I'm with you BJ with the analyser
... for good reason ...At 66 and having been mixing FOH back in the 70's and 80's, hell, my ears are well shot!
I mix by building up the sounds - but I nearly always start with the very basic things - I stick ReaEQ on each track (just coz it's a simple "surgical" eq to use, and it shows you the rough frequency spectrum live as you tune it). On the tracks with lots of bass, I make sure we don't drift down to much into the sub bass (I would add a sub bass track if I wanted sub bass), also I chop off the higher frequencies as well, making sure not to mangle any string pluck sounds. For the very high freq things, I pretty much do the opposite.
Basically making frequency "space" for the rest of the track ...
For me the mid range stuff is harder and needs to be mixed in and EQ'd carefully WITH the other tracks since the bass and high freq will eventually "colour" those mid range sounds (using colour in the technical sense).
I then still use a freq analyser on the master track and check nothing spikes up where it shouldn't - if it does I mute down the tracks to isolate the little "****ers", then bring back the tracks and eq those tracks watching the analyser to get it "right". Still listening of course all the time.
I also check the stereo "power" - I have heard tracks where a huge chunk of stereo image is missing - once you hear it, it make everything sound very odd.
Anyways, I need to thank all those who have advised me in the last year and a bit I've been doing the OSC.
My sound design, mixing and production skills have improved immeasurably - and I really mean that. If I can feed back any of this learnt knowledge, then I will. I try to keep my comments to the point, but honest.Overall, this is been a pleasant and interesting ride so far ... I used my learnt skills to do a different competition (no placing, but I use OSC techniques to produce the track).
If you would like to hear it, I unabashedly link it here ... it's also on my SC page, but I will link to a dropbox version so it doesn't get a full player and distract from the MUX comp. (NO 3rd party fx except a little EQ/comp allowed.
)https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/333 ... 0stems.mp3
PS Of course, any nice comments welcome on the SC page - hehe!
db
