Due to high popularity of my article "Six Top Mixing Tips", this new installment brings 6 more tips to help you get a better sound from your mixes:

http://bizcovering.com/business/six-essential-tips-for-bette r-sounding-mixes/

Good tips, but a little unspecific and too general for my taste ...not making any statement out of the "safe zone".

Is their some giant production bible or something out there that people keep paraphrasing the same dated shit from?

On a more positive note, i found the "The best rice kripsie bar recipe" linked in your article very informative

On another positive note, your first article "six top mixing tips" is not to bad,i think you should change the title of your new one,what you have suggested is by no means "essential"

hey guys, i too thought that those steps were a little general, so I decided throw in some of my personal mixing tips if someone is interested in reading them. let me know what you think

Mixing Tips:

1. Usually I have TONS of channels in my track (20-50) so the mixing that needs to be done is insane! That's why it's the worst part of making the song xD. So... I choose to start out by grouping all of my separate tracks. I make a drum kit group, a synth group, and an FX group (sweeps, risers, noises, etc.). This makes it much easier to mix because everything is organized.

2. When I start my mixing, I usually begin by EQ'ing and Compressing the Kick drum at the same time because I hate doing things twice. After I did that, i would continue moving on down the drum kit group (snares, hats, percussion, etc.) because it is the simplest part of my tracks.

3. After that, I would obviously go to the Bass. Now, if you like to EQ the kick and bass before you move on to the snares n such, then that is fine. It's a matter of preference. When EQ'ing the bass, make sure that it has a dip where the kick is and it's EQ'ed out of where the kick usually is. I tend to keep my kicks at around 60 Hz and my bass at around 75-85 Hz (but it can vary due to the sound). Make sure you do some EQ sweeping to make sure you are boosting or cutting the right frequencies in the sounds (a.k.a., boost the sounds where they seem to be more dominant and dip them a little where other sounds are boosted. This helps keep everything in the mix).

4. Next, I would EQ and compress the synths (chords, plucks, leads, etc.) because they are a little bit more high end (when I mix, I tend to move from lower frequencies to higher frequencies, except when I'm mixing the drums). Usually my synths are at about 200 Hz, so I would make a little boos there and then dip it where other sounds (i.e., kick, bass, snares, etc.) might be. NOTE: if some of your sounds (it may be any sound, including: bass or synths, whatever) stick out like a sore thumb when they play certain notes, you want to use a compressor because that will make every note play at the same volume level (at least from my personal experience ).

5. Last but not least, if you're mixing a lead and a medium-high frequency synth, you want to EQ sweep and find each other's strong frequencies and give each one a little gain boost at those frequencies. For example, lets say your synth chords are hitting the strongest at 4000 Hz (or 4KHz). You would want to give it a little gain boost at 4KHz. If you have a lead in the song as well and it might be strongest at 5000 Hz (or 5KHz), then you would want to give it a little boost at 5KHz. Now, here's the important part... These two sounds are pretty close in frequency, so they are competing with each other, so it might sound kind of muddy together. What you want to do is take the synth chords that are boosted at 4KHz and put the gain down a little bit at 5KHz (where the lead is boosted). Do the opposite with the lead (dip it at 4KHz where the synth chords are playing). Make sure that the bandwidth ("Q") is farely large so that you are not cutting or boosing TOO much frequencies .

6. Ahhh, the FX is usually the easiest part of my mixing. Because I'm a lazy person, I'll tell you this: mostly I use a lowpass filter on my EQ to cut out any unneeded low frequencies that might be taking up space and boost it it I think the noise or something is too muffled or dip it if it's too bright. Do what you want with your noises, depends how you want them to sound.

FINAL NOTES & MASTERING:

- make sure you mix around -10 to close around 0 Decibels (dB) because it is going to be much easier to master, but if you happen to mix below those volumes, its fine; just try not to go too low because when you compress/limit the master, you might find that it distorts your sound a bit and you'll want to remix your track, trust me it is disappointing! lol. I usually throw a compressor and limiter on my master and sometimes an EQ if i'm finding that i have too much bass or high end in a track, so i would dip it a little in certain frequencies to keep the track clean and appropriate for the ears.

-And finally... the internet is your greatest friend for this. Make sure you check out some youtube videos and google any questions you might have about production or certain tricks. I found a lot of useful videos and articles about producing and I'm sure you will too.

It takes a lot of time to read and study this stuff, but eventually it will pay off. Better now than later! Good luck and I hope this helps
Last edited by itsNano on Thu May 10, 2012 1:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

Just remember, Q means "bandwidth". If the bandwidth is large it WILL cover a lot of frequencies.

Also, be careful (earlier in your tips) you mention about using a compressor if something sticks out like a sore thumb. This should NOT be the default position. Digital compression can be harsh so it's best not to be reaching for it at EVERY opportunity.

Automation is key to creating a dynamic mix which flows and nothing is sticking out too much.

Otherwise, great to see the enthusiasm at 18 years old!

I just dump all my single tracks and instruments into the dishwasher and hit the "Make Better"-button - instant sparkle and lushness....

what dishwasher u usin? xD, naw i'm just messin. thx for the support james

I'm very keen to hear about this dishwasher trick! Might save a lot of time

Dude, did you try the iPhone app TrackAwesomifier? It's actually (IMHO better) even better than OneClickProMix 2.
Last edited by tranel on Thu May 10, 2012 6:06 pm; edited 1 time in total

I just put This Plugin on the master track. That way my songs sound like a Virus.

On a more serious note (pun unintended, but still quite funny. I hope it strikes a chord with some of you. Not that it's instrumental to understanding the following):

Most articles out there say the same thing as the OP's piece. What you don't read about that much (or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place) is the importance of contrast.

Contrast - that's the keyword for a clear, vibrant mix, I think. (alert: vague expressions for musical qualities coming up…. And lots of them..)

For instance:

boomy kick + woofy bass = mud. Avoid that by changing one of them to something snappy and dry sounding. The ear will be able to differentiate between the two sounds much more clearly.

Wide, reverby pad with chorus-drenched lead on top = maybe not mud, but definitely lack of clarity/definition, especially if the lead is also a wide-stereo sound. The solution here is to narrow the stereo image of the lead and keep it as dry as possible. But what if you still want the chorus-y sound? Program the lead sound in such a way that you achieve that effect without using fx, eg by detuning oscillators.

This philosophy can be applied to basically everything in the mix, not just bass and leads.

You often hear that the bass should be mono below certain frequencies. Well you can sharpen up your mix by making other sounds mono as well. This will increase the contrast with the sounds that really should be wide stereo - pads or big drum drops or swooshy fx. As I said above, leads positioned on top of a wide pad can be made mono or near-mono. Arpy things to the left and right can be made mono. For things that move in the stereo field, that movement will be much clearer/defined if the sound is in mono. Drum samples are often stereo - but do they need to be? Keep hihats, percussion and other such samples mono - if they are stereo they might reduce clarity.

Finally, think very hard about what element of the mix you want the listener to focus on at any given part of the song, what it is that drives the song at a particular time. Is it the lead? The bass line? You can make that particular element stand out when it needs to stand out by automating the volume, panning, eq of other tracks AND at the same time pulling back the fx of the "driving sound". The more effected a sound is the more indistinct it becomes, so for things that should "jump out" less is more in my book.

Anyway, my thoughts!

Best,

Anders

Isn't the mono bass thing for vinyl a myth?

A friend of mine is a huge vinyl collector and he has plenty of records with crazy stereo low-end action. The vinyl edition of Cyclo's Id springs to mind.

Rashad Becker has this to say about the matter.



http://www.monolake.de/interviews/mastering.html

Yes, good tips. I've thought the same on some of these.

Don't forget a really helpful friend, your side-chain compressor. Create fast slight reductions in volume on bass for example right where the kick hits. I find this is good sometimes though not all the time. I try to avoid a pumping sound, but I do find this helps the kick stay loud and clear while the bass notes can fill the rest of the rhythm.

Another thing, remember our ears are geared towards the mid-range, or the vocal range. If you want to make personal contact, I mean you want to get an emotional connection, focus your content in that area rather than really shiny highs.

In other words, gently filter out some high frequencies when they are not needed. This will bring the focus down to the mid-range as the high content is less distracting now. I am talking about 20k+. Try it out anyway, care is to be taken not to dull the track, but it works nicely. Once you have this nice mid-range you can then widen it. This means the listener is surrounded by more familiar intelligible frequencies rather than music for bats.

If you will excuse the shameless self promotion, I have a "here's one I made earlier" example here:

http://soundcloud.com/aiyn-zahev/mix-in-progress-5_8

Very cool music btw. Lovely to listen to just for the mix alone. Its pretty clear, clean and wide. Lots of room.

Oh, that is my last point. Listen to really good mixes even if they are not in your genre. I listen a lot to minimal house for this reason. Sasha's invovler, Guy J 1000 words. Very good mixes.

As far as I remember, the beatles had very hard panning(Drums, Bass, Vocals) on a lot of their records. I never had any problems with jumping needles.

Just adding a practical example to the above. I revisited a mix for an upcoming track yesterday night in which I've long felt that the latter half of the track felt "overcrowded". Basically, there's bass/drums, shakers hard-panned to the left, hi-hats panned right and a BIG pad underlying a bell sound that is quite atmospheric with a long reverb tail that kind of "rings out."


I improved clarity by:

1) in the bass/drum buss (I always use a separate buss for these), I made a cut of 3 or 4 db at around 800Hz with a wide Q to give more space to the pad and bell sound. There are some high frequencies in the kick/bass that I didn't want to lose but the mid-part could be tempered.

2) Lowered the shakers by several decibels. Shakers are deceptive and insidious creatures. You don't really notice them in a full mix, but if they are too loud they can really muddle things up.

3) Same thing with an arpeggio that's basically low-pass filtered white noise with a bit of resonance and cutoff modulated by a slow LFO. It is hardpanned to the left and kind of interacts with the shakers. This too was lowered as it distracted attention from the more high-frequent bell sound.

4) Carefully checked the frequencies at which the pad and bell sounds clashed and used mid-side EQ to cut frequencies of the pad sound. The listener should home in on the bells, hence the pad had to give. In the center (ie the mid in mid-side) I made a deeper cut than the sides. I also hi-cut the pad more in the center than in the sides. This opened up the mix somewhat - but still not good enough.

What made a real difference was lowering the amount of reverb on the bells and using a stereo tool to narrow the stereo width of the sound itself (including the reverb tail!) down to about 70% of the original. This positioned the bells firmly in the center and (with the mid-side EQ) with the pad enveloping it but not covering it (if that makes sense).


Much better!