My mixing is trash and I'm tilted

[Bartizanier]

Okay I am a long time music maker but just starting to learn mixing/home mastering. Using Logic Pro X and making pretty spare and uncomplicated synthwave-ish stuff and some beats.

I've watched Music Tech Help Guy's Logic 101 series. He did a great job of showing me how to use the compressors and some of the other stock tools. What I didn't really get was why/when I should be reaching for compression. I've heard and read so many conflicting comments - from "on pro mixes everything is compressed multiple times" to "never do anything if you don't know why, not every track needs compression". etc.

I'm experiencing the following issues with my test mix:

- my bass sound is garbage. The bass sounds (both kicks and synth bass) are muddy and quiet. The only inkling I have is to highpass around 45 hz to remove muddiness. But after that I'm lost. It seems like every time I add bass-y sounds to a track they blow up my output dB and I have to turn them down. But now they don't sound loud! Is this one of those extremely counter-intuitive things where it's like "turn up the treble to make the bass sound louder" lol??

- along with not knowing when to apply compression, I don't know when to apply EQ. I tend to feel that the sounds I've chosen "sound good as they are" and so I often don't tweak the EQ. My songs are simple, instrumental, and there shouldn't be too many clashing frequency range instruments. How do I know when to employ EQ and Exciters etc.?

Thats all I can think of. Sorry for the rant.

[elxsound]

There are lots to unload here so keep in mind that any responses from your fellow users should be thought of as points to further research. Some of it comes with experience but of course... where to start (the why's of this and that).

One place to start is a simplified way of considering playback... with your speaker. This is literally moving back and forth to create what you hear and will get muddied because it can't move more than one direction at a single time.

This leads to the bass with it being one of the biggest culprits for energy depriving movement. What you want to do is prevent clashes between your bass sounds. The most obvious is your kick and bass because their dominating frequencies often overlap, so that's when you'll hear lots about side-chaining (and this is not just an electronic music trick because there are many tools to side-chain specific frequencies via an EQ instead of using a compressor to assist in creating space as opposed to pumping effects).

The next part about bass is knowing when to cut. The best thing here to do is to practice by EQ sweeping your favorite songs to better listen to where they cut the bass, the kick, and the rest of the instruments. You'll be surprised how much lows are cut in your favorite bass lines and likely just as surprised how much of the highs are cut on other instruments/tracks.

One thing mentioned here and elsewhere is that often individual tracks of a great mix might sound terrible by themselves, but the point is making them sound good together and it becomes a selective process of creating prominence for certain tracks and supportive placement for others.



What I often suggest, especially if you're going the free route online, find someone who is sharing their workflow for mixing. They will create a starting point to then work their way out and mix the rest of the song. You're not copying anyone... you're just creating a foundation to then better measure what you want to incorporate as you learn different techniques. There are lots of different approaches so try to find just one and then explore. Bouncing around with different teachers and no foundation will likely give you lots of contradictory information and stunt any potential growth.

Otherwise good luck.

[Synthack]

.......

[fese]

If you are just starting out, the most useful advice I could give is “don’t get frustrated and just keep doing it”. Mixing, like playing an instrument, takes time and practice. I’m still shit after 15 years, but I am better than 15 years ago. (I would be even better if I really did some systematic practicing…)

Then, if you’re looking on YouTube, forget any videos with titles like “top 5/7/10 mixing tips/things to do to every mix” and similar.

Personally, for learning mixing concepts (and not just specific EQ or compression moves) from the ground up, i would recommend Michael White’s “fundamentals of mixing” (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60v ... eY2MLoDsAJ).
It is rather style-agnostic, very detailed (patience needed), and only gets to EQ and compression at the very end, but covers everything related to learning to mix like monitor setup and calibration, using reference tracks and so on. For specific electronic music mixing tips later on you’d have to look elsewhere, though.

[imrae]

As usual, I recommend the Mike Senior book (Mixing Secrets for the small studio) which takes you through a basic fader balance and then use of EQ, compression etc to improve this mix. It's a useful approach to these tools as "problem-solvers".

A few other thoughts/tips from your post:

The production bar is quite high in synthwave. Don't be discouraged that your mixes aren't as loud as commercial tracks: focus on balance and clarity and you should get to about -14 LUFS without too much funny business.

If your bass part doesn't sound loud but there are plenty of low frequencies, then you need a brighter bass sound, not more volume. Watch out for frequency clashes with other parts; use a frequency analyzer and think about where space can be made.

Similarly, think about how bass and kick overlap in subs. There is no hard rule about where to highpass, or even which of them should have lower subs. I suggest if you are not yet confident at mixing to avoid sidechaining and multiband compression - for most purposes you can get a nice kick/bass mix with faders and EQ. Only in the ultra-loud pop/dance world is it truly "necessary" to have them both full-bandwidth and separated temporally.

[DJ Warmonger]

I don't know when to apply EQ

Every time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's the first basic thing I do during sound design and then later in the mix.

This compression fetish is quite absurd, but common myth circling around music production scene.
I made a video about what to compress and what not to sort this thing out: https://youtu.be/zHllr4DZ3mA

Certainly compressing everything blindly is counter-productive - been there, done that.

[legendCNCD]

If you are just starting out, the most useful advice I could give is “don’t get frustrated and just keep doing it”. Mixing, like playing an instrument, takes time and practice. I’m still shit after 15 years, but I am better than 15 years ago. (I would be even better if I really did some systematic practicing…)

Good stuff on the whole thread, but the one is "Dont give up" as you said. It really takes time and practice. From getting to know your speakers/headphones to using less eq bands etc.

[DaveClark]

I tend to feel that the sounds I've chosen "sound good as they are" and so I often don't tweak the EQ. My songs are simple, instrumental, and there shouldn't be too many clashing frequency range instruments. How do I know when to employ EQ and Exciters etc.?

It looks from your post that you may be auditioning sounds solo, then deciding on something that sounds good, then mixing that in.

You need to take into account that, if you already have other sounds, a lot of the new sound is going to be absorbed into the existing mix, even for bass. It may be that you are choosing inappropriate sounds at the start, given what you either already have or plan to have. This makes mixing a lot harder. If one took a bunch of solo parts that were not designed to mesh well together and mixed them all to one track, it would most likely sound awful, even if they were the same tempo, style, etc.

As another posted pointed out, individual tracks of a finished mix don't usually sound all that great by themselves, after all the processing. Again, you can make things easier on yourself by using sounds that are already somewhat better for mixing together. This takes experience, but you can learn a lot by listening to different mixes that use different types of basses, drum sets, etc. The various genres of music all have different types of these instruments in large part due to how they mix together. If you change one instrument, you may have to change several others, along with the timing, and Voila! A new genre or variation of an existing one appears.

After choosing appropriate sounds for a mix, then you can worry about EQ, compression, etc.

[Bulbizarre]

If you're into synthwave, Mitch Murder makes amazing mixes. In particular the latest things are very, very clean, you should have a listen ! Some other artists use heavy compression and mastering processing, maybe you want that too. Just listen to some good tracks and compare directly with your mix.
Mixing is to me extremely difficult and almost an entire other thing to making music. Just keep trying and you will slowly improve.

[sjm]

The easiest type of compression to understand is "leveling" where, i.e. giving a track a more consistent level. This is a great way to make sure that it's not dipping in and out of the track. Most obvious use to understand what I mean: vocals. You don't want your vocals to go from barely audible to really loud, you want them to be - more or less - consistent and intelligible from start to finish. But most vocal performances are relatively dynamic, because singers move around the microphone, get more excited (and thus louder) etc. So a compressor is a great way of ensuring that the vocals are more or less consistent from start to finish.

That's not to say that is the only use of compression, but that it's probably a good place to start thinking about it. It's easy to understand and it's easy to hear. Once that sort of approach/thinking makes sense to you, then the other uses of compression will also make a lot more sense, as they tend to be about applying the same concepts to achieve different results. For example, if you compress your drums, you can accent different parts of the drums depending on how you set the compressor to react. Drums have an initial attack phase (transient) and then a sustain phase (what I'd call the "body"), and depending on how you set up your compressor, you can accentuate different parts of the drum's sound, giving it different tonal qualities and a different type of impact.

As for EQ, the simplest case is probably when you have an audio take which has a lot of low end rumble in it, which is below the range of where the primary action is. Again, if you think of a female vocal recording, there's probably not much happening in the bass beyond any ambient noise. So removing that simply cleans up the recording at makes it less rumbly.

Different areas of the frequency spectrum have different qualities in how they make a track sound. The best way for you to understand this - because the terms used to describe the sounds are pretty ambiguous - is to load up a full mix and apply a narrow band pass filter to the master. Then slowly sweep it up from 20Hz to 20KHz and listen to the sound of each area in the spectrum. Using somewhat ambiguous terminology there's rumble, there's mud, there's boxiness, there's nasal honkiness, there's brittle brightness etc.

EQ will allow you to remove frequencies that are overly present or just sound meh in your mix, and as you practice, you will start to be able to hear the frequency band that has issues, and what instruments are causing those issues. It is something that will be really hard for you to hear at first, especially as you probably have no idea how each area of the spectrum sounds when you start out - hence the suggestion above.

You will need to practice a lot, and obviously there's a lot more to both compression and EQ than this; but it's probably a good place to start because these are things that you don't need to have well trained ears to hear, and don't require you to know the ins and outs of how they work to understand the use case. Start simple, and work your way from there.

[kingozrecords]

waveshaper for bass. a good tool would be something that allows waveshaping for lower frequencies. It's what makes 808 bas sound good.

[Barbarossa]

I don't know when to apply EQ. I tend to feel that the sounds I've chosen "sound good as they are" and so I often don't tweak the EQ.

Compressors for a beginner. Forget everything. It's BS.
There is one thing you need to learn first: how do frequency ranges sound and change the sound?

How does a 300 Hz boost affect the sound? What is a 100 Hz and what is a 60 Hz boost doing to all kinds of tracks and instruments. Learn how 2k, 4k and 8k sound and how they impact the sound.

Only if you know, how frequency ranges are sounding, you will be able, to identify a problem.
And there's no need to learn that alone anymore. There are good ear training tools available.

[ON BEATS]

Can I ask what sound module or vst you are using that sounds good out of the box?

I struggled with sound modules and even the Korg Triton VST until I found Hensive which has pre-processed sounds to speed the production process.

[Barbarossa]

As a general rule' I'd look what successful people use.
I have wasted much money and time, because I thought I could go the cheap route and do not need the expensive tools everyone uses.
It's the other way around: everyone successful uses these tools, not only because of ease of production speed, but also because that sound offers the shortest way to a final product.

Gladly the times have changed a bit and things ITB have become available.

The Virus is still a safe bet and a 100% emulation is available for free.

And never underestimate presets. Especially if they are made by top notch people.
In the case of EDM, nobody has made it more accessible and easier than - IMO! - the best sound programmer in the world: Manuel Schleis.
His Nexus and Avenger soundsets have been offering production ready, up to date HQ sounds for more than a decade.

If you have any EDM sound in mind, chances are high, that Nexus or Avenger will already offer it in the very high production-ready form and you are ready to go.

[FREMADETHIS]

I'd like to add that sometimes as a producer if you're not picking the right sounds out of the bat, its tough to "mix" it to sound good. If you are in control of the production, get better sound selection!