4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton

LOG IN REGISTER SUBSCRIBE SHOP HELP 0 items Search

SOUND ON SOUND

NEWS FORUM MAGAZINE REVIEWS TECHNIQUES PEOPLE SOUND ADVICE MUSIC BUSINESS

HOME > PEOPLE >

Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton

Lady Gaga 'Just Dance'
Mixers
By Paul Tingen Published March 2009

Transatlantic number one 'Just Dance' was not only a breakthrough for Lady
Gaga, but also for her producer RedOne and mix engineer Robert Orton.

Until the end of 2008, New York singer Lady

Gaga was barely a blip on the radar of the US
media. On its original release, her debut album
The Fame, and its rst single, 'Just Dance', did
little to change her pro le in her native
In this article...
country, although the single did make it to the Introduction
top in Canada. All this changed when 'Just 'Just Dance'
Dance' nally arrived at the top of the Billboard Tidying Up
singles charts in January 2009, 22 weeks after Making A Di erence
Robert Orton: Mixing In The Box
its release.

The song is also the rst major hit for featured

singer Colby O'Donis and producer RedOne, and the single and album arrived on mix engineer
Robert Orton's desk only a few weeks after he left Trevor Horn's employment to begin a
freelance career in March 2008 (see box on the last page of this article).

'Just Dance'
Written by Lady Gaga, RedOne and Aliaune
ThiamProduced by RedOne

Robert Orton rst heard of Lady Gaga and

RedOne when his manager, Martin
Kierszenbaum, head of A&R at Interscope and
CherryTree Records, sent Orton the rough mix
of 'Just Dance'. "I  ipped,” recalls Orton. "You
can never tell for sure whether something is
going to be successful or not, but the second
I heard it, it sounded like a huge hit, it was just
amazing. That's how I got involved with that
project, and with RedOne, for whom I've since
mixed quite a few things. I received the le via
Digidelivery, which is how a lot of mixes are
sent these days. Nobody else was present for
the mix, it was just me at Sarm 3. I spoke to
RedOne on the phone before and during the mix, and to Lady Gaga afterwards, to get a sense Get your
of exactly what they wanted, and I made adjustments to the mix from that.
music in order
"I nd it really important to listen to the rough mix, because a lot of e ort has gone into it.
People work their guts out when working on a record to get a really good sound, and the rough
mix is one of the last stages of that process. There's often a lot of attention to detail in a rough Readers' Ads
mix and you need to make sure that you don't miss this. It will contain many small nuances that
people will miss if they're not in the nal mix. For them these nuances are part of the vibe. VIEW ALL ADS CREATE FREE AD
There may be problems with rough mix, but it will usually have a good vibe. In my view, to
come in and disregard the rough mix is a little bit arrogant. RedOne had done a really good On the same subject

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 1/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
rough mix of 'Just Dance', and the label and Lady Gaga liked it very much. There was nothing Zoom LiveTrak L-8
wrong with it. I was simply asked to take it to the next level. January 2021
Tascam Model 12
"You get an idea of what you can do for a song fairly quickly. If you work hard enough on December 2020
something you can make it better, but you have to be careful that you don't lose what's good IO‑Instruments Sponde
December 2020
about the rough mix. So I rst will spend a lot of e ort on replicating all the important elements
Korg SoundLink MW-2408
from the rough mix, and in the case of 'Just Dance', one of the things that really stood out was
November 2020
the way the kick drum interacted with the snare, giving the impression of a four-on-the- oor in
Neve 8424
the rst half of the bar. That really makes you want to get up and dance. To keep and enhance
October 2020
that feeling was crucial. There were about 100 tracks, half of them were programmed drums
and keyboards, the other half were vocal tracks, by Lady Gaga, Colby and RedOne. Not least
because there were so many vocal tracks, I worked hard on making them sound as good and SIGN UP TO
up-front and present as possible.” SOS NEWSLETTERS
Latest Videos
Tidying Up
"In general, I spend a lot of time listening to the
vocals. The lead vocal is what people latch on
to, and when you can get that sounding as
good as possible, a lot of the other stu falls
into place. I'll start my mixes by laying out the
Session in the way that I like and colour‑coding
everything, so it's easier to orientate myself
and I intuitively know where things are. I'll then
solo the vocals, and will listen to them on their
Bad Musicians Need Good Engineers
own, paying attention to the sound, the lyrics,
3 weeks 16 hours ago.
the melody and the rhythm of the singing, and
Part of the Pro Tools Edit window for Robert Orton's
from that I'll work out what kind of e ects will
'Just Dance' mix.
work on the vocals. I often nd that when you
get the e ects right on the vocals, they will suit the other stu in the track. I'll rst work on the
sound of the vocals, seeing if they need EQ or compression, and once I feel that I have the right
sound, I'll start looking for delays and reverbs, that kind of thing. I'll try to accentuate rhythmic
aspects of the vocal. The vocal by itself, without the track, tells you a story, and other parts of
the track enhance that.

"Once I feel I've taken the vocals as far as I can without hearing the backing track, I'll mute them
and I'll work on the drums and then the bass, and will do my best to get those to work
together. I'll then get the vocals back in, and will work on getting the vocals to sit well with the 100 Years Of The Theremin | Podcast
drums and the bass, and after that I'll bring in the other elements one by one, building them 3 weeks 1 day ago.
around the vocals, bass and drums. Of course, I'll be going to and fro a lot then between all the
di erent elements to ne‑tune things. A delay that I added to the vocals may not work in the
track, and I'll take it back o , and so on. In the beginning of the mix process I'll be working
equally with the [Pro Tools] Edit and the Mix windows, using the Edit window to move things
about, changing the timing of things or tidying things up. Like in 'Just Dance', there was
a synthesizer that spilled over from the intro into the verse, and it had much more impact to
have a clean cut straight into the verse. Working in the Edit window can also be good because it
gives you a visual clue as to what's in the track while you're listening to things.

"Towards the end of the mix I'll spend a lot more time just with the Mix window. I'll send the
di erent elements in the Mix window to a series of VCA faders, which are like masters of Distant City Studios - A Drum Room With A Di erence
di erent groups. In the case of 'Just Dance', 'A' is Lady Gaga's vocals, 'B' is Colby's vocal, 'C' is 3 months 3 weeks ago.
RedOne's vocal, 'D' is the drums, 'E' is the bass, 'F' the main synths, and 'G' the rest of the
keyboards. I like working with VCA faders, because you can still in uence track levels post any
automation that you set on individual tracks, whereas with groups, once you've set the
automation on an individual track, it's xed. When I move the VCA fader, all the tracks that are
sent to it move. Working with VCA faders is also a way of simplifying the Session. Because I had
25 tracks of e ects returns, which you can see to the left of the VCA faders in the mix window, I
was working with a total of 122 tracks. A lot of the vocals were stacked, and with everything
organised in groups via the VCA faders, things were a lot easier to deal with and I was quite
happy to have that many tracks. You don't really need to see or deal with them all the time.”

VOCALS: URS EQ, Bomb Factory Fairchild 660, Waves Renaissance Vox & De-esser,
Digidesign Revibe, Lo-Fi & Digirack EQ, McDSP Filterbank E6, Sound Toys Echoboy, TC Works
Chorus-Delay.

"On Lady Gaga's lead vocal [the track labelled 'GgLdC'] I have: a URS EQ plug-in, adding a little
bit of top end to her vocal; the Bomb Factory Fairchild 660 compressor, which just takes out
some of the peaks; the Waves Renaissance Vox for some more gentle compression, levelling
everything out slightly; and the Waves De-Esser to take out some of the harder 'esses'. I put it
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 2/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
towards the end, because the compression and the EQ bring up the 'esses' a little bit. There is
a vocal 'verb send to the Digidesign Revibe, set to a very short reverb, just to add a little bit of
space behind the vocal, ltered with the McDSP Filterbank E6, which brightens the reverb a bit
to give it some splash.

"I also used a lot of delays on Lady Gaga's lead

vocals. A lot of the time you're looking for
e ects to draw the listener in, and static e ects
sometimes work, but at other times you want
something more dynamic, like a delay in a pre-
chorus, that kind of thing. When soloing the
vocals, I added half-, quarter- and eighth-note
delays, and I think there's also a dotted eight-
note delay, all using the Sound Toys Echoboy. Multiple delays were used to add emphasis to
All the delay plug-ins are set on e ects returns, speci c words within the lead vocal.
partly because it means I can also send other
tracks to those delays, partly because not
having a plug-in on every track saves on system
resources. The eighth-note delay is panned to
the right, and comes in the choruses and some
words in the verses. The send is automated.
The half-note delay is panned to the left, and
captures certain words; for instance, in the
chorus each time the word 'dance' occurs at
the end of a line. The quarter-note delay is also panned to the right and is automated to
happen on certain words. All the delays catch words di erently, to keep it interesting. They're
also set to di erent styles on the Echoboy — TubeTape, Analogue, etc — to get di erent
textures. Sometimes you want quite a dark delay that's hidden behind the vocals just to give it
more body, at other times there are some gags with a word that clearly repeats, in which case
the delay has to sound up-front and clear.

"The plug-ins on the bridge vocal, Lo-Fi and

Digirack 7-band EQ, were added later on in the
mixing process. While mixing with all elements
in the track, I felt that it was di cult to get a
sense of what she was singing in that section.
There are four vocals in the bridge, two on the
left and two on the right, and the ones on the
left sounded like they were a delay of the ones
on the right, even though they weren't. I
wanted them to sound more independent from
each other, so the rst thing I did was send
Backing vocals at the bridge were hard‑panned and
them all to two auxes, and EQ the vocals on the treated separately using EQ, plus Digidesign's Lo-Fi
left ['2 aux'] di erently than those on the right e ect on the left-hand group.
['1 aux']. I then added some Lo-Fi to the 2 aux,
taking the sample rate down to 22kHz and
changing the anti-alias, which has the e ect of
removing the 'esses' from the vocal. All this
separated the vocals and made them sound
less like a delay.

"The TC Works plug-in is set up as a chorus to

work on some 'oohs' that RedOne sang from
the third chorus onwards. It's just to fatten and
widen them up a little bit.”

DRUMS: Sonnox Oxford EQ & Transient

Modulator, Focusrite D3, Empirical Labs
Distressor, SSL channel compressor,
Digidesign Digirack Delay & EQ, Digidesign
Smack!, Waves SSL Compressor.

"As I said, the kick drum is one of the main elements in 'Just Dance', almost sounding like a
four-on-the- oor in the rst part of the bar, where it does three hits. The snare is on the second
hit, and you almost feel kick more than the snare, which then clears out and you have a regular
kick-snare pattern, in a two-bar loop. It was really important to emphasise that, and this was
done by automating the kick and the snare, by pulling down this rst snare a little bit.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 3/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
"'Kick 1' is the main kick, and it has a bit of ambient room sound to it, which is quite important. I
EQ'ed it with the Oxford EQ and then added a
little bit of Focusrite D3 compression, which
brings up the ambience a bit more. 'Kick 2' just
plays on one and three of each bar, and is
quite thin and pokey‑sounding and just helps
to get the kick to cut through the track a little
more. It's not adding weight or bottom, it's just
adding some mid/high frequencies. Like the
snare, I sent it to an outboard Distressor set to
an old-style 1176 setting, and this helps to
push the snare and the kick in the mix. I call
that e ect the Thwacker in the Mix window.
There was also a sub-kick with quite a lot of
bottom end on it, which only comes in for the
bridge.

"I used the Oxford EQ to brighten the main

snare up a little bit, while also ducking it
around 5k, to remove a frequency I didn't like.
Like on the kick drum, there's a little D3
compression, in this case with a very fast attack
to take some edge o the snare, so it sounds
more full-bodied. I also sent the snare to the
Distressor, and I duplicated it to another track,
and sent that to a channel on the SSL board. I
quite like what the SSL channel compressor
does to the sound of drums: when you turn the
TC Works' Chorus-Delay plug-in helped to thicken the
ratio right up and lower the threshold it kind of
backing vocals.
grabs the sound in a way that no other
compressor does, giving it a really sharp-
sounding front end. However, towards the end
of the mix I still felt as if I hadn't quite captured
something about the kick-snare relation in the
rough mix, and it appeared to be coming from
some sort of compression over the whole mix.
So I downloaded the Waves SSL plug-in bundle,
and decided to do a shoot-out between that
and the desk, and was really gobsmacked by
how close the plug-in was. It was amazing and
it was exactly the kind of pumping sound that I
was after. The main kick sound was slightly EQed and
compressed to bring out its room ambience.
"There are various other e ects on the drums. I
added an eighth-note delay with the Digirack to
the hi‑hat, which was playing quarter notes. The
idea was to give the hi-hat a little bit more
impetus in the chorus. The delay then goes
through a Sonnox Transient Modulator, which
pushes the transient up a little bit, so you get
more of a sense of rhythm without actually
hearing the delay. I also EQ'ed the delay with the
Digirack 7-band EQ, cutting below 702Hz and at
11kHz, and boosting at 4.65kHz and 10.68kHz. It's
quite a drastic EQ, but the end e ect is very
subtle and I mixed the delayed hi-hat in behind
the original part. The clap has just an Oxford EQ,
boosting 12dB at 3.2k and rolling o some of the
extreme top. It's like a low-pass lter at the top
end, around 8kHz.

"There was also an e ect ['drms'] that's a send from several drum tracks to a Digidesign Smack!
compressor. The output of that compressor is tucked in behind the entire drum mix.
Sometimes when the drums are not quite coming through in a mix I will copy the drum mix
onto a send that goes to a compressor, and I'll compress that quite hard and maybe brighten it
up a little bit, and mix that in behind the original drums. Not too loud, because it can wash the
drums out, but a little bit helps the drums cut through. That's what I did in this song.”

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 4/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
SYNTHS: Bomb Factory Moogerfooger delay
& low-pass lter, Digidesign Digirack 7-band
EQ, D-Verb, Lo-Fi, Line 6 Echo Farm,
Chandler EMI TG12413, McDSP MC2000 &
Filterbank E6, Sound Toys Echoboy.

An eighth-note delay was added to the quarter-note

hi-hat part, and treated with transient modulation
and EQ.

A Moogerfooger Analog Delay plug-in was added to

the main synth bass part.

"The song had a few keyboard bass parts,

which sounded really good, so there was no
particular challenge. One of the parts was kind
of a sub-bass, the other sounded like a
sampled pick bass, which also cut through on
small speakers. Keyboard basses can
sometimes sound great on big speakers but
disappear on little speakers, but I didn't have
that problem here. One of the most important
elements in the synthesizer parts was called
the main synth and it sounded a bit like a synth
bass, but with a lot of bright stu going on in
the top end. It's stereo and runs pretty much
through the entire track, apart from the bridge.
I wanted to emphasise the stops in that part, so
I put a very short Bomb Factory Moogerfooger
analogue delay on it, I think it was a 16th‑note,
which had the e ect of fattening up the sound.
I then automated the delay return, muting it in
parallel with the main part, because I didn't
want the delays to sound in the gaps in the
main part. You can only hear the delay when
the main synth is playing. The only other plug-
in on the main synth is the Digirack 7-band EQ, just to brighten it up a bit.

"There's also a synth sound ['RdOnsgntr'], which is a bit of signature sound of his [RedOne's]. It
has quite a long D-Verb reverb going into a quarter-note Echo Farm delay, set to 'MemoryMan'.
The whole thing is compressed with the Chandler EMI TG12413 limiter. 'Answerblp', just above
'RdOnsgntr', is a sort of answer to the main synth sound in the pre-choruses. It's a really cool
part, and I felt that it needed a little bit of help in the mix, so it has quite a few plug-ins on it.
I added some distortion with the Lo-Fi to give it more presence, after which it's going through a
Moogerfooger low‑pass lter, which is a really cool plug-in I use a lot, because it allows you to
change the envelope of the sound. I wanted this sound to be less direct and for it to swell more
in the pre-chorus. It's only there for a moment and adds the dynamic movement in the track.
It's then going through quite a bit of multi‑band compression with the McDSP MC2000, which
evens it out frequency‑wise. After that it again goes through a Moogerfooger low-pass lter, to
again sculpt the envelope, and nally there's a Trim plug‑in so I can have the fader in
a reasonable position.

"'Audiolnst8' is audio instrument 8. A track title like that is a sure- re sign that the song was
created in Logic, even though it was given to me as a Pro Tools le! It's a little gure in the
choruses. The plug-ins on it do very little, to be honest. There's the McDSP E6 Filterbank EQ,
just adding a bit of top end, the McDSP MC2000, the Lo-Fi, the Echoboy eighth-note delay, and
Digidesign's 7-band EQ. Normally my philosophy during mixing is to try and do as little as

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 5/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
possible. It's really easy to think that you're improving things, whereas you're in fact making
them worse.” 

Making A Di erence
"In general, I would say that my main challenge in doing this mix was to make sure that I didn't
spoil what was good in the rough mix, particularly the kick and snare relationship, which was
largely down to the SSL compression over the whole mix. I also added the Waves L2 over the
stereo mix bus, which is a kind of brickwall limiter. I don't like the loudness war thing, and I'd
much rather not have to compress my mixes too much, but the reality is that you're competing
against other mixes, and people will compare its loudness to that of other mixes. I need to be
mindful of that, but at the same time I won't go crazy with the limiter, because I do like my
mixes to sound good. Having said that, I don't nd sample rate that important. Most of the stu
I do ends up on MP3, so whatever sample rate I use doesn't make a big di erence. I used
44.1kHz/24-bit for 'Just Dance'; 96k does sound great, but the large le sizes are a hassle:
everything takes twice as long and it's a pain to do backups. There are other factors that make
a far bigger di erence to the sound than just the sample rate, and I prefer to focus on them.”  

Robert Orton: Mixing In The Box

"I started playing piano at age ve,” explains Orton, "and from that age I knew that I
wanted to work with music. When I was 18 I went to the London College of Music in
Ealing, where I did a two-year course in Music Technology and a one-year course in
Media Technology. After this I worked for nine months at CTS studios in Wembley, and in
June 2000 I began working for Trevor Horn as his Pro Tools tech. When you leave college
you feel like you know a great deal, so I was shocked by how I was thrown back to the
bottom of the learning curve! But I soon did little bits of engineering for Trevor on my
own, and a year and a half later I did the engineering and some additional production on
tATu's rst Western album, 200km/h In The Wrong Lane, [2002] which was in part
produced by Trevor. I wasn't initially going to mix it, but the record company preferred
my rough mixes to the o cial mixes, and that's how I got into mixing.”

During his eight years with Horn, Orton's credits included Pet Shop Boys, Seal, Lisa
Stans eld, Elton John, Texas, Celine Dion, Kelly Rowland and Macy Gray. "I learned a lot
from working with Trevor,” the mixer elaborates, "like the importance of paying attention
to detail, and of knowing that if you can keep working on something you can probably
make it better. Most important of all, it's to never lose sight of the fact that it's music
you're working on. One of the biggest traps that many engineers fall into is thinking too
much about the technical aspects. Many times when mixing, you nd that the engineer
and the musician in you will be in con ict. It's important to realise that the musician
should nearly always win those con icts, within certain boundaries. Finding those
boundaries and knowing which ones you can push and how far is a key skill in mixing
that I learnt very much through working with Trevor.”

"I mix in the box entirely,” continues Orton. "For me, the quality I get is every bit as good
as when mixing on a board. You get a slightly di erent sound, perhaps, but it's certainly
not worse. In fact, I feel that I get a slightly more up-front sound from mixing in the box.
People say you don't get the same air when mixing on the board, but I nd that you can
get perfectly airy mixes in the box using plug-ins like Eiosis's Air EQ, URS's Fultec, and the
Abbey Road Brilliance Pack, which is amazing for adding air to the top end.

"I think that there's far too much emphasis placed on whether a mix is done on the
board or in the box. All that matters is nding a way to articulate the message in music,
so listeners can understand it. In the end it's about how you have learned your chops. If
you're used to working on an analogue board and you have your bag of tricks and
outboard gear with which you know how to make things sound great, you're going to
struggle in the box, because it's a totally di erent way of doing it. It works the same the
other way. I learned many of my chops from two of the freelance engineers Trevor used,
Steve MacMillan and Brad Gilderman — Steve has been at the forefront of Pro Tools
since its rst release as 'Sound Tools'. Even Trevor has become a complete convert to this
way of working. I'm totally comfortable with that way of working now, and with using a
trackball and a keyboard.”

Today, Orton owns his own "pretty large” Pro Tools HD system, which predictably is
"loaded to the teeth with plug-ins”. Not so predictably, he continues to prefer working in
a commercial studio, if possible Sarm Studio 3, where 'Just Dance' and the rest of The
Fame were mixed. "I have a couple of Distressors and I may occasionally run something
through those, or through an SSL, but the real reason I mix at Sarm 3 is because it is one

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 6/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
of the best-sounding rooms in the world. I can't stress the importance of mixing in a
good-sounding room enough, and Sarm 3 is amazing. Particularly the bottom end is very
true, and when you're mixing in a room as good as that, you don't have to worry about
what the room is doing, and you can solely focus on the music. I move my rig back and
forth between my home, where I have some Quested VS2108 monitors and a pair of
NS10s, and Sarm and the other places where I sometimes mix, for recall or for projects
with smaller budgets.”

Published March 2009

BUY PDF VERSION
Previous article Next article

New forum posts Recent topics Recently active forums

Re: Mic recommendations for £100 (new) or less  Mic recommendations for £100 (new) or less Music Business
 
Wonks 
Recording: Gear & Techniques
Noisy Yamaha MOXF   Guitar Technology
Recording: Gear & Techniques Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:51 pm
DIY Electronics & Studio Design
Noisy Yamaha MOXF Producer needs help working with feature rapp 
  New Products & Industry News
OneWorld  Mac Music
No more Focusrite interfaces for me  
Recording: Gear & Techniques Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:49 pm
Keyboards & Synthesis
First accoustic for teenage learner   Mixing, Mastering & Post Production
Re: Producer needs help working with feature r 

CS70  Live Sound & Performance

What percentage of my income from my song g 
Music Business Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:46 pm SOS Support Forum
Can anyone help me kill computer noise and int  Windows Music
Re: Mic recommendations for £100 (new) or less 
Apps & Other Computers/OS
garrettendi  Flute recording for newbie   Music Theory, Songwriting & Composition
Recording: Gear & Techniques Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:43 pm
Feedback
u-he DIVA AETHRA II  
Re: No more Focusrite interfaces for me  
User Reviews
OneWorld  External SSD not allowing iMac to wake? Useful Information Archive
 
Recording: Gear & Techniques Thu Apr 08, 2021 12:42 pm Remote Collaboration

Contact Us Cookie Policy Help Privacy Policy Terms of Use

           

All contents copyright © SOS Publications Group and/or its licensors, 1985-2021. All rights reserved.
The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior
written consent of the Publishers. Great care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this article but neither Sound On Sound Limited nor the publishers can be held
responsible for its contents. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 7/8
4/8/2021 Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Robert Orton
Web site designed & maintained by PB Associates & SOS

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/secrets-mix-engineers-robert-orton 8/8