Ok now i've recorded all my tracks how do I polish them up to sound.....well professional I spose...cause at the moment it sounds ok but not tight. The song contains and 4 or 5 Audio and one midi drum track and its on cubase 5.1.

- this may not be professional [im certainly not . . . ] but my trick [and from what i gather its used by a few of us here] is to just whack endorphin on the mix and tweak it till it sounds good

- cheers rob

hmmm, that depends very much of which audio material it is

for the drumpart:

it´s always nice to have at least BDand SN separated that you can EQ/Comp./whatever
them..

and if you have a basstrack you should try to put it on a different spot then the BD frequency-wise so that you can boost them
-->if they´re on the same freq. you would get a muddy sound and no punch..

I hope that helped, seeya!

Also a question about a Bdrum and Bassline to improve the dynamic between those 2 actors ?

Should we seperate them on 2 different channel then send an fx & compress them together ?
Or what else tips are welcom

Get The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski and stop clowning around with your music.
Works for me!

separation means more control...

...I mean if you like you can still put them together on a subgroup afterwards...but (=thinking...) ...for me it would make no sense..

chave vun! (russian accent )

Putny's right. A skilfull mix makes a record sounding professional. It is a common misconception that certain mysterious processing stage called "mastering" makes a shining pro record from an average amateurish one. Nope. In order to sound good, you need to invest a lot, and I mean lot of time, regardles the equipment/software you have. A serious monitoring setup is necessary, too.
Listen carefully to every aspect and every part of your mix, and compare it to your favourite recordings. Do not let any tiny bit to sound just OK. Everything has to be perfect. Owsinski's book is a good lecture, but it won't teach you unless you sit down and try everything for yourself. Perfection is pain.

Another thing is how well is the audio recorded. For instance if you're using bad mics in combinations with bad pre's all the great mixing and mastering skills in the world aren't going to help.

Here's a quick bit of help though, make sure you can hear all the instruments well, and they have thier own room. I can instantly tell where the bass frequencies are messing with the guitar ones, and know to either EQ or Pan one away from the other to clear things up. Lets say you have a rock song...if you can't tell where the bass ends and the guitar begins you have a problem, and need to make room both in the mix with panning, volume, and frequency wise for all the instruments you're working with.

Mac,
Any chance of a snippet preferably in .wav format?

I agree with funky here. Just be sure you can hear everything well. My only difference is that the drum tracks can be louder or softer depending on the Era you're emulating. EG: 70's stuff should not have an overwhelming drumbeat and can be almost inaudible at times where if you're doing 80's stuff the drums must be so loud they practially drown out everything else.

Actually, it's all in how you want your music to sound. Do what I do, tinker.

I use an FFT plug (I can't remember the name) that lets me watch two separate tracks interact. I'll take a look at how the bass and kick interact (everything else gets high-passed at 125 or higher) and then take a really precise, steep notch to the kick where the bass fundamentals are. Ahem, I once did this for an entire record _by hand_ in a wave editor... so I'd notch each bass/kick hit for that particular bass note's fundamental and first harmonic. There are tricks with sidechains and multiband compressors to do this... but....

Yeah, yeah, anal. But it sounded fantastic.

BTW, I don't recommend panning as a solution below 100Hz... because of the length of low frequency waves, they lose almost all localization at around 80 and below. (Ever seen a stereo sub-woofer?)

I apprenticed under a big-time producer for a couple years and I would always ask him how he did this or how he did that, and he would always say, "I fucked with it until it sounded good" at first I thought he was holding out or torturing the poor teaboy. But in the end, that was the most important thing I learned... there are no magic eq settings, shiny pieces of gear, voodoo incantations, or anything else that's going to make it sound pro. Just your ears.

Best,

Art
>>0xBA
http://www.bitshiftaudio.com

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jun01/articles/pcmusician0601.asp

http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/bmix/bmix.asp

i hope it is of some use.

I've got to go along with Putny's suggestion.

I picked up Bobby Owsinksi's Mixing Engineer's Handbook and was very skeptical at first.

And then I decided to stop screwing around looking for a magic plug-in to do the trick and really start listening to my mix. And lo-and-behold the quality of my next track was like night and day compared to the previous ones. Owsinksi knows what he's talking about - from general frequency sharing practices right down to tweaking the compressor so it pumps and breathes with the track's BPM. You really have to read between the lines though to pick out some of the tricks these guys use.

The book is worth twice its price and I would recommend it to anyone who's never had the chance to watch and listen to a real mix being done by a professional. Of course you want to use your ears / have a decent monitoring environment etc. But there really is a lot of little details that make a big difference. It was an eye- and ear-opening read for me.

That's just one guy's opinion and I could be full of shit for all you know...

But I don't think so....

I could post an mp3 of the two tracks too to prove it... if anyone's interested. Who knows, you might even be able to tell the difference at 128kbps... but then again you might not.

Resonance

Well I'm an attrocious mixer and although I'd like to think that Bitshift is over-exaggerating, I know that he speaks with wisdom. DAMN IT!

But I think there is merit in adopting advice while learning. I mean I can appreciate that if you want to mix as a profession it wouldn't help to be rigidly attached to 'rules of thumb'. The flexibility of your approach would be one of your selling points.

But I know from my point of view, I want to be able to mix adequately to get good levels, clarity with the enough polish to make my music marketable.

I don't want to be hired as a mixer, I want to be hired as a composer.

I still agree with what Bitshift says about the hard work, the monitoring equipment and the 'ear' factor, but I do think when we say we want our music to sound "professional" we don't mean that we want it as if it were mixed and mastered by a seasoned professional. I think we are more asking for some guidelines so that we can produce a decent sounding track that doesn't completely stink of amateurism while we slowly develop our own less rigid 'ear-driven' techniques.

Does that make sense?

My biggest problem is that I don't seem to 'get' EQing. I mean I get it in theory, but I never seem to be able to get it even vaguely right in practice. I will soon be posting mixing questions on this forum hoping to get some tips and pointers and I will keep at it until the bastard works. I hope to be able to get some throw away pointers from a professional like Bitshift when I do. Maybe I can become a 'seasoned professional' by association?

Caleb

Caleb

Hello

The most important change in my own mixing occured when I realized its all _one_ sound.
Each sound must be defined in their invididual place so that they are playing with each other and not on top of each other. Audiophile listeners always 'look' for depth and positioning in a mix.

So I think it helps to try imagining "visually seeing" each particular sound in an ideal environment, while listening, then "fucking with" the settings until it feels they are correctly placed visually as well as aurally. Its about somehow using your primary sense as an aid to transforming the mix from 2D to 3D.

Caleb... well said. I didn't mean to come off like 'everyone doing song demos should put in eighty hours a week for a few years under a slave-driving producer' Although it would definitely help the quality of your recordings, you probably wouldn't be focusing on the right things.

FFT is your friend for learning eq. There are a couple of good, free (or shareware) VST FFT visualization plugins. I regularly throw one up to see what's going on in a track. (As I mentioned before, I'm very anal about kick/bass interaction). You might be surprised (most people are) about where the fundamental of any given instrument REALLY lies. Again, 'seeing' it won't really help the final product, but it does help you know what to grab. When I was undergoing jedi training (way back when) I used to spend an hour each day (hey, it's like practicing an instrument) sweeping eqs across mixes or individual tracks, and trying to hear how it affected the sound.

I apologize if I seemed self-righteous in my previous posts. (Wifey says I was). I just think too many of us (me included) spend too much time/money searching for/buying answers/toys when what we're really looking for is at the end of a eight hour session at the DAW.

I like Resonance's post about Bobby Osinski's book, too (I haven't read it). But anything that advocates listening carefully to your mix rather than strapping the latest cool 'vintage compressor' plug across the mains is okay in my book.

Don't mind me though... my mixing motto is 'why compress when you can over-compress!'

see(hear) http://ino.iserver.net/Good_Day_To_Die.mp3 to see what I mean.

Best,

Art

>>0xBA
http://www.bitshiftaudio.com
Art

[ 14 April 2002, 05:35: Message edited by: bitshift ]

Hey, just to add a little more to the picture at hand here: I'm with Bitshift in that listening is key. But there is one trick (for lack of a better word) that might help (I picked it up on some other forum where several Pro-engineers and such where saying it).

It is "reference material" !!!!

You mix on a certain set of monitors, being good ones or ot so good ones. So what you need to do is to get familliar with THAT certain Pro-sound you are after, sounding on YOUR monitors that you mix on. It will help you to listen and hear what your own mix needs. So pick a few great recordings that sound like you want to sound and listen to them on your mixing equipment as often as possible. It will "calibrate" your ears to your monitors for THAT sound.

Another thing with mixing is ear fatigue. After long sessions you start loosing definition in your listening. So it also helps to listen to your reference albums in between mixing sessions.

i agree the mix can make or break a song, ever factor has to be taken in to concideration eq, compression, limiting, panning.

if any one knows the basic rules then let me know aswell

here`s some links

http://www.alesis.com/support/notes/Signal_Processing/compbasc.html

http://www.waves.com/htmls/service/tips_tricks/hutch.htm

Regards

Hmm... i would definitely be interested in knowing about these... post away

quote:

---

Originally posted by bitshift:
FFT is your friend for learning eq. There are a couple of good, free (or shareware) VST FFT visualization plugins.

---

http://www.orion-central.com/reviewcplugs.shtml

Eq and compression is the answer!

Interesting thread...

quote:

---

Resonance said:
I could post an mp3 of the two tracks too to prove it... if anyone's interested. Who knows, you might even be able to tell the difference at 128kbps... but then again you might not.

---

Great idea Res (or may I call you Q? )...could you mp3 them and listen to see if you can still hear enough detail to make it worth posting...or better still, post shorter extracts in WAV format?

V.good idea though - 'before and after' examples of various techniques...could be the start of a whole new café.

deW.

Hi There

Like a good painter uses it`s eyes for 90 % and his brushes and paint for 10 %
The good composer uses it`s ears for 90% and his instrumentarium (being plugins and plugins and plugins and a sequencer a good soundcard and good monitor boxes in the computer music field)for 10%

in either caes ... music or painting ...leaving out is the key. The most misty music that i hear in forums and on the radio nowadays is overcomposed.

A good mix in a good song stands or falls with the composition. When there is no overlab in sound ... you get that cool sound.

I will post some songs of me soon.

poweruser

Here's one I like. Only $20

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/NickWhitehurst/fft.htm

There's another one that let's you view multiple channels and see how they interact...

Can't find it now.

I also use the Free Filter plug that comes with Steinberg's Mastering Edition (funny I find it more useful for spectral analysis than the actual spectral analyzer ) $300 for the bundle.

Ozone's analyzer is swank-daddy (http://www.izotope.com), but a little heavy to be strapping on individual tracks (since it's also an EQ, MultiBand Compressor, Stereo Enhancer, and Reverb )

Oh, and one can't forget the one that comes with Cubase. ahem. Well maybe one could forget...

Best,

Art
>>0xBA
http://www.bitshiftaudio.com

[ 15 April 2002, 13:14: Message edited by: bitshift ]

Alright DeWaverly.

I've made two little 10 sec. snippets called 'Before' and 'After'. (remember I'm not an engineer, just a musician trying to get by on the cheap by doing it myself)

And to all Windows Media Player users: turn off that drug known as SRS WOW effects. It's deceptive and sweet, and it's siren song can lure many a one into a false sense of reality. Turn it off and live with the ugly while you learn.

Now I know there's not a lot of rockers here at KvR, but musical taste aside - you can definitely note a difference in production. I should really post something that's more fitting to my own style - but this was a couple of years ago and these two pieces were exactly the 'before and after' ones that I was mixing when I read the book (for those of us who crave immediate gratification). It's all about listening and Bitshift's sweepable EQ practices are right on the money. Try it out - the more you listen the better you know what freq. to grab for when you're mixing. And check out the eq spectrum of your mix. I use Steinberg's Free Filter now to see where my mixes need balancing and now they're not so ear-splitting in the high-end...

I know they're both short so set them to loop and listen for a minute or so.

As for my own thoughts the 'Before' clip sounds a little too crispy in the highs, and the mids and lows seem kind of muddy but still passable. The guitars are supposed to be heavy (and you get the idea they're heavy - but they don't really sound heavy).

The 'After' clip was a happier mood, so I threw a chorus on the guitars to make them sound lighter and smoother. The bass is rounder, the drum mix has way more punch, and the whole thing is more 'in your face' which is what I was trying to do in the first example. There's more body.

Of course it was no where close to perfect and listening back now it's still way too crispy (it's more in the ballpark of decent and passable), but it was the start of better mixes and a better understanding of eq, reverb, and compression. Fast Forward a couple of years and my mixing hat fits much better than it did before I read the Owsinski book (and used my ears instead of a magic plug-in - which actually was a hardware TC Finalizer Plus and cost me an arm and a leg too!!! - it's harder to mix with only one arm. (My apologies to any one-armed visitors - I meant no disrespect)

I'm still miles from good but my mixes transfer better to different environments and my demos sound more respectable.

Like I said earlier, the difference seemed like night and day to me. Check it out.

Res

Before and after would be better if it were exact same musical moments that were reworked.

I think a forum would be great for this b4 and after.

Bitshift -- wanna volunteer to be my Obe Wan Kenobi?? I really need the help.

Doug

Yeah, it would have been better, but this was a couple of years ago and I was mixing the same style of music. I was just showing an example of how much this particular book helped me by reading it.

The examples weren't meant to be guidelines - just examples of a change in my perception and mix quality.

I thought it was a valuable read that's all. And a 'before and after' forum is a great idea.

Res

Doug -

Are you effing crazy? The only Jedi Obi-wan ever instructed was Anakin Skywalker, nee Darth Vader. Who wound up killing him!

Go find Yoda or something.



Seriously, though, I'm happy to offer up any advice I might have. Although I'm far from an expert... there are vastly more experienced and talented people that frequent these forums.

Best,

Art
>>0xBA
http://www.bitshiftaudio.com

P.S. The pHATmatik PRO 'demo' song http://www.kvr-vst.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=000057 was a runner up in the Sonic Animation remix competition... Hooray!

[ 15 April 2002, 17:26: Message edited by: bitshift ]

This is all really interesting, any suggestions on where to get The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski or the FFT bitshift suggests?

Michael

You can actually use Winamp almost like a plug-in to do some spectrum analysis.

You can get a freeware plug-in to Winamp called Line in. It's a freebie. With that you can set the mixer on your soundcard as an input, so that you can measure the output from your sequencer...or any other device generating sound.

Furthermore, you can get a slightly more fancy FFT plug-in for Winamp so that you can set it up just like a plug-in. I think that costs $30 and is approximately 1 second behind?? Although apparently that latency can be adjusted.

It's fiddly to set it all up, but I managed to get it right a couple of times and found it pretty handy. Although last time I kinda forgot how to do it. DOH!

Caleb

Just a word of thanks to all who replied, you have been very informative (did i make that word up?) although it may take a while to actually understand what some of you said.....i spose i'll buy the book and spend the time getting my ears tuned and i'll check out all the links...hopefully i'll post something in the cafe soon

Look forward to hearing your stuff MacNasty!

Best,

Art
>>0xBA
http://www.bitshiftaudio.com

I am also having problem getting the professional sound.

Is it possible to get pro sound using cubase and the best VSTis (Halion (with the best samples) etc) and best Effects (Waves, TC, Timeworks)?

Also is the cubase eqs good enough for pro sound or does it distort the sound?

My mixes sound hollow, not the full, polished sound. I am thinking maybe its the reverb. Is the plugin reverbs like Waves Rennaisance Reverb good enough (its also hard to figure out how to use it properly)?

These are some of my questions, maybe someone can help.

Alright seeing as how this is what I do for a living, I'll throw in my two cents.

The keys to a good mix.

1. Great performances.

2. Great songs.

3. Space.

4. Good Gear.

5. Great performances.

I'm not trying to be a smart@ss. If it's not a great performance, then it's not going to sound professional. If it's a lame song then it's.....not gonna sound pro. Great gear isn't a requirement of a pro sound, but it doens't hurt. There's a reason why an old calrec mic pre is still highly regarded. Finally, if there's one amateur mistake I hear all the time it's not leaving any space. Does every track have to be stereo?? Try putting a part or instrument completely on one side. Now put something else on the other side. Instant space and imaging....

My advice, read read read and listen listen listen. We all went through a period of barking up the wrong trees and trying stupid things. Just do it long enough and it'll start to just happen for you naturally. It took me a while before I started feeling really good about my mixes. Hope this helps.

PS: Lay off the reverb....

Some of the new software I've got is going to help I think.

I purchased Psy-Q and Optimaster for the Pulsar platform and they are fantastic.

The Optimaster is a multiband compressor and normaliser etc. that has a wizard on it that actually determines what bands need to be compressed for you and does it all for you.

The Psy-Q has compression and high frequency stuffarama on it to treat the treble and or bass with a bit of magic.

And suddenly a well-mixed song takes on a lovely, professional touch. oooh la la!

But there's the rub - the song has to be well-mixed. GOD DAMN IT! I don't think I've got a wizard for mixing yet.

OK, want a wizard for mixing, here you go

http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=a7476ba74c6df89945f6f6ae e53c3760&threadid=19596

Well, actualy the Guy is a WIZARD and he's telling about MIXING