Mixing Tips

Deijavoo

You guys are awesome. :-)

Cirrus

*whispers*. Mix competition....

Deijavoo

If I can't crack this myself that's happening. :-) although, I'm not sure that I have a prize. Maybe a broken SHO Clone.

Cirrus

In all seriousness though, when you say you've been working on it all week... Try to do a mix in a single session. Don't leave things for later, don't make excuses for things not sounding right because you'll "sort that next time". Be decisive, work as fast as you can, do what needs to be done. If it doesn't work, fuck that mix off - save a version of the mix that's got no effects and all the faders down so you have a starting point. Ultimately, a good mix isn't about endlessly massaging a work in progress. It's about doing the best you can in a single session, then maybe going back to tweak a few things a few days later once you've lived with it. That's been my experience anyway.

Nerine

Unfortunately, the only real way to get good at mixing is through experience. There are a few pointers that can help, and some useful advice has already been mentioned in this thread so far, but it takes time to develop your ear and know how to make sounds sit correctly with each other.

Why not have a reference track imported in your session and just try to copy it?

You may find that works better than fiddling with lots of tools that have complicated numbers and settings and whatnot that can just as easily wreck a mix as make it good!

For a kick off, how about just balancing the mix? Take off any EQ and compression/fx/routing/busses/parallel processing/yadda yadda

Pull the faders down,

Find a level (volume) for your kick.

Maybe set the fader for that channel at - 6-8dB

Great.
Bring up the overheads so they sound correct with the kick.

If it's been recorded properly, most of the drum faders will probably be sitting at around the same point.

Do that with all tracks in the mix.

Do some basic LCR panning.

Go and listen to that mix in the car or whatever.

At least then you can identify what the problems actually are before you start willy nilly processing for the sake of it.

If it hasn't enough bass, then maybe start to play with the bass guitar channels. Add more bass CONSERVATIVELY until you've made up the deficit.

At this point it may be fighting your kick drum.

Try some EQ cuts in places of the lower end of the bass guitar to allow the kick more prominence again.

High and low pass filter GENTLY all of the tracks. You may as well lose any information that isn't important.
You've got to make all this fit onto a stereo track after all.

When I say gently, I mean gently as well. Only slightly.
To much filtering and you'll end up with a boxy sounding crap fest with a lack of sheen and richness.

Mixing isn't so much about making something sound good. It's about making the things around that thing sound unnoticeably worse to make the thing sound good.

Rinse and repeat.

Snare needs more weight?

Maybe add a few dB at 300 cycles or so.

Or/And

Remove a little 300 from gtrs, bass etc. to allow the illusion of the snare having more 300Hz thud.

BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE.

That's basically mixing in a nutshell.

Balance is everything. How you achieve that balance is up to you.

Usually, simpler is better.

Don't process for the sake of it.

Deijavoo

Oh my Nerine. I feel bad as I'm listening to our masters right now and you've just added so much. Thank you for all that. In fact all of you. You've made a morose man happy, busy and happy.

I actually like my results, but have learnt so much. Next time I'll try the whole process from micing up to mixing.  Then the next time after that mastering too.  

I will post my results asap. Just finishing off some artwork, fuck it's only a daft e.p. but I've got right into the whole process and having a resource like  you guys is just frankly fucking brilliant. Why I didn't do this all 17 years ago in art college studying music I'll never know. Well I do, but it's not really for discussion on a family site such as this. :-) 

Thanks again guys. 

thomasross20

WOW! Just the thread I've been looking for.

There are some great mixing books but they're 300+ pages and I think a BIT much ... there must be concise summaries to these books. I'll read this whole thread. 

I have to say, this is my least fave part of the whole process - a lot of you know loads about this! 

Jeez - checked out a David Glenn vid... 30 mins and 70+ of them. Simply don't have that amount of time

Deijavoo

Thanks again guys.

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/35628/my-new-band#latest

I'm not saying it's perfect but a wonderful learning curve helped in no small part by you lot. I owe each of you a beverage.

Cheers.

Deijavoo

One thing that has been a bit tough was that I had to gate/compress the snare so much to get a nice crack to it that I lost a lot of my drummer's ghost notes, but worked better for the greater good etc....

Deijavoo

I'm thinking that next time I may invest in midi triggers and blend in for thicker sounds on kick, snare and toms with BFD. Anyone got any tips in this area?

Cirrus

I've only done it a couple of times, when something was lacking in the recording. So I guess my philosophy there is that samples are a remedial technique to fix some deficiency in the recording. As an example, on one of the tracks on our forthcoming album we recorded the drums in a much drier room than the other tracks, so I used some quite roomy, wet samples with lots of ring on the kick and snare to augment the quite short, dry recorded sounds.

Then I re-amped the recording into a long hallway to get some extra ambience, which was lots of fun

Not sure if this link will work... Hall Verb

Deijavoo

I do enjoy this stuff. All very interesting.

Nerine

You may want to check out Slate Trigger 2 in that case.

Nearly every record you hear nowadays has sample enhancement going on in some way. Sometimes it's to just increase consistency, sometimes it's to blend behind the real drums, sometimes it's to replace fully.

No hurt in trying it out. Don't be fooled into thinking it's somehow unpure or cheating or whatever.

It's a very widely used common technique.

The key is to do it well/unnoticeably.

That sorts the men from the boys so to speak. Badly triggered/sample enhanced drums sound bloody awful.

Deijavoo

steamabacus said:

With regards to the second of those points, I found this online critical listening course very useful (and pretty challenging - and I've always thought I've got fairly 'good ears'). I'm not sure when they'll run it again but I recommend it highly.

Just signed up this morning.  Starts October 5th for anyone else interested. Thanks again @steamabacus. ;

Just in time really as the next ep is in the planning.  

As I mentioned before I want to do the whole process from start to finish myself, however all I have is my iMac, Apogee Duet (2 input) and 1 condenser mic....so I need to plan to invest too. Headphone amp, a bunch of mics and, and, and..... I'm not sure. I could probably loan a load of stuff but would rather own for future etc.... I'm a right cheeky twat, any tips in this area too please?

spark240

Well I use a 4 channel Samson amp for cans, its fine.

I have a couple of SE decent mics, probably a few hundred ££ used.

I use Presonus Studio One on a Mac Mini....perfect...check out the free Artists version.

I have a Novation impulse for keys and a Presonus Faderport for transport control ( I could use the Novation)

Deijavoo

Cool, thanks man. I think the big outlay on mics is where I'd need some loaners. Will look into that Presonus.

Deijavoo

Sorry I should have said I am still pretty happy with Logic X, will just need to get more than just two tracks at a time down.

Deijavoo

Anyone any experience with one of these?

https://www.musicmatter.co.uk/m-audio-mtrack-eight?gclid=CJ6E-b-m2cYCFfMZtAod9fQBWA

Drew_TNBD

There is a book I use:
http://www.systematicproductions.com/mixing-guide.htm

It's really damn useful. If you follow it to the letter, you end up with a really decent starting point. Then you can learn when you need to veer off the path into your own territory.

Deijavoo

Cheers man.