Micro-Automation: The Secret to Loud AND Dynamic Mixes?

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So, you want to create loud, dynamic and competitive mixes. Awesome! There’s just one problem…
For loudness, you need less dynamic range. For movement, punch and energy, you need MORE dynamic range! So how do you get BOTH???
The answer: micro-automation.
Micro-automation is a technique I’ve been using for many years and ONLY talking about inside my paid courses…until now.
Find out how I use this to build big, loud mixes that also move and breathe - and how to begin adding micro-automation to your mixing workflow now.

[@evanbell1791]

You recorded my old band in 2010 and used this trick on a bass fill of mine - really let it shine though! Great mixing tips!

[@hardcoremusicstudio]

nice! What band??

[@justmusiciaan]

@@hardcoremusicstudio a mystery....

[@Martinarroyou]

​@@justmusiciaan we'll never know

[@rmv2333]

Oh, man, mixing is like a whole universe. I discover a new thing every damn day...and I love it! I was naturally using a kind of micro-automation but now I'll emphasize it so I can get the most of my mixes!

[@JohnBJonesMusic]

been following you these past years. Every few months I listen to you for motivation or technique on youtube. Dude, you rock!

[@thorazine86]

I'm already doing some kind of this in my mixes, but this is a whole other level. Thanks for your tips, your channel is awesome.

[@geoffjenkins4633]

Your content is enabling me to bring music back into my life in a significantly satisfying way. Thank you so much for putting this stuff out for the world to learn. Cheers.

[@CrushingAxes]

Automation do require a lot of work, but once you get into it, there is no way back.

[@firmanpakaya8638]

Automation is the thing that differentiate oldschool way and modern way of recording, great job jordan!

[@romapsian]

That's what I searched for months now! Thank you, your vidéos help me so much 😉🤘🏻

[@jamesjoseph1373]

This was really cool, and helpful! It made me think of when I program drums. I start with the same velocity just to get the initial idea down. And then go through and fine tune the velocity hits to make it more dynamic. Broad strokes first, then fine tune.

[@TheSabotaje]

Awesome advice and great channel! You have a really great personality ❤

[@MarvelJAM]

Allowing processing to do your mix for you is a mistake. Even early automated consoles, yes I was part of that, we always used tons of automation to mix. We had only a few processors so that was printed to track. This sounds like things coming back around with even more control. Great video

[@svarogstudio]

Automation and, as you say, micro-automation is absolutely critical, and it's what separates an amateur mix from professional one. I recently uploaded a short overview of a death metal drum automation where you can see level, aux send and even eq automation being applied on this micro level. It really helped make the drum, and overall sound, more organic and dynamic.

[@adrianconsta1139]

I wouldn't believe that such short videos could be educational, but hell, man, good job!

[@svarogstudio]

@@adrianconsta1139 Thanks a lot, I'm glad you found it helpful!

[@ConnorTBS]

I've learned so much from this channel! Thank you Jordan!!

[@adrianconsta1139]

I follow Jordan's channel for cool tutorials like this and I don't even mix metal music. I dig various metal styles tho. Thanks for this awesome tips, J!

[@christiansmith7391]

Thanks for the tip. Sounds really daunting... Whenever I've tried automating with a control surface I feel like I need to edit it anyway. And doing this on every track... Whew. Anyway, I'll try it. I loved that Silverstein album btw!

[@lunarfifthstudios]

I really needed this lesson today... this is friggin' great! Doing this on a mix today. 👍

[@drum877]

This works very well with a lead vocal as well. I will do volume automation or send automation very lightly to the leading phrases up to the impact part of the vocal. Small raise in volume before the impact makes it huge difference. Also automate a long reverb swell in vocal pauses just a tad.

[@AlienorchestraNetoslo]

thaaaat’s super helpful, finding myself there! thank you!!

[@inoculous]

Jordan giving out the sauce. Thank you, man!

[@8bit_misfit]

Automating saturation.... 🤯. That is a great idea. Thank you.

[@adamjames3434]

pure gold Jordan, thanks.

[@DVILAIN]

It's a great way to bring your signature through the sound. Fun with a midi controler.

[@joshbosse4675]

This is where the artistry comes in with mixing! Love it!! How much db are you reducing, looks like less than 5db but it’s hard to tell

[@Rageguitar]

Thank you, I will try👍🏼

[@miserypath]

That is very interesting and I'm gonna try this in my next mixes. It seems to be a very creative process. I would like to know yout opinion about the "rear bus compression". Maybe you could make a video about this?

[@prashuryagoswami6122]

you know what tried this in a recent mix and shit sounds real powerful

[@SefiroUltima]

This is wizzardry man! I mean, not at all, but it is lol. Been trying to add that to my mixes since you taught me that in your courses (Mario Torres) but I still look at your tracks and some are micro automated from start to finish. Can't grasp well how you can even think about so many points to automate. I guess is practice. Need to mix more indeed.

[@chichopaiva6284]

great vid man, gonna start applying this ASAP. Quick question tho, you're automating the gain, right?

[@andreavitiello7001]

Thanks a lot for your tips, really great job! I have a little question, do you automate the volume of the fader or you're automating the gain volume of the trim plug in?

[@Sizalyth]

Amazing info!!!

[@AJDOLDCHANNELARCHIVE]

Great stuff that many mixers ignore because it's "too much work". For me it's an essential part of the recording/arrangement stage, it's like being a conductor of an orchestra (and for orchestral music especially if you ignore this stuff the VSTs/sample libraries just sound beyond fake and lifeless).

[@audioelitist3677]

I like how you actually care about a dynamic track.

[@YoyomaG6]

For this, what do you thin of Waves Vocal Ryder to make sure it's all the same level?

[@roeilevi4594]

you do that while you mix or mostly at the end of the mix?

[@iliatilev]

Sometimes it's tedious but it's worth it.

[@guylikesguitar]

Thank you! :)

[@gianlucagigliotti4026]

I always struggle with this because I find that my drums buss compression and then the 2buss compression eat up almost all the automation... 😭

[@user-mq9sy4rf1s]

So does anyone know how to automate that fast?For me even automating the vocals only takes 1-2 hours,kinda painful if every track should be automated this detailed...

[@franciscoojeda11]

You should grab a midi controller with faders and record the automation with it. Have in mind that long ago when mixes were made in big consoles you still could grab a couple of them at the same time

[@hardcoremusicstudio]

yes, you absolutely need a control surface to do this

[@Gdude899]

@@hardcoremusicstudio any suggestions? is a trackpad good I think a trackpad that you could assign all 10 fingers to automate 10 different tracks if needed would be cool for extra control. Also as a reaper user there's no easy way to select all the automation on all tracks or a group of tracks to make those all important balance moves without selecting the whole automation on each individual track then moving dB where desired, remembering the dB change and applying it on each individual track .....and when your mixing and constantly balancing groups of tracks without an easy solution to this it will take huge chunks out of your time what's your solution to this?

[@ractorstudios]

I disagree. A control surface isntaccurate enough for this kind of thing. Unless you feel like having to redo it over and over and again until you like it. I just use my mouse. After awhile it gets really quick. This way instead of all those little points being left. Its easy to adjust anything you need to after when its just a few points. Trying to hit .5 and then .9 exactly with the fader is pretty much impossible.

[@franciscoojeda11]

@@ractorstudios at least for me its faster to do it with midi and then tweaking bc I just go with flow of the mix.

[@heymarcello4827]

Question about volume automation in Logic: If you volume automate a track you can’t use the volume slider anymore afterwards right? Because it will always jump back to your automation curve. Does anyone have a truck for that? Is it the write mode of the automation? Or gain automation instead of volume?

[@jyoutube1233]

There’s two solutions, either automate a gain plug-in and use the slider after the fact, or automate the slider and use the gain plug-in as your volume control.

[@FFStudioMy]

Great tips. Btw, in your opinion does drum sample/vst drum library can match the same quality/sound to the real drums in a recording??

[@RedSheap]

Depending on the recording it often surpasses it.

[@HarmonicMolecues]

this automation does not remove or account for peaks and transients that eat headroom

[@RoomTone]

Hi Jordan. Automation is necessary for making a static mix to breath again. But if you enhance the dynamics with automation, wont they be flatten again in mastering?

[@adrianconsta1139]

I also had the same thought... but I think that besides the kick (and the snare perhaps), the rest won't trigger the master bus limiter. And if to be used a limiter on individual track, the whole automation would make sense to me after the limiter... And even for the kick and snare... if the limiter won't gain reduce as much as the dynamic range of the automation, it would still make sense to do it... This is my theory. :)

[@RoomTone]

@@adrianconsta1139 You might be right. I would really love to see a practical example of this tho.

[@kip5150]

Subscribed.

[@TECTONICSMASH]

Yo Silverstein rocks!!!

[@codycreepcore]

Is there an automation mode similar to Touch mode, but where if you let go of the fader it automatically moves back to unity gain? So you can have a baseline volume, and do these small movements of automation. I'm using a presonus faderport.

[@Spoofaged]

Not sure about your hardware, but when editing the automation in, in the daw, you're doing basically that. Set a point to raise it and then another point to bring it back down. I use reaper and it's pretty simple to edit in the volume and pan, etc automations with a few mouse clicks. It doesn't graphically show my faders going up and down to match the automation but you can hear it happening

[@timokurka8742]

@@Spoofaged Reaper can show the movement of faders too. You have to set automation mode to "Read" on the track itself and then arm the automation track. Both the track and mixer faders will then move while playing back

[@Spoofaged]

@@timokurka8742 oh cool, thanks for the info Timo! I knew it worked in the background easily so I never did any digging to figure out if I could make the faders move.

[@vadimradishevskiy6675]

Gain staging?

[@Bogdan_Tolm]

Jordan, it’s so cool, thank you, for what’s you’re doing! Btw did you find any plugin... “Maker” to create and develop plugins? If “yes”, PLEASE think about to make SansAmp PSA emulation like in Pro Tools. For me, it’s the best emulation of sans amp

[@hardcoremusicstudio]

Two plugins are already into beta testing :). Will consider that idea, thanks!

[@rmv2333]

Dude, I'm using Cubase and there's a plugin I had that emulated the SansAmp....I think it was called AXP SoftAmp. It was great but now I use STL Tonehub or Neural's Parallax.

[@romansweik]

@@hardcoremusicstudio oooh, please make the "Jordan Valeriote" plugin for non Pro Tools users :) I'm talking about Massey Tapehead of course :D

[@skyDN1974]

Question: do we need to automate the drummer if they are already playing dynamically?

[@hardcoremusicstudio]

definitely,

[@vasilevm7]

What's the name of that song?

[@wingowingo2802]

In the dark - Silverstein

[@miguelzayas8797]

Song name?

[@wingowingo2802]

In the dark - Silverstein

[@striborstarcevic3915]

The real secret here is not the automated gain staging, but how to have the WILL to do this! Thanks for the motivation

[@CherieO]

The word "automation" seems like a misnomer. It is not automatic. Really, you are deciding in details the volume and tracing it up or down by hand. I started doing this on my vocals a long time ago, but not so much on all instruments.

[@rmv2333]

Cool, I'd like to know what kind of criteria you have when you use automation on vocals. Like turning some dbs down when it's too loud or adding a couple dbs when you want to emphasize a specific sentence?

[@FeelTheFrostbyte]

it's automation because you're automating the faders, they automatically move on their own after you "set" them instead of trying to have 18 fingers for every track you want to automate. it's a quite literal name.

[@CherieO]

@@rmv2333 I record at home, so I edit it by ear after I'm done singing each section of the song. I use my mouse and the automation lane in my DAW, no faders. First, I look for the loudest peaks and softest parts and listen to see if they sound too extreme and use my ears to correct them syllable by syllable. I usually try to make the first word of the section loud and clear. Sometimes the proximity effect of the mic can make one word sound louder than I expected. I may record some parts again or comp. I am a dynamic singer. Then I solo the whole thing again listening for noise in empty spaces and remove them with the automation. I also listen in context of the mix if I have all the instrument tracks to make sure all the words can be understood, but that is better to do later if there is a mixing engineer.

[@BigStereoVR]

I never thought expansion would be rebranded with more syllables. "Micro automation". That's very Bay street. The PR types always make phrases of existing words: Customer "brand ambassador" .......... I bet if you add an "ality" at the end you will achieve supreme influencer status. Example: "Your track's dynamic range is squished due to it's micro automationality. You should probably redynamificate manually instead of using the tool as old as a compressor that happens to be on damn near every console in Toronto." Or is micro automation a thing you do to bump up hours spent on a project?

[@sword-and-shield]

Plenty of solid mixes and mixers without automation, shouldn't be a crutch. In my opinion, it should be decided or driven by the artist's decisions. You could end up influencing what "they" don't want influenced, and it is their art, specific intentions should be decided by them not you.

[@thomasw1865]

:) a thing I kinda don’t like, is when a title of a video let’s me click on it, and you need almost two minutes in a 7 minute video to get to the point, where the title already got me in first place.

[@PrimalVideo]

First! 😉

[@pursgo]

yep. it's called riding the faders. when did this go away? oh yeah never. it has and will always be done in studio and live. it's a shame you present this like it's new to sell your courses.

[@readysteadysteroids]

That's not accurate at all. With in the box mixing becoming so popular (esp without control surfaces), taking the time/knowing to do this kind of automation is a lot rarer than you'd think.

[@pursgo]

@@readysteadysteroids good thing your fact checking. stupidity or lack of gear is no excuse. it was still presented like this is a new thing with no reference to how it is\used to be done. all in the name of making a buck by selling a course.

[@MixingGBP]

@@pursgo Yes. Carrot dangling on us!

[@danielwiebe2123]

5-6 hours? Wtf

[@LA610]

To be honest I would watch you a lot more but the genre is not to my taste . Great advice when I can turn the song completely down....FYI