Vulture emulation."Most of the treatments on the drums are on the three aux bus tracks, '=Drums', '=Distortion' and '=Parallel'. All drum tracks go to the '=Drums' bus, which has the Waves NLS Analogue Summing plug-in, to add some drive, and the Waves L2 [limiter] to control any peaks. The sends on the '=Drums' bus go to the '=Distortion' parallel, which has the UAD Culture Vulture, and to the '=Parallel' bus, with the Waves SSL master bus compressor, slammed. There's a filter at 9kHz on the Culture Vulture on the '=Distortion' parallel, to add crunchiness and size without making the drums sound too bright. Sometimes I also brighten up the drums with the UAD API 550A EQ, but not in this case as it is quite a dark-sounding track. These two busses are mixed in at quite a high level: -5.3 and -7.5. The slammed SSL compressor also makes drums sound bigger. Fraser likes heavy drums, and they also are essential in grime and rap.

"The '=Drums' bus has another send, to an aux effect track with the [UA] Ocean Way Room, to give the drums a bit of room ambience. I also have a send to a Culture Vulture aux effect track on each instrument group bus track — on drums if I need more distortion, and bass, vocals, instruments and effects — but in this session I am only using it on the vocal bus, the piano, and the instruments busses. I have a Culture Vulture on the Master bus as well, so there is a lot of distortion in general. I spend a lot of time adding a little bit of distortion to everything, because things tend to sound too clean in the digital domain, even samples sometimes. If you are doing a pop track, you don't want to add that much distortion, but with this genre you can add quite a lot of distortion on everything. The Bell sound is sent to the '=Percussion' bus, which has the same sends as the '=Distortion' track, as well as to the NLS, but instead of the L2 it has the McDSP Filterbank E606 parametric EQ, adding some 4kHz, to make sure it cuts through, and taking out some low end, and finally the Waves S1 Imager, to make it a bit wider."

Bass

Asked to add more sub-bass to the bass sound, Manon Grandjean turned to UA's Little Labs Voice Of God plug-in."The feedback on my production mixes always was that the bass sounded great, but when it came to the final mix, Dave felt it wasn't subby enough. So I tried a few things, like bouncing it out to the UTA MPEQ 1 EQ, which allows you to add a lot of low-end resonance, depending on the Q. That still didn't entirely convince me, so I also tried the UAD Little Labs Voice of God Bass Resonance Tool plug-in. I don't use that often, but it worked quite well in this case. I put up the amplitude, raised the frequency to hear where it really resonated in the room, and then brought the amplitude back down. The bass track goes to the '+Bass' bus, on which I used the Waves RBass, set to 89Hz — so operating in a higher frequency range than the VOG — an E606 EQ boosting at 1kHz, to add some presence, and a McDSP Filterbank C202 compressor to compress just a little bit, given that the bass was already compressed. The bass sound in this track did not need to be aggressive, but rather low and warm."

Piano

"Dave played the piano, and wanted it to sound really moody. Piano 1 is an Ableton piano, which is why it only has the FabFilter Pro-Q 2 plug-in, taking some high end off at 5kHz. Piano 2 is the main piano part. In addition, there are three piano overdubs with low parts and one with a higher melody. All these upright piano tracks have the Soundtoys Decapitator, to compress and crunch the piano slightly, and Valhalla Shimmer to make it slightly washy. Piano 2 also has the UAD Precision K-Stereo to add more width. It has an M-S control, and is handy if you want to get rid of ambience on a recording or add more.

The main piano sound on 'Black' came from the studio's upright piano, processed with — among other things — Soundtoys' Decapitator distortion plug-in, Valhalla's Shimmer reverb and the UA Neve 33609 compressor emulation."The low piano parts all have the RBass, because I needed a bit more low end than we could get from the upright. Everything goes to the '=Piano' bus, which has the E606 EQ, UAD Neve 33609SE compressor, U-he Satin to add some tape warmth, and the S1 to make it wider. It also has sends to a Hall aux track, with the UAD Lexicon 224 at 2.4 sec, and the Chorus aux, with the TAL Chorus LX. The '=Instrument' bus has the same inserts and sends, and normally I would have sent the piano to that, but I wanted to treat the piano separately, so in this case only the strings go to the '=Instruments' bus."

Vocals

"'DAVE' is the main vocal track. There are a couple of delayed words that are on the 'Spins' track with a quarter-note [Waves] H-Delay and 'Low Fx' tracks, which is a vocal that is formanted down with Soundtoys' Little AlterBoy. These three vocal tracks all go to the '=LVBus' aux track, which has a send to the parallel 'VoxBright' track next to it to add a bit of brightness. The main vocal track has a Waves H-Delay, with just a short, sharp slap delay, and the Pro-Q 2, for yet more top end! Always more high end! The UAD LA‑2A on the '=LVBus' does very little compression, it is more used for colour because the vocal already was compressed during recording, and then sent out and compressed again. I used many compressors in total, at every stage with very light compression.

"The '=LVBus' has quite a few sends, to the Medium Room aux, with the Valhalla Room, the eighth-note delay aux (H-Delay), the H3000 aux (Soundtoys MicroShift) with a chorus-like effect, the Culture Vulture aux, the 'Vox Bright' parallel (The 1/2 delay and slap aux effect tracks are not in use). The 'Vox Bright' track has quite a few plug-ins, the main ones being the Waves Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter, again to brighten things, plus there's some compression from the UAD 670, and at the end of the chain another de-esser, because obviously the more brightness you add, the more the 's' sounds are being emphasised.

"There's no Antares Auto-Tune in this session, though there was on the singing in other songs on the album. Generally, we use Melodyne for correcting pitch, and Auto-Tune has a sound, so for me it's more of an effects tool than a correcting tool. We tend to use Melodyne to get the pitches where I want them, and I'll then add a little bit of Auto-Tune to get that sound. All aux effect return tracks go to the '=FX Ret Bus' aux track, which has the Plugin Alliance SPL de-esser, the E606 EQ for some low cut, and the S1 for some widening."

Master Track

Many mixers these days have an extensive processing chain on the stereo bus, but unusually, Grandjean takes it one step further: not only did she mix Psychodrama, but she also mastered the entire album. She concludes her analysis of her mix of 'Dave' by explaining the ins and outs of this process.

"This session has my standard master bus chain. I don't record with it, but when I work on the production mix at the end of the day, I will put it in. The first plug-in is a Waves L2, with -0.1 threshold and 0.1 output. The reason is that we hit the master bus quite hard. Some people are really against this, saying that your master bus should not hit above zero, but we have found that there's a sweet spot where the master bus peaks at +3, without plug-ins. The peaks are usually from the kick drum, and these peaks are controlled by the L2. I control the level of what goes into the master bus with the VCAs, to make sure that it is in that sweet spot. This is the way we think it sounds the best, even though we're not sure it's the 'right' way of doing it.

Unusually, Manon Grandjean does her own mastering, and does so within the mix session using iZotope's Ozone."After the L2 there's the Waves SSL master bus compressor, with very light compression, ratio 2:1, compressing 2-3 dB maximum, so not slamming things. Next is the Waves L3 Multi-Maximiser, which is dipping the high and low mids to get a kind of smile curve. But again, it's very light. The threshold is at around -1. Then I have a UAD Manley Massive Passive EQ, which is a favourite, adding 68Hz, and 560Hz and 4.7KHz for some presence. Obviously, the L3 before is controlling the mid-range, so now we add it back in with the Manley. If there's not enough mid-range the track would sound dull. I also add 12kHz with the Manley.

"The next plug-in is iZotope Ozone 5. This is where the mastering chain starts; until this point it was simply the stereo mix chain. I use Ozone 8 now, but at the time, because we had been using 5 for a long time, and I was not used to 8 yet, I preferred to stay in 5. I used the EQ in Ozone, mainly boosting low end and low mids, and bit of top end. I also controlled the mid-range a bit with the Dynamics, and used Stereo Imaging to widen the top band a bit, and then a little bit of the Maximiser, set at -0.5, just to limit it slightly. The next plug-in is a Culture Vulture, adding some very slight distortion. There is a mix control in the middle, which is set to 10-15 percent. It just adds some grit, which usually brings the vocals forward slightly as well. I used that on all songs on the record. Finally, there's another L2 to finish, set to -3. The mix is already pretty loud, so I am not really chasing loudness!"

Grandjean may not be chasing loudness, or fame, or awards, but her stellar engineering and mix work is likely to garner her more of the latter!