A mix can become very complex. If you were to consider an orchestral recording, there could easily be 100 tracks there you have to mix all at once. And I don't know about you, but I would have trouble trying to work and remember what all those tracks are doing. And, and to actually effectively mix them all at once. So what we end up doing is kind of chunking or submixing groups that kind of belong together. So in an orchestral mix, we might take all the woodwinds and put those to just one fader that we could bring up and down. And then the brass to another single fader that we can bring up and down. So in the end, you're kind of mixing inside the group and then you go over and then you mix group to group all at once. And you kind of mix those submixes. so you might start with 100 tracks, but you end up with just four faders at the very end. And this is a really common procedure. And it's not just for mixing. We find ways, we do that all the time, any time you're trying to trying to memorize a large string of numbers. You kind of group it into smaller pieces and memorize those instead. So the idea of a submix gets used all over. Not just orchestral music but even in like pop music. Say I have five background singers. I would tend to submix them to a single fader that I could process and control the volume [INAUDIBLE] of as a unit. Or my drums or multiple guitar parts could even get a submix. So it's a really common procedure, we need to know how to set that up within our DAW. As we're setting up a submix, it's going to be using a single bus and the track outputs. So usually, we would create a bus and give your buses a good name. and then we would route the output of those tracks to that bus. So if I was submixing say a set of drums, I would create a drum submix bus. I would go to all of my individual drum tracks, my snare track. I'd set it's output to the drum submix bus. The kick track, I think you get the idea, the drum submix bus. And then I'd have a single AUX track whose input is that drum submix bus. So now I've effectively submixed my drums onto an AUX track where I can put a single insert. So I can put an EQ or a compressor on that AUX track and affect all the drums as a single unit. And I have a single fader that represents the entire drum kit and I can easily mix that up and down in my mix. >> As we're setting up a sub mix, it's going to be using a single bus and the track outputs. So usually, we would create a bus and give your buses a good name. and then we would route the output of those tracks to that bus. So if I was submixing say a set of drums, I would create a drum submix bus. I would go to all to my individual drum tracks. My snare track. I'd set its output to the drum submix bus. The kick track, I think you get the idea. The drum submix bus. And then I'd have a single AUX track, whose input is that drum submix bus. So now I've effectively submixed my drums onto an AUX track where I can put a single insert. So I can put an EQ or compressor on that AUX track and affect all the drums as a single unit. And I have this single fader that represents the entire drum kit and I can easily mix that up and down in my mix. >> Now that we've seen how a submix works conceptually, I'd like to go through the steps of setting one up in a single DAW. It will be up to you to try this in your program. But I think you'll find the steps are very much the same everywhere. So I have my track here. it's one we've been working on through the course. Let's hear it. [MUSIC] As you can see, at this point I have Kick, Snare, Hat and Overheads are all drum tracks. So the Kick was created from a microphone on the kick drum. The Snare a mic on the snare. The Hat a mic on the hat. Overheads are two sets of microphones above the entire kit. I've created a blend between the drums that I'm happy with. I've carefully controlled the levels and I have things just about where I want them. But I'd like to be able to control all the drum kit as a single fader, so we need to set up a sub mix. The first thing we're going to need is a bus. So I'll create my bus. We talked about kind of using an IO or a bus window earlier. I'll create a new one. I do want to make this stereo because I'm creating a stereo mix inside the submix so I'll need a stereo bus for this to function on. And I'll call it my drum submix bus. With that created, I can configure the outputs of all my tracks to go to that drum submix. Now if I was to hit Play right, now we would not hear drums at all. Let's hear [MUSIC] because I've routed these tracks to a Drum Submix. But I haven't told Pro Tools that I want to listen to that Drum Submix. So now I'll create an AUX track to work with that. Like we saw in our earlier diagram, we're going to set the input of this track to the drum submix bus. Now, if I hit play, [MUSIC] we hear the drums and our drums' submix is complete. Notice that I can now bring this one fader down and I can control the volume of all the drums. [MUSIC] I could also add an insert like we tried earlier. Maybe an EQ plugin. And I could control the equalization of the entire drums as a group. Maybe I wanted to reduce the high end on the drums, I could do that like this. [MUSIC]. Or increase it as I like. So I can control all the drums as a single unit in this sub mix. I'd like you to go to your DAW and try out this technique. It doesn't have to be drums. It doesn't even have to be very musical. I just want you to try to create a sub mix within your DAW. A mix within a mix. It's an important technique and you're going to need to know how to do it.
