We've seen the creation of "Live And I Learn" by The Weird Sisters from the start of preproduction and basic tracking at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, TN, to the overdub sessions and mixing at Sputnik Sound, with every take, decision, and detail documented on camera. It's time to watch as Vance Powell takes the mix across the finish line in the final episode of this Start To Finish Series.
But is it truly the end of the series? Stay tuned…
Watch as Vance:
Adds moments of interest in the bridge by automating the horns and guitars
Dials in his API 2500 2bus compressor
Does the last pass on his Pro-Ac monitors at a louder level to do the final tweaks to the mix
Brings in the band to hear the mix for the first time
Goes through the band's notes before printing the final version of the mix
A/Bs the transformers in his Burl converters on the print of the mix
This is your chance to join Nashville legend Vance Powell and The Weird Sisters at the world-famous Blackbird Studio and watch them craft "Live And I Learn" from Start To Finish.
00:00:29 So the things I want to listen to here
are the saxophone,
which kind of does a cool thing.
00:00:34 And then these vocal lines which
I believe I've got in the right spot here.
00:00:44 Oh yeah, cool.
00:00:45 The guitars need to
come up a little bit here.
00:00:55 Cool.
00:01:26 There's also this other little kind
of soloey guitar going on in here,
this Fender Lead here.
00:01:32 That and the piano so we're
going to kind of work that.
00:01:35 The piano is here on this track,
notices there's acoustic
and piano because there's no
piano in the verses but there is acoustic.
00:01:43 The other part of that is
going to be the lead here.
00:01:47 There's no Clav here.
So Lead, solo and Clav.
00:01:50 So Mike has laid this out so that
parts never overlap so I can
use the master faders here
to ride the tracks.
00:01:58 OK, here we go.
00:02:42 Now we get the solo.
00:02:43 Since the solo is sort of
left and right part
I actually am going to
just sort of do it over here.
00:02:50 There's solo, there's piano and
there's saxophones all through this
so we're just going to do the solo first
then we're gonna do the piano
and then we do the saxes.
00:03:37 That would be over the top
but it might be cool.
00:04:20 Cool, pretty cool.
00:04:44 Now, electric guitar.
00:05:00 Cool.
00:05:02 In the break there's
a little drum part,
I'm going to bring that up right here,
same thing.
00:05:16 In the choruses here
on my 2-Bus compressor, I want about
2 ish dB of compression.
00:05:40 I'm going to take one pass through now...
00:05:45 On
my Proacs.
00:05:49 Rock'n'roll level.
00:05:51 And then I'm going to save the mix
and we're going to wait for the band.
00:05:54 See what they think,
unless something is screwed up.
00:05:58 Which happens sometimes.
00:06:01 Take a listen.
00:06:03 Semi-rock'n'roll level.
00:06:31 A little top-end here on this cymbal.
00:09:47 During that pass
I tweaked the kick and snare a little bit.
00:09:50 Because
it just sort of felt like maybe they had...
00:09:55 We're just maybe a little too loud.
00:09:58 Which is always hard for
me cause I really like that.
00:10:00 They just felt a little out of balance.
00:10:03 I changed the attack so it
wasn't hitting quite as hard,
it's a little softer
and then just to
balance the rhythm up a bit,
once a kind of turn it up loud here.
00:10:13 When I was playing back on the NS10s
I sort of felt like there
was a couple of little things
needed but because the NS10s,
the way I have them set with
the toilet paper and all the stuff,
that high end is not
really super accurate.
00:10:26 Shall we say.
00:10:28 So I don't try to add a lot of
that until I go back to the Proacs.
00:10:33 So in going back to the
Proacs I felt like
a little bit of the overheads
can be a little bit more cymbal,
a little bit more sizzle in that.
00:10:41 And then
just a little bit of tweaking of the
kick and snare balance.
00:10:46 And little bit of the kick
and snare compression.
00:10:49 And that kind of felt pretty good,
now I just need to go
through and listen to it again
a couple more times.
00:11:02 OK.
00:11:02 Something like that.
00:11:04 Let's see what the band says.
00:11:05 So we're gonna bring the band in
and let them check it out.
00:11:08 Hello!
Hey kids.
00:11:10 How are you?
Awake?
Yes, enough.
00:11:14 Yeah.
00:11:14 At the crack of noon forty five.
00:11:18 Hey, so,
I think I got this pretty
somewhat wrapped in.
00:11:23 Won't you guys come up here?
Check it out.
00:11:27 Captain seat?
You can take the
captain seat if you want.
00:11:30 I'll take it.
00:11:31 Alright.
00:11:32 For I am the captain.
00:11:33 Alright, yes. 'Captain, oh my captain!'
Something like that.
00:15:22 Hell yeah dude!
The snare drum sounds
so cool ringing out there.
00:15:27 I missed one little thing, let me
slide in real quick, one little line that
annoyed me and
it's purely my fault here.
00:15:37 Listening in the back of the
room you get a little different,
you know, idea.
00:16:03 What you think kids?
Anything you want to change,
anything that needs to be louder, quieter.
00:16:08 Worse, better, start over,
you hated it all?
"Just throw it all out."
Start all over...
00:16:15 "I just really feel like
it's in the wrong key."
I've had that happen.
00:16:20 Oh god!
Oh yeah.
00:16:22 And I've had it be too
fast or too slow
I had to figure that out.
00:16:26 But...
00:16:26 It feels groovy to me.
00:16:28 Cool.
00:16:29 What do you think?
I love it.
00:16:32 The only thing I think
it was too much was
the sax grooves in the bridge.
00:16:39 OK, cool.
00:16:41 Those little guys here?
OK, cool.
00:16:50 I'll buy that.
00:16:52 So one of the things you can
do here is we're going to see
where that fader is there at that point.
00:16:57 So I'm going to match it.
00:16:58 Here, like this.
00:17:15 Like that?
I have it down in there.
00:17:30 Cool.
00:17:31 I have one thing.
00:17:35 Yeah, shoot.
00:17:36 It might be just a matter of taste
but I thought that
the harmony that I
come in with in the double chorus,
could have been a hair louder.
00:17:51 Not the high C.
00:17:52 -Not the high one.
-No.
00:18:05 I think it's this one.
00:18:06 What I'm gonna do
here is trim these here
in Pro Tools automation here,
we're just going to come up
like half a dB.
00:18:17 I want to hear that bridge again too.
00:18:19 OK, so these will be the lows.
00:18:32 -Does that help?
-I think so.
00:18:45 Let me do this, if that's cool let's play
those can go up 2 more.
00:18:50 Yeah, I feel like it can
be a little bit more.
00:18:53 So, check this out.
00:19:05 So that's the magic percent.
00:19:07 0.7 dB.
00:19:08 0.7.
00:19:10 It always seems to work.
00:19:12 OK, cool. And then in the bridge...
00:19:15 What was the bridge?
I would like to hear the whole
thing. The first bridge.
00:19:47 Do you ever do anything
with that vocoder?
Oh yeah it's in there,
it's just up underneath.
00:19:54 It's doing this.
00:20:01 Cool.
00:20:07 Yeah.
00:20:07 It's just...
00:20:09 It's sounds like crystal.
00:20:10 It's really cool.
00:20:18 Cool, let's listen from the top.
00:20:20 And I'll listen here
on that kind of shitty speakers,
kind of quiet.
00:20:24 You want to sit here?
Yeah.
00:20:28 Get on in there.
00:20:55 Thoughts?
Our process now,
hit end,
on the computer here.
00:21:09 We're gonna label it 'Mix 1
21
0201'.
00:21:17 Now we're going to sweep the desk.
00:21:21 121
0201.
00:21:24 A night in the wood.
00:21:27 These are all pictures that pop up,
something that SSL put in,
you can turn them off.
00:21:32 But it just puts something up the
screen while it sweeps the console.
00:21:36 And there's
two pictures, there's 'day at the beach'
and 'night in the wood'.
00:21:41 But there's actually a third
and the third is Begbroke.
00:21:45 Begbroke is the name of the,
I think it's a county.
00:21:50 Like what we would call county.
00:21:51 Or maybe it's the city
where the SSL factory is.
00:21:54 And it's a funny little picture.
00:21:57 And from what I've been told
is it comes up at the same
odds
as the double zero
and the single zero on a roulette wheel.
00:22:07 So every now and then
we'd get a Begbroke.
00:22:10 And it's kind of cool.
00:22:11 It's a weird picture, it's kind of
a channel strip and some trees,
it doesn't make any sense but
it's supposed to sort of emulate
what the factory looks like
in beautiful four bit color here.
00:22:24 Now I'm going to
burp the automation here.
00:22:28 Put it right at the top.
00:22:29 Play mix from here.
00:22:32 It's going to load the automation.
00:22:35 And then.
00:22:37 We are gonna switch over here
to our print tracks
and on our print tracks here
I have
a Burl
BAD4M.
00:22:48 Now, that's a Burl converter
that has a switchable transformer,
you switch a transformer in and out.
00:22:56 I basically have a pair
of inputs here
for my print tracks
and, here on the I/O you can see
BAD4M 3-4, that's the transformer version
and then 1-2 is the non-transformer.
00:23:12 That's how I have them set up.
00:23:13 So let's just listen to the track,
here, very subtle,
with the transformers.
00:23:28 Cool, now I'm gonna
switch to the non-transformer.
00:23:52 I think the transformers
are going to win today.
00:23:54 I'm gonna use the transformer input.
00:23:57 So let's set these.
00:23:59 So now what I'm going
to do is I'm going to put
these print tracks into record here.
00:24:04 If you notice, there is a 'heater' track
and that's just a little bit of L2.
00:24:10 Just a little tiny bit,
this is mine, it's a preset.
00:24:13 It just adds 7 dB and puts a little bit
of stop at the top.
00:24:18 So to speak.
00:24:19 And that goes to this
'heater' bus right here
which is the heated mix.
00:24:23 Then this is the master.
00:24:25 And basically we just do that.
00:24:29 And it's off to the races.
00:24:38 And the heated mix,
obviously,
usually is what I send the band guys
and ladies
to listen in the car.
00:24:48 Before it goes to mastering.
00:24:57 And now we're listening to the playback.
00:24:59 We're gonna let this run.
00:25:01 There's a couple
mixes we're going to
make we're going to do
a master, that's what this is.
00:25:07 We're going to do an instrumental.
00:25:10 We're going to do
a vocal up, I'm gonna do across
the board vocal up seven tenths.
00:25:15 and I'll do across the board,
down 0.7 dB.
00:25:18 Then we're gonna do a lead vocal stem.
00:25:20 A background vocals stem of Isaac
and then a background
vocals stem of Gabby.
00:25:26 And these are for sync
licensing and things like that
where they can make little donuts.
00:25:31 They can do whatever they want if they
get a sync.
00:25:35 Alright everybody, so that's that.
00:25:37 The Weird Sisters are in the books.
00:25:40 If you have any questions
please
feel free to email me at
vance@vancepowell.com
Go to the Weird Sisters website,
which is theweirdsisters.com?
theweirdsistersband...
00:25:51 theweirdsistersband.com
Also they have a bunch
of content on YouTube,
check them out, they're a lotta fun.
00:25:58 And we'll see around soon.
00:26:00 Peace.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Vance studied electrical engineering in Missouri and started his career in live sound as a front-of-house engineer. In 2002, he moved to Nashville in order to become studio manager and chief engineer at the legendary Black Bird studios in Nashville. In 2006, he co-founded Sputnik studios along with Grammy-winning engineer Mitch Dane, still in Nashville.
Vance Powell has won 6 Grammy awards working with rock artists such as The Raconteurs, Kings of Leon, Jack White, Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Dead Weather and more.
Powell's domain of expertise is definitely mixing and producing rock music. As shown in his pureMix videos, Vance likes to experiment and create new fuller and exciting sounds using all kinds of pedals, echos, analog outboards and plug-ins. Vance was used to recording to tape and definitely has an analog approach that makes him commit to fewer good sounding tracks rather than piling up takes in Pro Tools.
His goal is to make something new and warm that fits the band's vision with upfront snare drums and powerful guitars. Rocking.
Fantastic series. Great band. Love your work. Very nice job!!
cjbroersma
2022 Jul 21
Fun series to watch. Cool band.
chris.massa
2022 Jul 09
Great series from start to finish. Always interesting to watch the choices being made toward the finished song along the way.
RPHP
2022 Jul 09
Very very good serie, Vance is really didactique as we say in France !
A little bit surprise that the serie stop, I would have been happy to see the track go to mastering like the Greg Wells serie...
Thank you !
Romain
