how to avoid from harsh mix?

[Lucky C]

hi everyone,

i hear alot Tommy Trash mix,and it seems that all insturments are have a bright image but nothing have any harsh from the highs or the mids.

i know its all about eq but i mess around alot with eq and reduce alot of freqs and it doesnt smooth like Tommy sound.

how everything sounds so bright and doesnt harsh?

thanks

[IELMusic]

hi everyone,

i hear alot Tommy Trash mix,and it seems that all insturments are have a bright image but nothing have any harsh from the highs or the mids.

i know its all about eq but i mess around alot with eq and reduce alot of freqs and it doesnt smooth like Tommy sound.

how everything sounds so bright and doesnt harsh?

thanks

The key to brightness is high frequency content. If your mix has plenty on high frequency content, it'll sound bright and crisp. The trick is, to make sure you don't have too much extreme highs (8 KHz and up), because that'll make it sound hissy and noisy, and also, to make sure you don't accumulate too much content in the 3KHz to 6KHz range, as this is where most of the harsh, piercing high tones reside. So, to make a sound brighter, boost it's highs, but scoop out a bit of the upper mids when it starts to sound harsh.

[Lucky C]

Thanks for your replay...but few things I have to ask.
When you eq some lead,like supersaw and you reduce the upper mid you will lose some character of the lead,don't you?

When I listen to david guetta - laserlight,this track is full but full og highs and it doesn't scream!!
How is possible to do that? Do I need to cut freq firsts and than boosts? Should I boost with pultec?

Thanks

[Automotions]

What I have found that work quite well is to tame bass and/or mid with a shelf filter (simple high pass usually destroy too much the sound I find). Then I use a simple boosting filter (simple bell curve) with large bandwidth around a sweet spot in the high frequencies. Finally a shelf low pass or simple low pass on the very top to keep really harsh frequencies checked.

[james_mcfadyen]

When I listen to david guetta - laserlight,this track is full but full og highs and it doesn't scream!!

LOL - David Guetta is not a producer, at least not in the sense us on KVR are producers. Think of him as the boss who employs other people to do the hard work.

[TIMT]

Fred Rister is david guettas new "ghost producer"he's the one responsible for the new guetta dance pop sound.i think Sandy Vee is behind some of it aswell,though am not entirely sure on that one, that maybe on a track by track basis rather than an actual "ghost producer".

His older (love don't let me go,walking away etc)one was Joachim Garraud,who is now an established EDM act in his own right

Guettas a brand not an actual "artiste" so to speak

[Lucky C]

I know David isn't a engineer or something,that's why I was supriesed to see his name in the credits of the track "laserlight" under the section "producer,mixing & mastering"

[james_mcfadyen]

David Guetta is more of a project manager producer.

He is an exceptional DJ and knows dance music inside out. But he does need proper [creative] producers to realize his "brand".

[highkoo]

His older one was Joachim Garraud

Wow, hadnt heard that.
Ugh that hurts.

[christiancoriolis]

Cheneilat - don't forget to try different things with compression in your mix (or on individual tracks). A signal chain like this: EQ > Compression > EQ gives you a lot of leverage to emphasize some frequencies, while keeping them tamed.

Also, try parallel compression or play with the wet/dry control on your compressor (if it has one).