Ryan Schwabe discusses his approach of using separate music and vocal buses in mixing to enable more aggressive processing on the music without affecting the vocals. By doing so, he can apply saturation or distortion to the music while maintaining the vocal's clarity and presence.
He outlines a technique where both buses send to a heavily compressed tape channel, subtly blending and adding cohesion to the mix. This setup helps manage dynamics and maintain separation, ensuring that aggressive processing on the music doesn’t inadvertently impact the vocal track.