How I Mixed This Beat Using Mainly Ozone 11 Plugins

In this video, I take you behind the scenes as I arrange, mix, and master a beat using Logic Pro and iZotope Ozone 11. The track was originally built using Landr Sampler and includes a mix of chopped samples, live-recorded drum samples, synth bass, and melodic one-shots. The goal is to transform an unstructured idea into a clean, release-ready track, all in real time.

I walk through the entire production workflow, starting with session cleanup and exporting stems. From there, I drop everything into my free Logic Pro mixing template, organize by folder, and begin shaping the sound using the faders and mainly Ozone 11 plugins. Almost no stock tools were used, except the Logic compressor for side-chaining and some delay. 

You'll see how I use Tonal Balance Control, dynamic EQ, vintage tape and mid/side imaging to tighten the mix and create space for vocals. I also share my thoughts on using Ozone’s AI mastering assistant—when it’s useful, and when to trust your ears instead.

If you're a home studio producer looking to improve your mixes or curious how to mix and master beats in Logic Pro using Ozone 11, this video gives you a full, practical example, from chaos to polished. However, please be adviced that this is NOT a tutorial: It's a reality show:)

 

Here is the complete transcript: 

 

I made a beat yesterday.

 

I really feel it, but it's a complete mess.

 

So, in this video, I'm going to take it from a complete mess to release ready.

 

This will be sort of like a reality show where I do my thing. You can follow along and you can just skip through the chapters if you want to dive into some sections that you think is more interesting than others.

 

Let's go.

 

Now, the plugins that I'm using in this video is mainly iZotope Ozone 11 plugins. This makes it a lot easier if you have this bundle. you don't have to be all over the place with the plugins. And if you want me to make other videos such as this, but using other plug-in bundles, please let me know.

 

So, this beat is made by me and it's made using the Landr Sampler, mainly.

 

And I've made another video about that you can check out. It's right there. And if this is something that you would like to try out, there's a link below where you also support the channel if you use my link.

 

All right, so here's the beat in all its messy glory. Check it out.

 

Going to have to use my headphones for this.

 

Here comes the base.

 

So, there's a lot of problems with this beat and one of them is the tonality. It's like somewhere there's some janky harmonics and you know it's it is what it is. The intentional part is the the beat with the swing of the beat is manually. There's no machine swing going on here. It's just me recording live and then just nudging the notes, you know, the kick. This is just a duplicate of the kicks and the snare is not falling on the Okay. So, it's it's not quantized that much, you see. So, it's a bit late, I think. Or is it a bit early? Yeah, it comes a bit late. And uh the same goes for the hihats. Those are also just manually punched in me using my computer keyboard. And the hihats are actually uh from a hihat loop that I just found because I was too lazy to lay down the fast going hihats. And then we have a sample which is called the main sample which is chopped up. And it's a chopped up loop like so. And there's an alternative loop which is also really lazy. It's just a loop that I haven't done anything with. I just put it on there. But, you know, it's it's a simple arpeggiator. I could easily have done that myself, but it was there, so I just used it. Lazy me. And then there's an acoustic bass that I've chopped up a bit like that. And uh I really like the sound of that. And then we have two bells which are one shots. And I've just played them with my keyboard like that. And another one bell like this. I'm a bit unsure if I'm I'm going to keep it, but we'll see. And then we have some uh synth. We have a synth bass which is like a bit more powerful sounding but just it's like this and and the same is for this one. This is the same instrument.

 

It's just a different pattern. And then we have a bass synth and yet another bass synth and it was because I wanted something cleaner and and I didn't find that using the Landr sampler. So, I just used the serum and I just tweaked something like that. Like make made my own little tweak like that. Nothing nothing fancy just to fill out the bass spect uh the bass frequencies a bit in in one certain particular part of the song like that. And then we have sound effects which I also made in Serum. This is a preset in Serum. Yeah, nothing fancy, but all in all, here's the beat.

 

So, this isn't isn't structured in any particular way. I want to make an intro, a verse part, and a chorus part, and an outro, but I haven't come that far yet. But I want to do that together with you. Okay. So, um, let's just see. Now, I have one plugin on here. As you can see, there's there's no plugins going on here except for the instruments. And I have one plugin going on here, which is called the tonal balance control, which is just to give me some visual feedbacks on the tonal balance of the beat. Um, you can check it out.

 

So you see there's a real smiley curve here on the beats. There's uh not a much not much going on in the vocal area of the beats. So what I like to do when especially when making bass heavy beats like this is to just add an acapella. And I'm going to do that just now by inserting an acapella from a song that I've previously mixed. This is only for mixing. So I'm not going to make a remix now. But I want to have this acapella so I can mix the beat around acapella, a type of acapella that I am thinking maybe will fit the beat nicely. So I'll just do do it with this one for example. Okay, I'll go with that. This can be any song because it's not going to be be released by any means. Now I've just dragged it in and I guess it's another tempo on this one. So, I'll just rightclick and I'll do the tempo stuff with it. So, I'll just hit apply project tempo to region and downbeat. Now that we're here, what I want to do is bounce this in place just to make sure that we have a clean audio file without anything going on. All right. Now, what I want to do is I will stem split it. So, I'll rightclick processing stem splitter. And what's neat about the new stem splitter is that it sorts into categories because there there are some categories now. Um, two more than it used to be. We have, I guess, piano and guitar is is the new ones, but we only need acappella for now. So, I'll hit apply. And then it takes roughly a minute. You see, I'm not checking my phone. Just just to just to say that I'm waiting, but I'm not checking my phone. I'm I'm working on it. Okay. Now, where when we have these, we can just delete the others. Now, I have an acapella that fits the beats. It should at least. So, I'll hit on snap bar. And I want it to come in. Let's see after eight bars. Isn't that what they do? The professionals. Yeah.

 

And I'm using this acapella specifically because I have the permission to do so. It's by Slink Race. I I've linked this Spotify in the link below and you should really check him out. He's one of Norway's best Sami rappers. Let's go. Best rappers in any any language in Norway, I think. And of course, this is the stem splitted acapella. So, don't don't mind the quality of the vocals right now. Just focus on the beat.

 

And I don't want that long of a session. So I can just do this. Um because the point is not to make a remix. As I said, it's just to Yeah. You know. All right. So what I do now, I have all these instruments. Everything is like samplers all over the place. And there's synths and I don't want that in the mixing session. I want to start fresh. So what I'll do, I'll export everything. export all tracks as audio files and and and and another reason is that I have no buses or sense or anything I have and and you can see here that the whole complete the complete of everything it's it's just a mess. You you see all the faders is all over the place and I I can't start a mix like that. So I'll export it. Let's see like that. Create a new folder beat. All right. Let's see here.

 

No phone, no checking for messages or anything. Just Okay, cool. No social media. Now I have a folder with everything in it, even the acapella like here. And I'll open the template. And this template you can download for free. The link is in the description down below. You should really use it. It's really neat and clean. You have everything in place that you need. There are other videos that I where I discuss these more in depth, but here you can see it in real use. So this is again absolutely free. Go download it: subphotic.com/logic.

 

Did I say did I say clearly?

 

subphotic.com/logic.

 

That's the address. All right. Here we go. Here we have it. This is just a drag drop template. We can start with the drums. You see, I have tracks laid out for drums here from the get-go. So, I'll drag up my snare. I'll drag up the kicks, the high hats. We even have a high hat fast and a high hat slow. And that's correct. You see here, fast and slow. Going closely folder for now. Bass folder. Let's see. We have quite a few bases. So, um, for the bass folders, I I often have a bass tone and a bass sub because I like to divide the bases into two sections sort of. But in this particular case, I just duplicate the tracks. Hit command D and duplicate. And let's see, bass, bass, bass, bass. We have four of them. And I'll just put them right there. And I don't mind the sub for now. And then we have the instrument folder where we have the main loop. Let's see the main sample. That's the main loop, isn't it? Yep. And then we have we'll just zoom out a bit. Then we have the sound effects right here. And then we have the old samples right here. One, two, and three. Wow, great. It's not that often it's that suitable and it's that great of a fit. Okay. And then we have the ac capella which I will place inside the vox folder on the verse right there. And you can see also there's processing going on in this template but everything is bypassed so you don't have to worry about it. And I'm only going to use i isotope plugins for this. So I'm going to completely disregard all the stock plugins for now. Now the tempo is set to 92 and that's wrong. It was 140 as I can recall. Now let's check it out.

 

Okay, we can start by just deleting everything that we don't need. Let's just take that away. Take it away. All this we we don't want any distractions. Here we have the effects folder. We'll just keep them for now. And uh yeah, cool. And what we do now, command A, select all, right click, and color regions by track. Now I will start mixing.

 

(MUSIC)

 

And these will be processed more later on. Let's just

 

Okay, that's good for now. Okay. And let's intro in introduce the instruments again. Let's just look at them in solo.

 

All right. Okay. Let's together.

 

Get on the dance.

 

I can see that this instrument right here, the the main loop is is sort of like a piano loop. It really interferes with the vocals and make it unintelligible. So, I'll have to deal with that soon. And other than that, I I feel that the tonal balance is is starting to take shape. Let's uh pull up uh metering tool. I like to use the tonal balance control from iZotope.

 

So what this says is that the high end is a bit exaggerated. Maybe it's the high hats. Um, let's let's take a take a look at that.

 

(MUSIC)

 

I really like that this kick in the snare is like really present and they're they're just punching through the mix. Uh, of course I will have to treat them a bit uh afterwards. But in the grand scheme of things, I think we are pretty much there right now uh without using any plugins at all. Just using the the faders. Maybe we should use some panning. Let's see.

 

And I'm just going to visualize the waveforms a bit more so I can see where I have everything because some of them are really low in volume. And before I go any further, let's just check out the the stereo out. Let's see.

 

It's running a bit hot. So we will just have to keep that in the back of our minds but minus2 is good minus one is good as as long as you don't uh exceed zero plus.1 you will cause some distortions that you don't want. So just keep that in mind.

 

See

 

The problem now is that I've fallen in love with the setup. I've fallen in love with how it sounds and how it's arranged. And that's a bit um stupid of me. I should have done less of the arrangement beforehand and I should have left that for now. But done is done. What can I say?

 

Oh yeah, let's go back to the kicks a bit. Um, there's two kicks. One is sort of muffled, not that prominent, and the other one is more prominent. Let's let's listen to the to the two of them.

 

What I would like to do actually is to kick number two. I would like to be the main kick sort of and then I would like the the more muffled kick to be the swing type of kick. So I'll if you know what I mean. Just solo the drum.

 

like that instead of layering them. I think I can get more of a cool impact that way. So, I'll just do that here as well. Just remove that.

 

Oops.

 

Here,

 

here's my idea. I will I will now do the arrangement properly. So, I will start off really really soft and then bam, it will hit the beat will drop really early in the song so that nobody skips on Spotify or Soundcloud or wherever. And then I will sort of strip down the beat when the rapper comes in. And I will increase a bit of what is in the beat when it's time for the chorus. And then I will strip it down again for the second verse. Chorus. And then the outro. Sounds good. Okay, let's let's let's let's execute. Let's do that. Okay, now I'll just move everything like here. And I think that four bars is like a is like a sweet deal for for an intro. Maybe even two bars. Let's go crazy. Yeah. So, two bars. Now, let's just build up something. Uh let's use the sound effects right here. I'll just just cut that out here and here. Where is it? Right here. Okay, that's Is that four bars or is it two? I can see it from afar.

 

Oh, yeah. That's two bars. Cool.

 

Oh, I have an idea.

 

H I don't like the deviation here. Let's turn that to one. One. Let's see.

 

Cool. Now, now you see what I mean. And let's automate this because I don't want it to be present. I hit A and then I hit Dutch. And then let's and I'll delete that one. Now I'll go here and turn on the automation right here.

 

For this one I want to automate something else and that's an EQ. And just for the sake of it I'm going to isotope EQer like that. Let's just automate a low pass filter. Low pass. I don't want to 80 48 slope. Come on. Give me a break. 12 is great. 12 is nice. Okay, cool. Um, and I'll just let it reside right up there at 20 20k. And again I will uh

 

and go here because on the final stage here where you get this sort of like a bridge. Now what I want to do is I want I want to remove this part. Right.

 

Okay. So, I just I've just discovered something new and I didn't know this, but uh for example, when I use the stock EQ, the linear phase EQ or when I use the ProQ3, uh look at the look at the look at the frequency here. ProQ3 starts at 30 30,000 hertz and if you turn it down, it goes down to here's 10. Here's two or yeah, here's two. 2,000 hertz. And it's like, look at this. I'll just bypass the ozone now. And um let's see here.

 

Like that. And uh 200. And here we have like 20 30. This is the subfrequencies. But if you take a look at the ozone frequency, let's see here. It starts on 20, 18, 17, and down here we have 10 we have 10,000. So it goes linear, not exponential. Like here's here's 4,000 and here's 1,700 and you you know here. So yeah. So, yeah, probably because it's a mastering equalizer and not a mixing equalizer. But I digress. Let's Let's make this transition happen. I'll just do this then. Okay. Is it okay? Can I do that? Thanks.

 

It's really hopeless in doing this in that way. Um, but I'm stubborn. And I'll just keep I'll just keep going. Let's see up. Um, let's just make some movement out of this.

 

I'll have a node here and a node here. And then I'll just raise it a bit up until like this. So only subtle movements to create some sense of movement.

 

So, so you sort of you hear it and and you you sort of you feel it. You feel it more than you hear it maybe.

 

Now, I want this to be more here, like there. And I want it to go faster down to…like this.

 

And I want to do something in the in the in the same in the same streets. Can you say streets? In the same go. Okay. So, what I what I think here,

 

I want to simplify this bell right here. And I'll do it like this.

 

Okay, I've cleaned up the I've cleaned up the pitch of things because I don't want that those harmonic clashes. They are really unsuitable and uh I don't want people to think that I don't know any music theory. I don't. But shh, don't tell anyone.

 

I only use my ears. I only use my intuition. That's that's it. That's about it. And I think that when when AI now is coming and more and more AI music is being made, like no human touch at all, I think using your intuition is a lot more worth than knowing all the music theory in the world. Not that knowing music theory is a bad thing because you can you can experiment more and better you with the music theory. Obviously, I know quite a bit of music theory, but I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert in anything. In fact, I'm not an expert in mixing, mastering, logic. I'm not an expert, but I love it and I have done it a lot. And I think I'm a way ahead of a lot of people. So that's that's the reason of this channel, not to show off my incredible skills because, you know, my skills are my skills and and I'm a teacher. So that's that's how who I am.

 

Here is where the chorus starts. So, here we have a buildup to the chorus. And I'll try this.

 

So, in the main loop, it's like a piano as well. So, I can just call it the piano. Call it for what it is. And I'll actually drag up this one because these are these are the two competing elements. And I think that they can't run fully at the same time without being at least panned or EQed heav he heavily. So, let's let's let's go opt in for an EQ right here as well. Let's see. So, what I've learned now is that when it comes to because I've always used this EQ for mastering, but never for mixing. But what I've learned is that it's a horrible EQ for mixing. Uh because just because of the automation, but when it comes to everything else, it's it's quite nice. I like ProQ better, but here we go. As as an EQ at least. So,

 

But we'll we'll use it as we we'll use the filters. So I will

 

Okay, now we have it. Okay, this is ridiculous. But is but it is the way it is. Okay, 200. Let's see. Put down the 200 right here. See how

 

we can have it a bit more audible. 700. Let's just jump up to 700 like 2 millimeters.

 

Yeah, I like that. Okay.

 

Yeah. So this is like this is like the chorus and this is the second part of the chorus where there's more chanting. The first part is more softly singing maybe and then we have some chanting going on here and then comes the next verse and it starts right here which is different like pattern-wise from the first verse and I like that uh you have something different happening on the second verse.

 

So we start here and what we'll do now because this piano has been running all along now we will just mute that piano. Let's see.

 

Let's see.

 

And here we can also do the EQ thing. Cut it down down to here at least. So we'll really have focus on the vocal vocals. And then we can turn it up a bit before the verse stops.

 

And I have an idea here just to end off uh the bar the the four bar the first four bar section. I'll just take it up until four.

 

And I'll do that for the next four bar section as well. 1 2 3 4. right here. Do the same thing. And here comes the last chorus. Should come here. And what I'll do now, I'll just cheat a bit. I'll just copy what I had from before. So, we have the verse that is like 1 2 3 four sections right here. And then the chorus will

 

chorus is right here from 41 to 57. So, we'll just take everything

 

like here and not the vocals though. The vocals can be okay. Okay. Okay. And here we will have a tail. And I think that's it for the outro.

 

We will fade that out sort of using the EQ like that and adjusting the curve like this.

 

Take away this. Okay.

 

Okay, I like that way of ending it a bit abruptly.

 

for the sake of the video. And since I have had people comment that uh why why don't I use the built-in AI assistant in Ozone, I've tried it before. I don't like it that much and I I don't like using it. I I don't think it's fun to use it. I I think mixing and mastering should be fun. So that that's me. But I'll do it now for just just for the sake of the video.

 

So, it understood that it was hip-hop rap at least. And let's go to the details this thing. Detail view. So, it cut down a bit on the bass and it improved the the mids a bit. And I think that's that's a good choice. Um,

 

some transit shaping going on, increasing the transients in the bass area below 120 and reducing in the in the mids. that I guess that's the kick in the snare that's quite prominent. Uh it used some imaging because it felt that the mix was a bit narrow. Uh I was about to address that in the mixing stage. Let's see here what it says. Well, it has uh uh some clarity issues. Let's see.

 

and some stabilizer.

 

So here it's adding back some low end that it took took away in this one in this section. Now, some dynamic EQs because it it it was there was some uh maybe some nasty frequency buildups right here, here, and here.

(MUSIC)

 

Usual the usual suspects, the 200, 500, and a 5K. And then a Maximizer with the IRC2. That's that's that that's not usually my my go-to setting. 10 of output level. I think that's a bit a lot. And you see here it's peaking as well.

 

It goes quite heavy on the limiting, I think. And it uses upward compression and soft clipping. That's okay. Cool. Um, but I really and it's no true peak limiting. Um, and and therefore it it's it's it's clipping and if I use true peak, it won't clip.

 

Sort of force the transcendence to be under control. But, uh, I agree with the AI. No true peak is needed. Minus one. Let's see how it goes.

 

Then we then we stay safe under minus.3 and that's that's a safe place to be more or less. But when we take away the vocals, uh the the rules will change. But let's just check out the the tonal balance control for now.

 

So, I definitely need to work on the low end. Uh, that's that's an issue that's here. And and you know an advantage of using this AI assistant right here is that you can at least you can get some hints and clues of what to do. Uh and my suspicions were being confirmed that I need to work on the low end. I need to work on the mid-range and the high end is a bit piercing. So, but I pro you've probably already heard it yourself if you're listening to it in in a in a with with some good speakers or headphones. All right. Now, just going to get some out of the fridge freezer and I'll be right back.

 

Okay. Um, right. So, let's let's just fix the issues, put on some bus compression, and call it a day.

 

Yeah.

 

So, I'll just side chaining the the kick to the bass bus where everything bass goes and we can we can listen to it.

 

No more than 5Ds dbs needed right here. You You don't want to hear it like really clearly. You just want to hear it. You You just want to have the get the bass out of the way for the kick.

 

(MUSIC)

 

And then I also want the on the instrument bus the instruments out of the way of the bass. So, I'll side chain the bass here.

 

And then I want some compression to happen on the instrument bus. I just want to compress it a bit using the the isotope uh compressor. We can do broadband compression. Let's just

 

(MUSIC)

 

And there's no instruments, at least in the verse section, there's no instruments that really live in the 1 to2k area and that is like really prominent there. So, I think we'll I'll just bypass the phone. This was just a just a test. Now, I'll I'll open the ozone 11 again and I'll insert an EQ and I'll boost it a bit in the in this area right here.

 

Now listen with and without.

 

So we have a bit more presence now.

 

bit better balance. And let's work with the drums a bit because they can when they're too hard-hitting, it's sort of like you you got too much of a trans going on. It it might sound a bit thin. So, uh so I have the perfect solution for this and that that's some tape. So, let's do it with some uh vintage tape. Let's see. Ozone vintage tape. Now, let's just go with the

 

I like that it it it crunches the drums a bit, but I think it's too much. So, I'll back off on the input drive and let's see.

 

Well, let's see in the context of this song.

 

(MUSIC)

 

Okay, cool. Um, yep. I don't want to over complicate anything, so I'll just go over to the next processor. And that's the that's the limiter or the maximizer. And I like using the the classic or the modern. It's my go-to.

 

Okay, you see the high hats are going nuts all over the place. And we don't need both these high hats here to go run at the same time. I like the switch of energy between the slow and the fast. So I will uh start off with the fast ones. Let's see like

 

I'm just relaxing and having a cup of sub.

 

I'm quite happy, but uh this is a new studio setup for me, so I don't trust these speakers in this room quite just quite yet. So, I'm going to have uh have a couple of um hours just reset my ears and listening to it in my air on my AirPods and in my car. And um yeah, that's just for calibrating. and then I'll come back and and do the rest.

 

Now I'm back from my car. I've listened to it in my AirPods in my car and just figured out something that wasn't quite there. And I'm going to fix that right now.

 

 

(MUSIC)

 

And finally, here it is. Listen to before and after.

 

Now, if you like videos like these where I just relax, chill, just mix and master a beat like this, and you want to watch over my shoulders, check out one of these videos. I hope I see you there. Thanks so much for watching. Peace out.