Lessons

Lesson Info

Segment 27 - When to Use Clip Gain

So once we have all the tracks kind of cleaned up, I think we're pretty close. We've got kind of a decent signing mix a lot of this stuff before I start doing automation. A lot of these parts, depending on what kind of compression I'm using, I can do with clip gain on. This is a really cool thing that just came out in pro tools. I believe 10 and and clip plane basically allows you to go through a specific track. And before you use automation, you can use clip gain to sort of make something louder. Um, but there is something to keep in mind really quick. So I'm sure you how to do it. Um, let's say this is the tom that we're using really quick here. So let's say I wanted to have this Tom, these Tom's come out a little bit more just in this part of the song. Once I have these fades and I'm gonna zoom in a little bit closer, you'll see that clip gain is this little zero db and little picture of a tiny fader here, and what this allows me to do is just grab that and change the value of just...

that one specific, um, way form. You can see the pop out of the mix a little better. It's just like doing automation. Except there's something really important you need to know. You have to think about signal flow because clip gain is happening before it touches the fader. So before any of your compressors air accused. So if I'm using clip gain for automation, I'm actually not automating the sound output of the fader. I'm automating the input to the compressors or whatever, having the rack on that instrument track or that audio track, so have to be thinking about that right now. I don't have any compressors on here except from the bus, so I can pull it a little better a little better, and it doesn't mean you can't do that. You just have to know that that's what you're doing on. Be cognizant of it that you're not. You're pushing harder into the compressor by turning a clip gain instead of just turning it up overall. So it's good to think about, but it is helpful to do those with specific parts a lot of times with like synth tracks or things that I'm not gonna compress. Really? Um, I can use clicking to quickly go through and just at, you know, bring up or down certain parts without having to bring up the automation window. And sometimes I want certain kick drums or snare drums to hit a little harder than others. So, like, maybe I'm gonna go through and see as a mixing. I feel like I can't get enough punch out of a certain snare, because it's just not quite there. I could either replace the snare or maybe find one, See if I can find an example here. We often in the kick. Um, so you look at these performances. They're pretty consistent. He's a pretty good drummer. Um, uh, maybe like one of these down in here, Um, maybe one of these I want to bring up a little bit. Um, these ghost notes. So I could separate those out. And maybe I want those to hit the compressor a little more equally than they were before. Because you can You can't. Here is much of the punch, so I might want to use clip game to be ableto have those punch the kick drums a little of the compressors a little harder. So that's why, why and when you would use clip gain? I wouldn't use it for vocals, for the most part, unless they're just a specific background part that I'm adjusting. Vocals could get really nuanced. So things like, you know, synth parts of its a whole section. Or maybe kick drums or snare drums. Things that are like have a very specific envelope. It's easy to use quick to use clip gain for, but to separate out of region of a vocal track and turn it up or down is pretty hard. T make it sound natural. So you'd want to use more specific automation. So now that have this kind of like set up, I just want to listen really quick to this vocal and hear how it sits in the mix without any of the background vocals, someone a mute those, and we'll start there. Um, let's listen to a diverse part here if you listen. This is a great example. So listen the course part we heard first and then the first part, like the levels pretty good for the first part, but in the course it's getting buried a little bit because the vocals is really gonna come from thes doubled background tracks. Um, so maybe I want to bring up the vocal part in the verse. I'm sorry in the chorus so that it's a little more centered, so let's go ahead, and I'm gonna hold down command with the multi tool. Well, first, pull up the volume automation, Hold on command on the multi tool and add some automation points on either side. And then if you scroll above the line or above the line, you'll see this little down bracket, and that allows you to adjust entire sections. Keep in mind the only way to get that is if you have a specific region of time with nothing, with no other points in between. If I put Fleming in the middle and I tried to do this, it would just do that one section, and if I just put one marker and not the other, it would automatically assume that the region I'm using that I'm automating is what I want to automate, not the whole thing. If I tried to do it here, he would just do the entire track. Um, so it's important to know that like where you're setting the boundaries between, you can also sort of, like, hold down and drag the automation. But then again, everything afterwards is gonna be affected. So I usually try to separate out of region I'm working on and then start to automate from there. So the sort of like first passive automation is to go through and say now that the dynamics are taken care of and I've started a compress what I want to throw in here to make certain sections sound louder. So it's sort of like the bigger global things. So maybe I'll turn the vocals up on these sections, run the next chorus, and if you notice as you're clicking and dragging, there's two things that pop up to show you. The first is the amount of change that has already apply or where the level is out of the specific track. So if I click and hold, it shows me this is a plus 2.3 db, and next to it is a little triangle symbol for all of you math nerds out there. That means change or change over time. And so the change shows you the change that's being applied with whatever you're doing right now. So because I'm clicking and holding out doing anything, there's no change. But if I start to change it, it says it's negative. 10.2 db but it's changing it by negative 12.5 db So I know how much I'm changing it to. I'm gonna look really quick here. That's plus 2. and then over here is plus 3.2 and I want those to be the same. Somebody go ahead and lower that two plus 2.3. Another really cool thing. And this is pretty much true all over pro tools. But if I hold down the command while I'm dragging, it switches from just the normal amount of change to a fine tuning amount of change and allows you to get a little closer. So if you see, it's really hard to try to, like, zoom in and make small changes. But if I hold that command, I can scroll through small values and get it exactly down to where I want it. Okay, this is a great example to bring up something else. So once I've gone, gone in and um I've got all these. You know, dynamics changed for the whole sections, like I know the courses or whether at the vs, where that I feel like I'm pretty close to where I want to be. Maybe I want to start adding in some, like, cooler tricks that I could do like some some more musical things to make the song pop out. So, like this scream, for example, maybe I would want to try to automate how much reverb is on the scream as it goes in overtime. So as you hear it right now, awkward like it's cool. Yeah, it's an awesome is wailing. No, but like, what could we do with that? To make it fit Maurin the track? So maybe we're gonna try to automate some reverb just on that specific note to make it seem like a little more farther in the background and more musical. So let's see what we have pulled up on the vocal track right now. So both of these, if you remember from this morning, um, we've got an ambient sort of like verb, and we've got a vocal plate which isn't a huge river, but I'm I'm thinking more like an echoey, huge reverb that maybe we want to use for something else. So I'm going to bring up on their several ways to do this. Maybe I wanna have a totally different reverb for this. So let's try one thing first and see if this works instead of changing anything, we're just gonna automate the amount of send to the vocal reverb and see if that works. So it's already too pretty good level. Um, we wanted to start right at the start, screaming. So right there on what kind of like automate that up a little bit. See what happens that kind of work since here in the track. Or maybe we want to try to have it build over times that starts. And then as it goes on, it gets louder and louder. So part of the problem with this is that the reverb itself just isn't that long of a decay. So once the track starts playing, you kind of lose a little bit of the sound of the reverb. We're gonna get rid of that. Um, let's try doing something else. Instead, let's try bringing in an entirely different river that only comes in on that section. So I'm gonna bring a river of here. Let's use just something kind of cheesy. So let's just use the d verb groups. There it is. And we're gonna have, um, with solar this again. Uh oh, that's kind of more of what we're looking for, but let's even make it bigger. What I've done is bypassed the other reverb just for a second. And we're gonna use this just on this one part. So we want to do is automate the bypass button on this. So I'm gonna go here and click automation and choose Master Bypass bypassed and add it to the automation list on that track and want to go to our reverb sent here, and I'm going to see the where volume. I'm doing this like the volume to go down to Deaver. But now you see, the master bypass is an option to choose for for that specific part. So let's go find out where this vocal is. And for this whole section we're going Teoh, make it un bypassed and then turn it off right before. So it'll come on right as he starts singing and then it'll leave again Oops. Right is he stops. So now if you look at them selected here and I go back, it's bypassed. Comes like that Here it's bypass. But if I'm in the middle, it's not. So then you know that you want to do is make sure that the other reverb isn't necessarily on that track as well. So we're gonna go to the true verb and pull up that bypassed button and add that and what do the same with this part except in the opposite. So what I'm gonna do is, um oops. We knew that, um, I'm gonna go back to my d verb and I'm a copy of this section. Keep that region selected. Go to my master bypass and paste. It didn't let me paste it. So instead, I'm going to select this region as tightly as I can. So I know where it starts and ends, and then switch to my other river, plug in and do the opposite so that it's bypassed during that section, but not bypassed before Cool. See what that sounds like? Come on, don. We want to just that a little bit so that it actually lines up toe when he's actually gonna start doing that? Yeah. We wanted to be right when he starts saying the word. God, Yeah, yeah. See what that sounds like in the mix? I also want to combine that with the send that we're actually sending to that. You also might be thinking, Well, why wouldn't I just add another bus on and put it on the separate og send, which you totally could do. But again, when I go to bounce stems, I also want to be thinking about keeping all of my vocal reverb on the same place. So doing this automation helps me do that. Someone I bounced stems. It'll be hot. Easier to be able to do that. But I could actually send this a little bit. Make this sort of a little more natural of a sent here. What kind of flows into it? A little better. It almost like it fades into the reverb so you can get into all those kind of details with automation. That's kind of like the main point. Um, okay, so now that you know the modes, you can edit those. You can edit plug ins settings if you want to. Quickly, I talked about this yesterday. But if you want to quickly automate just a section of a specific plug in like, I don't know what each of these are gonna be called in the list. Shift Option Command, click her shift control option click. Sorry. Or was it yesterday? I totally forgot. That is control. Option Command click allows you to enable plug in automation for the specific track. So you could just do that in one click. Hold on Control, Option command, and click on any plug in control. It allows you to quickly just add it to the plug in, lest to the automation list without having to do that. So if I wanted to, maybe just on that one section changed the decay. Over time, I'm gonna enable that Now it turns green. I'm gonna go to that section of the and you can see now decay shows up and over this time, when you start singing this part, maybe we want to start and have this play increase over times that it sounds like it's even getting bigger. Here's what that sound is coming from. I don't think that's supposed to be in there. Um, we'll come back to that. So yeah, you'll hear all these different ideas. You can do it. How You can use automation to make musical effects. You basically just write that stuff specifically into the track. Um, and I would start off with the first pastors to kind of recap the first pass to do sections like, maybe I want to do just the vocals or just the courses or just the intros. So they get each of the sections working and then add in some specific effects. So maybe I want to do some cool tricks and kind of add some stuff in like that, and then maybe the third passes I want to go through and start to do some more specific fine tuning stuff, which we'll talk about next.