Dialing In The Mix Using ADSR Relational Decision-Making

1:55 What's good, everybody?Scoobert Doobert here for Love Music More.Today, I'm really excited to share one of my favorite ways of just looking at music in generalthrough the perspective of the synthesizer.So I'm talking ADSR, not ASMR ADSR, and what is that?That is the sequence, the envelope generator,

2:15 the four parameters that make up envelopes, attack, decay, sustain, and release.So let's go through each of those things in turn, and I've got my cool little synthesizerwith a lot of attack on it to show what attack sounds like.So attack is really just the hitting of a transient.So think drums, think a clap.Boom, attack.

2:41 But in that attack, you also have other things going on, because I'm in a natural environment,there's a little bit of reverb, and so that could be considered a decay, a sustain,or a release, the things that happen after the attack.

2:54 But first, let's talk about it in the sense of like a piano, very understandable instrument.You have a sustain pedal, that's the third pedal closest to the right foot.So one, two, three, that one adds more sustain.It takes away the dampers kind of on the piano.So if you press a key, you'll hear it just kind of sound, initial attack,

3:15 where the hammer strikes the string, and then over time that string will cease vibrating.It'll kind of like just slowly fade away.Same thing, where if you press down that sustain pedal, there's even less damping.So you press down on the key, and it rings for longer.But still, it's a hammer hitting a string, and that string is not going to ring forever.

3:35 On a synthesizer, on the other hand, we can make a ring as long as we want.And we can also control the stuff in between.So where does this come from?It comes from Robert Moog, of course, creator of the Moog synthesizer in the 1960s.You can hear that on Abbey Road, as well as like every other thing ever.Moog synths are awesome.They're still awesome.

3:55 And the coolest thing was when they started to figure out how to like articulate the synthesizers.That's another fancy way to put these ADSRs.In terms of don't trigger it just on or off, where you go boop, off.Give me some gradients.And this is where we start to get this goodness.So let's start with attack.So I've got my attack set to the lowest setting zero,which is going to be the most aggressive attack.

4:28 And then I've got my decay, sustain, and release all set to three.So you can still hear it.Here, it's just kind of like a little knock.It's kind of cool doing these things up on higher registers.

4:44 I've probably heard that kind of stuff in a lot of modern music with a lot of reverb and whatever.You know, plucks is another way that these things are talked about in sample libraries.

4:57 Really tight, great with reverb because the reverb ends up adding its own sense of decay,that own sense of release.But that's kind of what attack sounds like.Just for fun, here's what attack sounds like with everything else down.So it's just attack.Little click.Awful.But you know, that's all you get.It's just attack.So let's go the opposite direction.Let's start raising some of these things.

5:19 So I'm going to leave the attack quite high and then I'm going to add in some decay,but I'm going to leave the sustain and the release all the way down.The release is only going to come into effect when I release my hand from the keys.The sustain and the decay are the stuff in between the attack and the release.So that's it.It's got a fairly long decay but no sustain.Let's add it to the sustain.

5:45 That baby's going to go as long as I want it to because I add it in a good amount of sustain.But the second I take my hands off, off.There's no fade out.It almost has a little click just like the attack does.Hear that?It's a little rough.So maybe we add in a little bit of release to make it feel a little more natural.So here's the release at like two or three.

6:13 The attack, decay and sustain are all fairly high settings.So the attack is like two.The decay is like seven and the release is about five.And if I give it a lot more release,so I'm basically like lifting off my fingers andoff it still goes.

6:38 Which is a nice way if you want it to blend a lot of kind of chords or something like that.Like you're going from one chord change to another but you don't want to have to

6:48 always keep your hands down which is like what people use the sustain pedal on a piano forwhere if you want to play really complicated things you only have so many fingers.So sustain between the two make them more fluid.You can do that with the release feature without having to have a sustain pedal.Say whoops, that's fine.

7:07 You guys do not see how small this keyboard is but it is about the size of both of my palms.So yeah, forgive the the hilarity that may ensue.So anyway, that's that's the gist.And then there are cool things that you can do after that ADS are like chorus.So let's say for example I wanted to keep a very similar sound to that.I'm going to pull down the release a little bit just so it isn't so unwieldy.

7:35 I'm going to add in a little chorus and all of a sudden that synth is going to take some real life.Here I'd still hanging out.That's the sustain feature.Let's take away that sustain feature and you can hear it different.Yep, get it.

7:53 And I still have a little bit of release so it's not giving me that weird tacky thing when I lift upmy hands from the keyboard.

8:00 Okay, so with all of that you can also start to play with the way that they manipulate each other.So the reason why we have a decay and a sustain is one

8:10 like you need to have that level of granularity because just like we were seeing the differencebetween having no sustain and having sustain.It's pretty drastic.But they also play with kind of the thing that's right next to them.So let's play with the interaction between attack and decay.So if I take away the attack, so it's less tacky.It's less of that immediate bam, bam, bam, like a drum.

8:37 Now I'll pull down the decay as well and you'll hear how the synthesizer is going to have alike a kind of energy to it that's using a million songs, right?

8:52 And it's a really powerful way to punctuate, especially if you're down to lower octave.Cool, right?

8:59 That's all you have to do to get that is just lower your attack so the attack is fading in,but then also having a tight decay so the decay isn't super long.Check out how different it sounds as the decay is super long.You know, not nearly as cool I don't think.I think that's really sick.Anyway, that is part of the reason why we have the four.Because they all kind of dance with each other.

9:26 Each one impacts the next in the perception of the next thing.And attack and release are the two that I really,really want to focus on because they are the most applicableto not just synthesizers, which is cool.I love using synthesizers, but it's way cooler to think about all of musicas a series of frequencies and a series of transients.What are transients?Those are the attacks and the releases.

9:46 They're the ways in which things are pressing into the microphoneor pressing into the computer or pressing onto tape.And the ways that you can manipulate them using things like tapeor things like saturation or compression, compression,compresses transients.Not always, but it can.So basically what you're doing is you can make the music feelharder hitting or softer.

10:09 You can also order transients so that like, say, for example,snare drum has got a really tight transient,like my example with the clap.If you have that really tight transient,maybe you have a synth bass with a slightly longer attack time,like we were doing with this guy, you know, a lot longer attack timeso that after the snare drum hits the bass comes in.

10:29 Even if your program, so that they're playing in the exact same time,just the nature of the transients aren't fighting with each otherand they're ending up creating that pocket together by thinking of them as a unitand by thinking of all of kind of music as that together.Let's put that another way.So say, for example, you have a drum kit.The drum kit is going to constantly be interacting

10:52 with everybody else in the arrangement, including the lead vocal.If you're thinking about the transient response,the attack and the release, how do they fit togetherin a way that creates groove but also creates space for the vocalto be able to understand the vocal?That's really difficult.And one of the best ways that you can do thatis to adjust where the things are sitting in actual real time

11:14 and then also the way that you're singing, the way that you're articulatingalongside the drum kit.It's really difficult to just do this in the mixbut a lot of times you have to.But the best way to do it is to just think and listen in that wayand a lot of this happens subconsciously after you've been playing music for a whilebut trying to articulate in a way that fits, that locks.

11:34 It's not just time, it's not just feel.A lot of it is articulation and the ways that you're attacking, decaying,sustaining and releasing on every instrument, including the human voice.Best example of this ever is Michael Jackson.Best articulation, best pocket.Everybody can learn from that.Rappers, like Kendrick Lamar, incredible articulation, incredible pocket,

11:59 incredible relationship with the rest of the arrangement in hip hop. And it's a beautiful thing because then it makes it so you don't have to reach forthese other tools that compensate.Not to say these tools aren't good or that you don't use them.I use them all the time.But you want to use them to, like,not be a crutch necessarily.That's the best possible use.So a great tool is called Track Spacer.And basically what this is doing is every single time

12:28 the input thing that you're trying to space the other track tois putting on music.You are using a little bit of compressionand dynamically pulling back the rest of the arrangement.So this is often used on a instrumental bus,and then the vocal is sending to the instrumental bus.So every time that the vocal is is talking, I did that in the intro for the advertiser for

12:51 district. Every time that the vocal is talking, it is ducking out the rest of the musicwithin a certain frequency spectrum with a certain attack and release to that compressor.And so what that's doing is creating a conversation and allowing for spacefor the frequencies and the attacks that's transients to be able to cut through the rest of the mix.These things are great, but they are best used, like, conservatively,

13:14 unless you're doing it for an effect.And the best way to do that is to, like, give you that extra little 5-10 percent.And so if you already have good articulation, you already have good separation,and then that just pushes you over the edge.That's the sweet spot.When you haven't used it too much as a crutch, the mixes can sound odd

13:34 because now everything's kind of stepping on each other and dancing around in a erratic way.Dancing is a great way to think about it.

13:42 Because all of these things in the mix, all of these things live, whatever, however you're playing,are all interacting with each other and competing for the same space.But if you're dancing fluidly together, there's plenty of space.If you're dancing, like, turkey jerky, if you're dancing all weird,you're going to step on each other's toes.There's not going to be enough room.It's that fancy footwork.

14:06 It's that spacing that you end up achieving.And a lot of that is not just through volume.A lot of that is not just through pocket and timing.A lot of it is through how are you attacking?And how are you compensating for the way that everyone else is attacking?And then finally, how are you releasing?What does the room sound like?

14:24 The room naturally will have a certain amount of release unless you're in a perfectly dry space,which is part of the reason why I really like very dry drums,

14:32 is that it leaves the room for everything else to carry the space and the release.When the drums do too much, there's no room for anybody else to do anything,which can be cool, but it also can be super limiting.Because you have all these ideas.You want to do all this stuff.And so if the drums have got a lot of reverb,if everything's big and smashing and attacking in your face,

14:56 there's not a ton of room to add in that other counter melody idea or even to add in the vocal.Again, no problem with that if that's what you're going for.But a lot of times, that's not what you're going for.A lot of times, people fall into the trap of making everything sound good on its own.When that doesn't really matter, because no one's listening to it on its own.Everyone's listening to it as a song.

15:20 So if I am mixing something, and this happens to me a lot,or somebody will send me some tracks, and it's like,hey, this sounds awesome, soloed.But the second I try and fit it into the mix, it sounds crazy.Because everything is competing for that same attack release space.A lot of times, what I'll end up doing is I'll end up using my transient designer,

15:39 which is an envelope filter that can out-augment or decay the volume and the amountof these same things that synthesizers are doing.It just can do it to audio.And I'll go in there, and I might have to make some pretty aggressive movesto make things fit.A lot of times, people don't notice, because it just sounds good now.It would have been a lot better to instead of using it as a crutch,

16:05 instead of using it as a band-aid,to instead be able to use those to push it up to that next 10, 15% better.It's hard to think that way when you're producing,but the real great ones do.And the real greater rangers do.There are all a history.And every instrument has its own set of built-in features.That the musicians can certainly articulate in different ways,but a French horn has its French horn attack.

16:36 A trumpet has its trumpet attack.You can do some stuff within that, but it's that instrument.That's part of the signature sound of what that instrument is.In the same way that a guitar with a pick versus a guitar with your finger sounds very different.It's good to know when to go for which.The great arrangers, the great producers are able toput the musicians in a place that is natural for them,

17:00 so they can succeed, or know the players that can make it work,even if it's not natural.They know when to push people in or out of their comfort zones,and a lot of the comfort zone stuff is articulation.An articulation is really an interesting thing to like,just think about in terms of phrasing.Like what bits of the music are you hitting?Which bits have more or less attack?Which bits have more or less intensity,

17:25 temporal volume?Not just volume volume, but like,where are you digging in, so to speak?All of that can make you take these ideas from a synthesizer,or make you take the ideas from equalization,and apply it to everything.Because everything fundamentally is just attack,sustain, attack decay, sustain release,across a frequency spectrum.Reduce it in that way,and then everything kind of opens up.

17:55 Because now it's not I'm mixing guitar, it's I'm mixing music.And it's not I'm just listening to noise.It's like I'm listening to frequencies.And I think that's the aha moment of modern music.The thing that helps to differentiate us,where the lines between acoustic and digital,the analog and digital are so blurred,and they should be, because it's not about that.It's not about bits and bytes,

18:25 it's not about perfect acoustic, whatever.It's about frequency and manipulating those frequenciesfor pleasing ends.Doesn't have to be like,discord or, you know, it doesn't have to be that,but it needs to be pleasing to whatever your audience is,even if the audience is just yourself.But instead of thinking it like,I want to write the most virtuoster guitar thing,I don't care.I don't think very many people care.

18:51 I think people care about frequencies that move them.And by thinking about everything as a frequency and input into that frequency,I think frees your mind out of the traditional rock bandor traditional guitar tones or whatever,and say instead of trying to add in a really cool distorted part here,I'm going to add in something that hits this frequency range.

19:14 I'm going to add in something that hits this attack that's missing.I'm going to add to the groove or subtract from the grooveby making the drums tighter but then by making with a bass more language.All of these things, the relational decisions,I think are more valuable than historical decisions,at this point, with where music is and the way that we can manipulate it.It's like, we use the tools.Have fun with them.

19:40 And the easiest way to use them is to rethink yourrelationship to them, your relationship to music.Because by doing that, you're free.And they can make some really cool experimental stuff.Or not.But at the very least, it'll sound pretty coolbecause you'll be controlling things in the right wayand making them speak to each other.If you guys enjoyed this,I definitely welcome you to subscribe to the podcast.

20:08 It is always a fun ride,especially with these guests that I've got coming up.And definitely check out the other ones.So you can check out my music, though,at scoobertdoobert.pizza www.scoobertdoobert.pizzaand be sure to rate five stars.Share it with your friends.This is a great way to help the podcast grow.So thank you everybody for listening.I hope that this little ride about one of my pet subjects was fun.

20:33 And I hope it influences the music that you makeand the way you listen to it.Thanks a lot, everybody.