Hi Friends,
I hope you´re having a marvellous Thanksgiving with your friends and family!
Today, I want to share a mixing tutorial, which my good friend and talented mixer David Mood has recorded for us:
David will show you several ways to control the dynamics of your vocal- and bass tracks and add fatness and character to them by using saturation.
This tutorial is an excellent example on how you can completely alter the vibe and feel of the song, just by adding colour and distortion. – I use this technique all the time and I love it!
David is using Studio One, so he will not only show you different techniques on how to use saturation in your mixes, but he´ll also share some amazing insights into the workflow of Studio One, which might make you consider using it as your main DAW. 😉
I almost forgot! You can download the multitracks of this song by singing up to our email list through the form below.
(Scrooolll doooown)
Enjoy the tutorial and stay tuned for some amazing Black Friday Deals tomorrow!
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing,
Warren Huart
WOW!! WOW!!! WOW!!! etc. Man what a superb video and what amazing plugins.
I’ve had the “Saturation Knob” for well over a year now and have loved it from the very start, but as David Moon correctly points out, it’s range before getting really unstable or distorted is limited. And as he showed, I’ve resorted to all manner of way to tame it and of course used up all my CPU in the process.
So his use of the Blue Cat Gain Suite was amazing and an absolute solution to a problem that’s plagued me since I started.
His use of the pre and post makes complete total sense to my “non engineer” brain” and that’s always good.
His tutorial was excellent (please tell him that for me Warren?) I’m impressed and heading over to his website shortly…Definitely want his YouTube Videos in my subscriptions.
He seems like a wonderful person to know. Calm, well spoken and very clear in his delivery of important details (a + always considering the amount of b.s. tutorials flooding YouTube these days.)
I’m impressed, stoked!! And most importantly I have to work on some vocals tonight and tomorrow that need to be “Polished” and this might be just exactly what I need. YAY!!!
Also, David is a very good teacher for Studio One which is now the DAW of my choice. I’m always looking for the techniques and processes of work flow with it. And there seems to always be some cool little thing in S1 that one can never find in the manual.
(Just for reference on this point there is another gentleman who hails from Edinborough ? Scotland named Johnny Lipsham who also is a wizard on Studio One. So if anyone on this website is a Studio One person, he is also a great reference for mixing in S1)
But man!! My hats off to David Moon…I will be checking his website out shortly.
Thank You Warren very much…as a Studio One User, this video really REALLY helped me both in long term and for an immediate need I can put to use right now.
HAVE A BODACIOUS THANKSGIVING!! 😛
Where is David Moon’s website or YouTube Channel? When I type in David Moon or David Moon drummer, all the search engine comes up with is drummer Keith Moon from the Who. Nice drummer too but not the Moon I’m looking for.
Try Studio One Expert for more of David’s videos
Hi Martin, wow, wow, wow, etc. 🙂
Thank you for this wonderful comment, I am blushed! I have to print this out, and hang it on my wall.
Please tell everyone that I haven’t payed you to write this post, haha!
As Sara mentioned, you can find some more videos by me at Studio One Expert (put David MooD in the search field ;), and also there are two more videos by me on Warren’s channel.
Many thanks again, David
Happy Holidays to you and family David.
Merry Christmas to All.
Marty Weeks
Thank you Marty, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family as well! David
Thank you Sir and same back to you.
Great! These same work flow features are in Sonar, I am going to have the same set up in an FX chain now!
Great to hear, Robert!
Great vid David! I will try this in Reason as well. Funny, I was actually thinking about this problem and I´m amazed that it doesn’t already is built in avery plugin already. It is quite essential just to hear what the plugin does without any gain added.. But it is like the dry/ wet or mix knob! Soon it on every plugin! 😉 I hope…
Actually some are. Newtron from Izotope is far and away the biggest one where they have all manner of input/output control for everything from compression to EQ and Gate. They also have the linking and reversing feature to augment and avoid masking.
Their is also an inexpensive plugin from Plugin Alliance called “Character” which I think is a version of a saturation knob type of thing. Allows for you to dial into specific frequency ranges for tonal color and has input/out put controls. Three general setting for vocals, bass, drums and instruments.
I use that to speed up the process of tonal control on tracks. Helps a lot.
However, using David Moon’s preset configuration will still make a wonderful difference on tracks like vocals, bass, horns etc.
Question for all…how would this process using Blue Cat’s Gain syncing and the Saturation Knob work as a parallel processing tool? (not side chaining but parallel?
Oh yeah just a quicky note for Studio One users
If you are adding your preset (Blue Cat Gain and Saturation knob) to a track that already has other plugins inserted…make sure you do the drag and drop from the browser. If you use the down arrow for short cut to your presets, it will replace whatever other settings you’ve already placed. No undo for that, you’d have to close the project without saving and re open.
I found that out yesterday. However, just drag and drop from the browser window and you’ll have no problems.
Thank you Jeppe! Many plug-ins have an input and/or output gain knob, but very few actually have the two linked, to compensate for loudness increase automatically. The Waves Kramer Master Tape is the only plug-in in my collection which has that.
Some awesome ideas. Thank you for sharing this Warren!! And thanks to David Moon.
Thank you! David MooD here 🙂
Sorry David. My bad. Great video, non the less! lol
No problem Joel! Many thanks, David
thanks Warren and David! love this! I already use softube saturation and blue cat eq’s,..so to add the blue cat gain plug -ins is a
slam dunk..!!
Thank you, Jim!
Awesome. I do have a question, tho. I am new to Studio One and need to know: where are my effects I downloaded? I mean, I know where they are, but how do I get them into my effects folder?
thanx
Hi, do you mean 3rd party plug-ins? You need to “tell” Studio One their location on your hard drive in the options.
Thank you for your reply. I don’t know quite how to do that. I have Soft Tube installed, but I can’t do anything with it. The Blackcat plug-ins just sit there looking at me. When I drag them anywhere, I just get the symbol which means that it’s not going anyplace. I have Studio One Artist which may be the problem. Thank you. btw, the video is really great. Can’t wait to use it.
Studio One Artist doesn’t have VST-support, that is the problem indeed. There is an add-on which you can purchase in the PreSonus shop which enables VST-support, or you could upgrade to S1 Pro which gives you all features of S1.
Thank you for your help. I was afraid of that. I would very much like to upgrade, but on a fixed, limited income. I really wanted to get in on the 50% off upgrade, but my check doesn’t come until the 30th. Two days late! lol When I do upgrade, I will be one more step closer to paradise. Keep the great tutorials coming.
Hi sleepy, I’ve just seen that the 50% off upgrade deal is valid until December 2 at Sweetwater. So you could still take advantage of the offer 🙂
Thank you. I missed it. thanx anyway.
Awesome idea how to keep the output in place. The splitter is a cool feature in Studio One, too. In Cubase there isn’t such a thing :(.
Cool video! Really appreciated.
Thank you, metalsine! Yes I love the splitter, has to be my favourite feature of Studio One 3!
As far as I know, no other DAW has something like this yet, but I could be wrong.
Many thanks, David
Great video. Just a quick question ….. When would you use saturation as opposed to parallel distortion?