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Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

Lesson 59 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Eyal Levi

Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

Lesson 59 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

59. Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Intro to Bootcamp

13:45
2

Purpose of Pre-Production

15:55
3

Technical Side of Preproduction

11:33
4

Pre-Production: Setting Up the Tempo Map

12:05
5

Pre-Production: Importing Stems

10:11
6

Pre-Production: Click Track

15:27
7

Creating Tracking Templates

17:04
8

Intro and the Tone Pie

04:52
9

Drums - Lay of the Land

10:45
10

Bearing Edges

03:10
11

Wood Types

10:37
12

Depths and Sizes

04:00
13

Hoops

02:39
14

Sticks and Beaters

07:39
15

Drum Heads

07:31
16

Drum Tuning

1:03:55
17

Drum Mic Placement Intro

10:38
18

Basic Drum Mic Setup

53:37
19

Cymbal Mic Setup

35:25
20

Touch Up Tuning

46:56
21

Microphone Choice and Placement

40:34
22

Drum Tracking Intro

01:01
23

Getting Tones and Final Placement

34:52
24

Primary Tracking

31:54
25

Punching In and Comping Takes

20:11
26

Guitar Setup and Rhythm Tone Tracking

01:59
27

Amplifiers - Lay of the Land

10:01
28

Amplifiers & Cab Shoot Out

27:13
29

Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement

03:56
30

Guitar Tracking and Signal Chain

29:08
31

Finalizing Amplifier Tone

51:24
32

Guitar Mic Shootout Round Robin

05:22
33

Intro to Rhythm Tracking

07:46
34

Setting Up Guitars

15:02
35

Working with a Guitarist

05:05
36

Final Guitar Tone and Recap

04:11
37

Guitar Tracking with John

15:19
38

Guitar Tracking with Ollie

32:03
39

Final Tracking

22:08
40

Tracking Quads

33:44
41

Intro to Bass Tone

01:26
42

Bass Tone Setup

07:36
43

Bass Tone Mic Placement

16:42
44

Bass Tracking

45:09
45

Intro to Clean and Lead Tones

02:15
46

Clean Guitar Tones

34:05
47

Lead Tones

10:58
48

Vocal Setup for Tracking

11:27
49

Vocal Mic Selection and Setup

02:39
50

Vocal Mic Shootout

09:14
51

Lead Vocal Tracking

38:09
52

Writing Harmonies

07:44
53

Harmony Vocal Tracking

23:25
54

Vocal Warm Ups

11:40
55

Scream Vocal Tracking

18:57
56

Vocal Tuning and Editing Introduction

01:35
57

Vocal Tuning and Editing

29:26
58

Routing and Bussing

25:16
59

Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

17:54
60

Setting Up Parallel Compression

30:51
61

Setting Up Drum Triggers

10:41
62

Gain Staging and Trim

1:00:54
63

Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ

25:39
64

Drum Mixing - Snare

23:01
65

Drum Mixing - Kick

11:39
66

Drum Mixing - Toms

24:47
67

Drum Mixing - Cymbals and Rooms

17:24
68

Drum Mixing Recap

08:58
69

Mixing Bass Guitar

16:27
70

Mixing Rhythm Guitars

1:16:08
71

Basic Vocal Mix

1:08:59
72

Mixing Clean and Lead Guitars

58:55
73

Mixing - Automation

43:36
74

Mastering - Interview with Joel Wanasek

31:02

Lesson Info

Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels

I'm going to go ahead and finish up the color scheme between tracks and buses. Ans so the way that I'm gonna do it is this: so that it's really, really easy to know where the hell I am when I'm scrolling through, 'cause look at this, it's insanity. So, buses are gonna be bright and tracks are gonna be dark. And secondary tracks, like DIs or something, are gonna be even darker. And that's how I'll know. So, for instance, this is the vocal effects bus, right? So, we're just gonna go ahead and make that bright purple. And then, these are the actual vocal effects right here, so make them a shade darker. And here's a vocal scream bus, so dark purple. And you see, so everything vocal, all the vocal buses, the vocal scream, the vocal sing, the vocal effects, they're all gonna be this bright purple. And then the individual tracks that go into that are gonna be darker. And this just helps. It helps me and it'll help you if you do it, too. So, scream, here's the scream bus, here's the scream tra...

ck, so a shade darker. Here we've got the vocals sing and a vocal sing harmony are background buses, so both of these will be bright. And here we got the lead. So, one shade darker. Now here's something interesting, because these are all clean vocals, even though they're going to two different buses, they're gonna be side by side. They're working together at all times. And for the sake of how I think, I'm gonna actually take these harmonies and make them darker, so that at least I have a little bit of differentiation here between the tracks when I look down. Alright, so, remember I said that guitars cleans and leads were both going to the same bus? Well, I don't like that. I'm looking to see if there's a guitar effects bus. And I don't see one, so this is a good opportunity to make one. And to also make a clean bus. And I'm gonna just clone this aux right here. And then change it up. (clicking) So, call this one guitar cleans. And this one effects. Alright, cool. So, I'm gonna put the effects at the top, since they both go to that and so I'm gonna make these three buses, I don't like that orange, but I'll deal with it. Okay. The things you have to do in life. Alright, let's see. Let me find where there are some leads. Okay, these are the leads. See my file naming convention, right here, saves me because if you remember from day one, when I talked about pre-Pro and about file naming convention how I put the group instrument first and then what it is, so for instance, with guitars, I go G dash left one. G dash L two, so I know guitar lead one, guitar lead two, guitar lead three, wow, rocket science. But now it was easy for me to find, as opposed to right here, G-C-one, G-C-two, what might that be? Guitar clean one, guitar clean two. This stuff seems elementary, but trust me when you have to get into a super complex mix like this, all these little things add up and either they're gonna make you more efficient or less efficient and I choose the side of being more efficient. Alright, the guitar cleans are going to be a shade darker. And then the guitar leads are going to be a shade darker. These look like DI's, can't tell. (clicking) What's it even going to, guitar leads. Ah yes, that would explain it, the volume's turned down. Okay, so, I'm not planning on using these DI's right now. So for the sake of not having DI's everywhere, I'm going to make these tracks inactive and hide them. Could always come back to them later, if I need to change anything. Get that out of here. And then looks like I've got some lead DI's as well. So, I've got leads one through four and then lead DI, well one through three, actually, it looks like. Track, delete. And then lead DI, one through three, I'm going to make them inactive. And hide them. There is no lead four, goodbye. Alright-y this is easier to deal with. However, there's one major thing that's left, which is that I don't have a clean guitar bus in the I-O. So I'm gonna go name it. (clicking) And now, all these cleans can go to clean guitar and then, clean guitar bus can get clean guitars. And then clean guitar bus can go to clean and lead guitar aux, beautiful. Okay, and now, guitar leads can also go to my aux for clean and lead guitars. And then, I'm going to do this differently. Let's see if I have a guitar effects send. Nope, I'm gonna make one. Again, the reason that I'm naming all this stuff is because it is so much easier to work with named buses rather than like Bus 34 through or Bus 11 to and they have to remember how you had all that going. This way, I just know that the guitar effects goes to the guitar effects buses, how much more simple can it get? So, bus guitar effects and then, I'm gonna set up a send on the clean guitars to go to guitar effects. And then I'm going to do the same on leads to go to guitar effects. Now I don't totally know what the guitar effects are going to be, but I'm just gonna, just for the sake of having something to play with, I think that I'm going to add, where is it? There it is, Effect Rack. Anyone who's not familiar with Soundtoys 5, you should be, you now get this Effects Rack with it. Really, really awesome. You can do all kinds of crazy shit with it. So I'm gonna put EchoBoy on here and let's see what else. You've got a Crystallizer, yeah, EchoBoy and Crystallizer. Okay, so since these are on a send, at least, oh I gave myself two Crystallizers, I don't want that. Goodbye. Where did my EchoBoy go? Alright, so EchoBoy has to be on mix under percent, because it's a descend. The Crystallizer mix, I just want to add a touch of that to the effects and then the third one, doesn't even exist. Okay, cool. I don't know if those are going to be the guitar effects, but I'm actually just gonna turn this down, but at least it's set up now. And, as per usual, I'm gonna test it. Cool. (guitar notes) Alright. I'm gonna record it. I want one last thing, my guitar effects need to go to my guitar aux. The clean and lead guitar aux. That they're just printed on there, one big sound. So, let's see, is it gonna work? (guitar music) Cool, we've got that and then, just for now, I'm going to enable my lead clean print so that... can check if that works. (guitar music) Okay. As you can see, I just made myself a lead clean stem. And I'm gonna turn it up a little. (clicking) (guitar music) Looks like it worked, there you go. I test these things because I don't want to assume that, you test it once, make sure that it works and you're never gonna have to test it again. While I'm setting it up, I don't want to by chance have something that's not routed right or not bouncing to the right place and then have mistakes take place. So, as you can see, it also bounced louder and not as loud versions. Alright, cool. Alright, let's keep on going. Clean guitars... Okay. I'm gonna skip this real quick, 'cause this is crazy stuff. I'm gonna get to it in a second. I'm gonna start with drums. Drums is such a huge topic, just go ahead and give them all a color to begin with. Like blue. Cool. Okay. So I've got a lot of stuff here. Let's just start getting right to it. (clicking) That's what I thought. Okay, these are keys for which the trigger gates off of. And this is midi, so (music playing) these tracks (music playing) stop it. These tracks right here, and this is some version of contact that he was using that we don't even need, and that's Steven Slate Drums, we don't need that. So just gonna get rid of it all. So, contact of slate, delete. All the midi, can't exactly make it inactive but I sure as hell can make it small and get it out of here. I will need it later, I think, if I need to print any samples, but we'll get to it, if needed. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna take it and just put it at the very bottom. Just completely out of the way. Alright. All these gates, I'm gonna put them with their respective instruments. Now, you remember when I said that I use brightest for the bus? Then one shade less bright for the actual tracks. And then one shade less bright for anything else. So these gate keys would be the darkest shade, for instance, that's kind of what I mean is anything else, like trigger splat, or something like that, that you use to trigger something or to enable a side chain. So, got these for the tawns, as well.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Eyal Levi Bootcamp Bonuses
Drum Editing - HD

Ratings and Reviews

Ron
 

I'm on lesson 19! Already worth every dollar!!! Priceless insight! I have already incorporated some of the ideas (preproduction common sense stuff that I never thought of, but damn). VERY HAPPY with this course! ALWAYS LEARNING and looking forward to the next 50 (or whatever) lessons!!! Excellent course! GREAT PRODUCER/ENGINEER, GREAT DRUM TECH, and GREAT BAND!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

ceeleeme
 

I'm just part way though and I'm blown away by the quality approach Eyal takes to getting the best out of the sessions. I love how well everything is explained and Eyals calm manner is just awesome it really makes you want to listen to the gems of wisdom he offers.

user-eb82bd
 

Amazing knowledge is being presented here. If you want to start out recording, this should be your first step, it'll save you lots of time and get you awesome results. Highly recommended class.

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