No reverb on the master bus! A recipe for instant mud.
7. Identify which instruments that really need effects (many effects add some form of stereo enhancement to the sound) at all. Think contrast, you have wide effected sounds in the background, dry ones in the foreground.
8. Similar to the above: think hard about what instruments need to be in stereo. It's not only the bass that benefit from mono. You can make leads, arps etc mono or near-mono too. This will emphasize the width of stereo pads in the background.
9. Sounds that move in the stereo field can be mono or near-mono themselves to emphasize the movement.
10. arpy, rhythmic things that are not so noticeable can be panned hard L or R. If you have two different patterns, make on L and the other R. This will emphasize width. Again, keep the volume of such elements low to keep your mix focused. These elements function more like sprinkles of movement that you'll miss if they weren't there but don't pay attention to otherwise. Such elements can be left dry.
Hope it helps.
Best,
Anders
How to achieve a wide sounding mix?
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- KVRian
- 926 posts since 15 Mar, 2004 from Tokyo, Japan
Eion Flow: Lush, cinematic electronica from the urban galaxy that is Tokyo, Japan. More on eionflow.com | Facebook | Soundcloud
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 1676 posts since 17 Dec, 2002 from Yorkshire
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- KVRist
- 364 posts since 23 Mar, 2008
Yeah, this is really helpful. I always thought you wanted to try to get everything in the same 'room' -- meaning, if you had one channel with stereo width and no verb, and one channel with lots of mono verb, panned slightly to the left, your ears would call bullshit.
I always thought you wanted to arrange the parts in the field like they were around you in a room, and then everything had to have more or less amounts of the same reverb, to indicate how close or far away this is.
This was all assumption, though. In reality, I couldn't name a single record that's produced this way. Apparently it's fine to use plenty of 'mixed media' on a record without creating the tacky, juxtaposed sound collage I thought it would.
I always thought you wanted to arrange the parts in the field like they were around you in a room, and then everything had to have more or less amounts of the same reverb, to indicate how close or far away this is.
This was all assumption, though. In reality, I couldn't name a single record that's produced this way. Apparently it's fine to use plenty of 'mixed media' on a record without creating the tacky, juxtaposed sound collage I thought it would.