My Mixing Workflow (How to structure creativity)

0:01 Music Appreciation. What's up, y'all is Scoobert Doobert on the mic.Today I want to talk about the sexiest of subjects.Work flow.What is work flow?How do you get faster?How do you get better at mixing?How do you streamline things?But not get boring.An eternal task, something that I am working deeply on rightnow because I'm superfrickin busy.It is crazy right now, partially because we're

0:43 coming out of COVID, and so there's live shows.That's been a hell of a wrinkle to throw into this projectof, hey, not only are you mixing other people and producingother people, making your own music, makingcollaborations, but also make a live set that having to dealwith all the logistics of that, and also the visualsand all the things that go into making a compelling liveshow.Man, there's a lot going on.

1:10 So that's why I'm thinking a lot and working a lot on myworkflow.This is like kind of funny because it's like a corporateterm, right?Like everybody's got their workflows, their flow charts.But there's something that we can take from that corporatekind of thing and bring it into music.But there is a line.There's a place where it goes too far and then things startgetting sterile or repetitive.

1:32 And so that's what I want to talk about is that give and takebetween best practices, between templating, between colorcoding and all of those things, and still keeping chaos and fun,and a sense of randomness inside of your workflow.Building that in.So the best example that I can talk about is in mixing.Because mixing is something that I apply to myselfand to others.And it's also like a very different hat to put on.

2:00 I have certain workflows when I'm writing a song,when I'm producing a song.But the thing that's like the most in a boxis the mixing process.So I've talked about what mixing is, some other pods,but just to quickly recap that.Mixing is the process of taking all of the ingredientsof the song and baking that cake.It's like you recorded all the stuff.It sounds pretty cool.But some things aren't really working together.

2:30 Some things don't have depth.There's not a sense of oneness.You take everything and you stick it and glue it together.And you're also kind of playing the role of a camera person,zooming in and out on different aspectsof what's cool in the mix, leading the listener,taking them on that journey, and using different techniquesto create a depth of field, to create a blurriness

2:56 and a focus throughout the rest of your arrangement.So there's not too many things yelling at you all at once.There is a flow.But in order to create that flow, you need to turn the chaosof production and arranging, which is a lot of throwingpaint at a canvas, really aggressive,like blue over here and green over here and everythingscreaming and things aren't named properly.

3:21 There's just stuff that's untitled too and a-one and a-a-a-a-3.Then you need to take all of that and turn itinto a final product.So the number one first thing that I dois what an assistant mixing engineer generally does.I don't have one of those, so it's me.What I do is you start by taking the session and ordering.Have the drums in one section that it follows by the bass,

3:45 and it usually follows by the synth and effects.Drums and percussion are all part of the same thing.So drums and percussion, bass, synth and effects,like swooshes, guitar and vocals.So it's kind of like, for me, it goes from rhythm, low-end,vibe, and then to me, I consider guitars similar to vocals,where I can actually mix a lot of the songwithout some guitars, even rock songs.

4:15 I can do that pretty well of like, if I get the bass,the drums, and maybe the lead vocal all working,then I can layer in background vocals and guitarsand stuff like that.Because for me, it's like different for every mix,but they're not necessarily the thingsthat'll change everybody else's perception.There's some stuff that is so foundational, like, say,for example, mixing without the bass,

4:42 it changes the way that everything else sounds,mixing without the drums changesthe way everything else sounds.So I take the foundational elements.I organize them first, and I clean everything.I go through it and I am the maid.I am making sure there's no pops, there's no clicks,there's no weird noise things that aren't cool.It's cool if they're cool,but there's nothing like that feels unintentional.

5:07 And that's what I do first.Clean up the fades, get everything in order,and then I color code stuff so that my braindoesn't even have to think like, where's the drums?They just see, you know, blue and there's drumsbecause the drums are blue.And so that's what I do.It's like, first of all, take everythingand turn the madness, which I think is necessaryfor production personally.I think when you produce too sterile,

5:28 it doesn't work for me.It makes the whole thing too procedural.I like production to be very chaotic and creative.But once you get to mixing,now that's when the procedural needs to come in.Clean stuff up, organize stuff,get everybody working together, get everything routed.That's the next step.So like, yeah, I've cleaned it.There's no sounds, there's no weird hits,or fluzzes, or sounds that randomly come in and out

6:00 of a track, clean up all of that stuff.And then, from there, start routing.So what I like to think about is like,what instruments are so glued to one another?And sometimes they're disparate instruments.Sometimes you'll have a guitar and a synthesizerthat are kind of doing the same thing.I try and figure those relationships out next.And then I start busing things together.

6:24 So like drums and bass almost always are together.Because drums and bass are like extensionsof the same instrument.You know, all the guitars sometimes are together,but usually it's like all guitarsthat are serving one function and all guitarsthat are serving another.I'll pull them together.That's what creating stems is like.But mine's a little bit less.Creating stems in the sense of these are guitars.These are bass.

6:47 These are drums.And it's a little bit more about what is your role?I am a percussive instrument.I'm doing this kind of thing.So maybe if I have a super percussive guitar,I want to run that into the percussion bus.So this is where it starts to mixin between workflow and creative.Is that I'm thinking, hey, that is acting with that.So they need to come together so that I can treat them together

7:11 because they're fundamentally the same instrument,even if they're being played by different people.And that's where the glue starts to happen.And that's the important part of this workflowthat starts to ease into creative.Once I get all those kind of decisions made,like who's vibing with who,that's when I can start doing thingslike parallel compression.Or I'm compressing these things together.

7:35 I'm forcing that glue and even better parallel saturationwhere I'm saturating these things together.I'm running the guitar that sounds like a padalong with the pad into a tape machine.So that it sounds like they're both recordedon the same track of tape.And just by doing that, it's like,you aren't togetherness.And that's what I'm all about.Because that's what mixing fundamentally to me is,

7:58 is making it not individual instruments,but like there's a wall of sound.Just something that is very difficult for mewith Dolby Atmos, something that I'm learning,something that's going to change my workflow.Because fundamentally my mixing strategiesfor two track mixes.Right and left, two ears.Dolby Atmos instead says,infinite ears, kind of like 118.And it's all of these little points in space.

8:27 You have 118 little objects that you can move around in space.And that's a very different experiencein terms of like gluing stuff together.And it's fun, it's a good challenge.But different workflows are requiredto do something like that.And I also think that that's like one of the early partsof joining a new technology.Because clearly the technology was createdby people that have like a live environment,

8:53 a real life environment in mind,where there are instruments located around a stage.And you move them around the listener on the stagewhere as a mixing engineer,I don't even want you to necessarily listento the individual instruments.I want you to listen to the music, man.It's like, it's the wall of sound ideawithout stacking 100 background vocals.It's, but it's the same concept of like,

9:16 I want this thing to hit you like a truck.How do I do that if there's just like individualsterile pieces all around you?I'm working on it, figuring it out.And some other mixers have done really good jobs with it.So I'm not without precedent.I've heard some other cool stuffin Atmos that's doing that.But that's my central challenge is applyingthis mixing workflow to this new technology.And by applying these workflows,

9:38 they open you up to now,I've got my drums color coded, my bass,interacting with my drums, the synth stuff,interacting together, the percussive guitars,interacting with the percussion.And now I can take a different view of a mixinstead of a bunch of little individual parts,which is impossible to me.People send me these tracks where it's like,yo, yeah, I hit the track limits.

10:02 Like there's 256 tracks in my Pro Tools session.What the hell am I supposed to do with that?You want me to be creative?I can't think of, I can't listen to 200 things at once.I need to like, you need to group thingsso that you can say, okay, this is under the umbrellaof this impression, this is under the umbrellaof this thrust of musical concept.Once you get those umbrellas, now you're talking

10:28 because now you're not having to like thinkabout everything in the world.You're instead thinking about emotion and vibe and focus,which then you're mixing.Before that, you're just cleaning or fiddling knobs,totally different vibe to me, this is my personal view.Once you start creating stems,once you start creating stemsthat are not just instrument groups that are stems

10:51 by function, then you can pull things in and out way easier.You can ride some of those automations,which is like changing the way that the knobsare being turned virtually,depending on what sort of emotional impactyou're looking to get out of that mix.But without the workflow to get you there,you're having to think of too many things at once.Work flow is about becoming reductive,and that's where the danger comes in.

11:17 If you're being too reductive,then you're like, you're not gonna have any roomfor creativity.If like every song is made by I start with kick drum,then I do snare drum, then I do hi-hat,then I do guitar, then I do bass.It's like, okay, you've just created this AI modelfor creating songs that you're plugging yourself into.How lame, you need to attack itfrom every possible different direction.

11:40 That's why I'm not as into workflow for the production.That's why it should be chaos.But once you get to mixing, most of those ideas are done.You're trying to reorganize that chaos, reorient itso then you can make new creative decisionsbased on musical imperatives, musical goals.And then you apply new technologieslike this Dolby Atmos certificationthat I'm working on right now,

12:05 and figure out how the hell do I do a new workflowfor a similar, more slightly different musical goal.Like maybe I have to rethink mixing for this new platform.And that's kind of cool, it's kind of exciting.But in order to do that,I need to eliminate the technological barrierswhich is the workflow.I need to stop thinking about all right,I need to command, shift, option here,

12:35 and route these things to the Dolby Rendererand have put in this native panning tool,but not this one and then have this 7.1 reverb.Like these are all the things that I'm learning.But the goal is then I have to think about them anymoreso you can actually make some damn musicinstead of like thinking like I'm reading an owner's manual,which is where I'm at right now.But workflow is the key to change that reality.

13:01 And also hopefully make my life a little less busybecause holy crap, it's crazy right now, but it's fun.Maybe come out to the CS show.If you're around and playing San Diegoand then New York, being Brooklyn soon.And I'm sure there are more shows to come in my future.If you like what you heard, if you have questions,anything like that, hit me up,scoobertdoobert.pizza is the place to do it.See y'all next week.