Animals As Leaders: Nick Morzov on VCAs & Mix Template Design

Mixing a band like Animals As Leaders is no small feat. Their music is a whirlwind of intricate rhythms, dense layers, and mind-bending technicality. So, how does a pro like Nick Morzov (Periphery, Polyphia, DGD) keep his head straight and the creativity flowing when tackling such complex sessions? It starts with a solid mix template and some clever routing, particularly when it comes to VCAs – a seriously underrated tool in modern DAWs.

Nick recently gave us a peek into his Pro Tools session for Animals As Leaders, and his approach to organization and gain staging is something every metal producer can learn from. Forget spending ages fighting your session; let’s dive into how Nick sets things up for maximum efficiency and creative freedom. And if you want to see him break down the entire mix, you can grab the full Animals As Leaders Nail The Mix session.

Taming the Beast: Drum Routing and Processing

Drums are the backbone of any metal track, and with Animals As Leaders, you know they’re going to be intricate. Nick’s drum routing is all about control and sonic options.

The “Wet” and “Dry-ish” Drum Bus Approach

Instead of a single drum bus, Nick runs his drums into two main buses, hilariously labeled “labia majora” and “labia” in his session. Both of these buses are fed by the same source tracks, but each gets its own distinct processing. This allows for parallel processing right at the bus level, giving him a “wet” (more processed) and a “dry-ish” (less processed) version of the drum kit to blend. This is a killer way to add punch and character while retaining the core transient information. He also mentioned having printed tracks from drum trigger software, with the original triggers deactivated, ensuring the samples are locked in.

Pre-Fader Sends for Effects: Isolating Your Reverbs

Ever tried to solo your reverb to hear exactly what it’s doing, only to find it disappears with the dry track? Nick has a simple solution: pre-fader sends for his reverbs and other effects. He emphasized that he likes to be able to solo out effects to isolate any issues he might be hearing. This is crucial for fine-tuning your ambience and making sure nothing weird is lurking in the tails. While many opt for post-fader sends (which maintain the wet/dry balance when you move the source fader), pre-fader gives you that independent control which can be invaluable for surgical adjustments.

The Power of VCAs: More Than Just Faders

Here’s where things get really interesting. Nick is a big proponent of using VCAs (Voltage Controlled Amplifiers, or in DAW terms, basically master faders for groups of tracks that don’t sum audio). While they might seem like an old-school console feature, they’re incredibly useful in the box.

Why VCAs? Controlling Levels Without Over-Processing

So, what’s the big deal with VCAs? A VCA fader allows you to control the levels of multiple tracks simultaneously without actually routing the audio through another bus. This is key. Nick uses VCAs to manage groups of drum mics – like all the kick mics, snare mics (top, bottom, and triggers), or toms – especially after he’s already dialed in detailed track automation. This way, he can make broad level adjustments to a group without messing up the individual track automation or having to re-adjust sends.

Crucially, Nick often opts for VCAs for guitars and bass instead of routing them to a submix bus. Why? To resist the temptation! He admits that if he sends all his guitars to a bus, he’s likely to start slapping more plugins on that bus. VCAs give him the global level control he needs without providing another stage for potentially unnecessary processing. This self-imposed limitation can be a real mix-saver, forcing you to get sounds right at the source or on individual tracks. Read more here for more on how the pros balance and treat instruments in a dense metal mix.

VCAs for Practical Problem Solving

Beyond just level control, VCAs offer some slick workflow advantages:

• Latency Management: Nick pointed out that back when they mixed this Animals As Leaders record, Pro Tools had some serious issues with bus delay compensation. VCAs, by not passing audio, helped sidestep some of these latency headaches. While DAWs have improved, it’s still a good trick to keep in your back pocket.
• Maintaining FX Send Balances: A great point (shoutout to Andrew Lawson in the chat during the stream!) is that adjusting a VCA fader won’t mess with the send levels of your individual tracks to reverbs or delays. If you move a traditional group/bus fader, the amount of signal hitting your post-fader sends changes, altering your wet/dry balance. VCAs keep those effect sends consistent.
• Macro Control for Balance: Especially towards the end of a mix, when you have tons of tracks and automation, VCAs provide an elegant way to make small, overall balance adjustments to entire sections or instrument groups. Think of it as a remote control for a selection of faders.
• Tracking Helper: Nick even uses VCAs when tracking. For instance, if he has a killer instrumental mix dialed in and then needs to record live drums, he might assign all non-drum tracks to a “Not Drums” VCA. This lets him quickly turn down the entire backing mix to make space for the live drums without upsetting the relative balance of the existing tracks.

If you’re looking to get a tighter grip on your mix dynamics, beyond just fader levels, understanding tools like VCAs is a step in the right direction. For more on dynamic control, our Metal Compression Secrets hub page has some great insights.

Navigating the Chaos: Session Layout and Naming

Let’s be honest, creativity can be messy. Nick’s session tour showed that even pro sessions aren’t always perfectly labeled and color-coded from the get-go.

The “Production Session” Reality

Nick was upfront that the session he showed was very much the production session. Tracks weren’t always meticulously renamed (“Audio 8.01,” anyone?). This is totally normal. When you’re in the creative flow, experimenting with sounds, and layering parts, stopping to name everything perfectly can kill the vibe. As Nick and Tosin Abasi (yep, the Tosin Abasi was in the NTM session too!) discussed, sometimes you just have “dupe_2000” and that’s okay in the moment.

Finding Order in the Unlabeled: Nick’s Approach

So how do you navigate a session with potentially hundreds of tracks if they’re not all named like “KILLER_GUITAR_LEAD_VERSE_2”? Nick often relies on a chronological track layout. Tracks that appear earlier in the song are higher up in the session, and as the song progresses, new parts appear further down. This, combined with familiarity from working on the song, helps him find things quickly, even without perfect labels. Sometimes, he’ll also group tracks by tonality, like keeping all clean guitars together.

When to Clean Up

Of course, if you’re sending your session to someone else to mix, or for archiving, then proper naming becomes crucial. Nick’s advice is to be as descriptive as possible in a short amount of words. But during the heat of creation? Don’t let housekeeping slow you down.

Selective Sound: The Art of Choosing Your Mics

More isn’t always better, especially with microphones. The Animals As Leaders session came with a lot of room mic options.

Room Mics: More Isn’t Always More

While the allure of “more rooms for a bigger drum sound” is strong, Nick and the team were selective. They started by listening to the overheads and rooms, then building the shell sounds. However, they found that many of the provided room mics introduced too much phase incoherence or “flam” due to the distances involved. Some control room mics, for instance, sounded a bit phasey and weren’t accurately measured for time alignment during tracking. Fighting these phase issues can be a massive time sink. If you’re battling phase, understanding your EQ strategies can sometimes help, but often, prevention (or selective omission) is key.

Level Up Your Mixing Workflow

Nick Morzov’s approach to his Animals As Leaders mix template is a masterclass in practical efficiency. By utilizing smart drum routing, leveraging the often-overlooked power of VCAs, and maintaining a sensible session layout (even amidst creative chaos), he sets himself up for success. These aren’t just “hacks”; they’re foundational strategies that allow for more creative freedom and less technical frustration.

Want to see exactly how Nick Morzov applied these techniques and mixed an Animals As Leaders track from scratch? You can dive deep into his entire process, get the raw multitracks, and learn from the man himself over at Nail The Mix. Check out the Animals As Leaders session with Nick Morzov and start implementing these powerful workflow enhancements in your own productions.