Mixing

Back to the Shack

Weezer

Tom Lord-Alge

Song : Back to the Shack

Duration:2h29 Subtitles: English, Spanish

Description

Step inside Spank Studios in Miami, home of renowned rock mixer Tom Lord-Alge! This in-depth series focusses on TLA's editing and mix techniques used on 'Back to the Shack' by Weezer. Tom explains his hybrid setup and workflow, giving a rationale for choosing to implement a combination of Pro Tools, a Sony 3348 HR tape machine, and his SSL G+ console. Following an overview of his setup, TLA takes you through the mix session and reveals some of his very clever and useful techniques; notably, how he triggers drum samples with high precision and removes cymbal leakage from tom-tom signals.You'll see how he effectively manages his sessions, time-aligns drums, adds effects to vocals, compresses his mix buss, and much more!

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19 min

Part 1

SSL console, ITB vs. hybrid, hardware, Sony 3348, buss compressors, track order, labelling
16 min

Part 2

Drum alignment, vocal effects, stem workflow, static mix, monitoring, creating trigger tracks
13 min

Part 3

Bass drum trigger track, ducking, sample nudging, EQ, compression, fader & plug-in levels
16 min

Part 4

Snare gate, EQ, compression, reverb, metering, mix compressor settings, gain structure
16 min

Part 5

Drum room tracks, side-chaining, delay compensation, phase, multi-band compression
14 min

Part 6

Cymbal leakage, overheads, hi-hats, overdubs, loop, saturation, bass guitar, noise reduction
14 min

Part 7

Rhythm guitar blend, buss chain, expansion, EQ, distortion
17 min

Part 8

Lead guitar treatment, effects, stereo spread, filtering, compression, vocal processing
19 min

Part 9

Bridge vocal effects, scene change, harmonies, group chants, mix with automation
Trailer

Comments

(15)

phil clark February 20, 2025 at 6:14 AM

Nice work with the di guitars. I record lots of live gigs for local tribute bands. The guitar players always look at me funny when I try to patch in a DI. Most of the time I end up using Amplitude on the di for their tone...
Robert vanderMark February 6, 2025 at 5:09 AM

Amazing. Just used your Tom trick to get the cymbals out of the Tom tracks. Heavy metal, fast tempo song with really involved fills. Worked like a charm, Tom! Thank you.
David Rockower September 4, 2024 at 10:34 PM

KUDOS TO MIX WITH THE MASTERS!! Yet another song I loved when it came out that I use as a reference track that.... wouldnt you know it.... theres a complete complete breakdown on here! For anyone else out there, I love the bf 76, but the one that I found has a similar drive is the CLA Bluey.
Alex October 26, 2023 at 10:54 PM

Great stuff! As a side note the whole trigger track thing can be avoided by using a gate with a lookahead feature. Delay compensation works by processing tracks that have latency inducing plugins before those that don't. When using lookahead, the plugin declares latency to the DAW that it's not actually using, meaning it will receive and process the sidechain signal ahead of time. You can then adjust how far ahead you want it to be triggered by tweaking the lookahead instead of sliding a trigger track back and forth.
D-Nasté ... October 24, 2022 at 7:14 PM

He's not afraid to spank the piss out of individual sounds.
Steffen Buhlmann April 4, 2022 at 10:36 PM

Erstmal, no hate. Ich mag TLA, aber dieser Trigger Trick ist irgendwie sinnlos bei mir. Ich arbeite mit Cubase und es entsteht gar kein Versatz. Also ich verstehe nicht warum er so ein Zirkus mit diesem Blib Track erstellt. Man kann doch einfach die Kick Spur duplizieren, ein Gate auf die Spur machen und ins nichts routen, dann diesen Track als Trigger verwenden. Ich wollte diesen Trick von ihm eigentlich übernehmen aber hier entseht gar kein Versatz bei dem Gate. Das Gate öffnet genau richtig und wenn es doch so wäre, kann man ja die Triggerspur die ins nichts geroutet ist um ein paar Millisekunden zurücksetzten.
John Zwick January 3, 2021 at 4:12 AM

Hello, Love the tutorial! I have a question regarding the gate-trigger track "tricking the delay compensation," segment found in video 3. I have studied the routing closely, but I'm failing to replicate it in my DAW, which is Logic ProX. I create the gate-trigger track, I route it to a bus, then that bus outputs to an audio track with a dummy output (which is just an audio track with no output selected, right)? Then the gate is placed on the appropriate instrument, and the key input is assigned to the aforementioned bus. As far as I can tell, that mirrors what TLA does in the tutorial, but when I place a plugin on the instrument after the gate, it cuts off the front end of the instrument. I just can't figure it out! Any advice??
Thomas Engel March 8, 2021 at 2:59 PM

Check out Video 5, he goes into more detail on it.
David K. April 1, 2020 at 3:03 PM

Hi Tom I was not clear are you using the gain on a plugin instead of moving the fader because it sounds better??
Jozsef Fuzy October 10, 2020 at 11:42 PM

No, he uses the input gain on his plugins so that he doesn't have to use his channel faders in Pro Tools. The difference is not in sound, but workflow. This way, he can keep scrolling around his session knowing that if a fader is on anything but 0, it was nudged by mistake so he sees it rightaway and can set it back to 0 to go back to the original balance (which he established by using the input gain knobs on the plugins). The only exception are tracks that have volume automation on them. I hope this helps
Jesus Raymundo February 21, 2020 at 10:23 PM

Spanish Please, I love Tom Lord Alge and his job
Chuck Swicegood May 17, 2019 at 5:33 AM

AGAIN...
D-Nasté ... October 13, 2022 at 11:39 PM

In this particular song...
Scott Goodrich May 28, 2018 at 6:05 PM

For the love all things pure on this planet please do take off your pants and jacket mix through then i can die knowing my childhood was real. thank you.
Chris Gannon May 4, 2018 at 9:52 AM

It would be great if I could watch it! I love TLA but the app crashes and hangs up constantly, the video won't play on the website. It gets stuck at the "Mix With The Masters" splash screen after pressing play! I'm very frustrated and disappointed with this site. Very expensive for something that's quickly becoming useless!

About Tom Lord-Alge

Tom Lord-Alge, the younger brother of mix engineer Chris Lord-Alge, is a 3 time Grammy Award winning producer and mix engineer. One of Tom’s first major projects was the Multi-Grammy Award winning album Back In The High Life by Steve Winwood, for which Tom earned his first of two Best Engineered Recording Grammy Awards. During this time Tom worked with such artists as Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Billy Joel, OMD, Jeff Beck, Chaka Kahn, Level 42, Peter Cetera, Go West, Michael McDonald and Rick Astley....

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19 min

Part 1

SSL console, ITB vs. hybrid, hardware, Sony 3348, buss compressors, track order, labelling
16 min

Part 2

Drum alignment, vocal effects, stem workflow, static mix, monitoring, creating trigger tracks
13 min

Part 3

Bass drum trigger track, ducking, sample nudging, EQ, compression, fader & plug-in levels
16 min

Part 4

Snare gate, EQ, compression, reverb, metering, mix compressor settings, gain structure
16 min

Part 5

Drum room tracks, side-chaining, delay compensation, phase, multi-band compression
14 min

Part 6

Cymbal leakage, overheads, hi-hats, overdubs, loop, saturation, bass guitar, noise reduction
14 min

Part 7

Rhythm guitar blend, buss chain, expansion, EQ, distortion
17 min

Part 8

Lead guitar treatment, effects, stereo spread, filtering, compression, vocal processing
19 min

Part 9

Bridge vocal effects, scene change, harmonies, group chants, mix with automation
Trailer