My Advice as a Novice

TheLurker

TheLurker

New member
So. I am pretty new to audio engineering and production. However, here is my advice that I have tested and found is the best thing I can pass on to other people starting out...

1) Use your ears - You know what sounds good, and what doesn't. Don't settle.

2) Test your mix/master on different types of speakers and see what the result is... You know you have a good mix/master when it sounds good on mid-grade headphones, car speakers, and studio monitors.

3) EQ, Compression, Reverb, and Panning are the essential elements of mixing.

4) EQ will make or break your mixes - play with it and learn how EQing things changes and opens up your songs. EQ essentially creates notches in your song which allows each instrument to sit well with every other instrument.

5) Compression is confusing to me... I use mostly presets - This isn't perse advice... I'm just admitting something I have less experience with.

6) In general, bass is best in mono.

7) Compression, Maximizers, and Limiters are what typically help your overall master track.

Again, this is just what I have learned... This is not the gospel. I am new to this, and do not claim to be an expert. However, after I started using my ears instead of having some cookie cutter recipe my mixing/mastering improved greatly. I hope this helps you new guys!

What do you guys think?
 
All valid points - I've learned these tips as I went along. Still learning.
We should get the "treat your room" comments shortly :)
 
Do your eqing on the way in through mic placement, on your guitar amp, on your guitar, by tuning your drums, etc.
Remember what you had to EQ last time and fix it at the source the next time.
 
I agree mit Dem Swartz. Learning to track is something that I learned that is really important.
 
Tracking is pretty straight forward. Sing into the mic, stick a mic in front of your best speaker, 4 mics on the drums, direct feed your keyboard.
Mixing has way more variables and involves a completely different set of skills. Harder than recording.
 
But if you get tracking right, mixing is so much easier.

Quite often easier said than done as a beginner, there is no substitue for practise.
 
TheLurker said:
So. I am pretty new to audio engineering and production. However, here is my advice that I have tested and found is the best thing I can pass on to other people starting out...

1) Use your ears - You know what sounds good, and what doesn't. Don't settle.

2) Test your mix/master on different types of speakers and see what the result is... You know you have a good mix/master when it sounds good on mid-grade headphones, car speakers, and studio monitors.

3) EQ, Compression, Reverb, and Panning are the essential elements of mixing.

4) EQ will make or break your mixes - play with it and learn how EQing things changes and opens up your songs. EQ essentially creates notches in your song which allows each instrument to sit well with every other instrument.

5) Compression is confusing to me... I use mostly presets - This isn't perse advice... I'm just admitting something I have less experience with.

6) In general, bass is best in mono.

7) Compression, Maximizers, and Limiters are what typically help your overall master track.

Again, this is just what I have learned... This is not the gospel. I am new to this, and do not claim to be an expert. However, after I started using my ears instead of having some cookie cutter recipe my mixing/mastering improved greatly. I hope this helps you new guys!

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

1) You've got to 'train' your ears first. A novice's ears dont' know what to listen for.
2) There's many other ways to listen to your mix - earbuds, phone speaker, mono, Bose multi-speaker crapfest, etc. And everyone's car stereo can be different, too, etc.

5) How is this advice?

This whole forum is about advice. Keep practicing, use the MP3 Clinic, listen to what some of the 'old timers' here do and say.
 
RAMI said:
Good tracking gets you more than half way there. It's anything but straight-forward. Moving a drum mic 1/2 an inch makes a big difference to the overall picture. it's not just "put up a mic and hit record".
Click to expand...

We agree there - I should have said set you drum mics up properly.
I think mixing is more difficult, because I don't play drums lol.
 
RAMI said:
Good tracking gets you more than half way there. It's anything but straight-forward. Moving a drum mic 1/2 an inch makes a big difference to the overall picture. it's not just "put up a mic and hit record".
Click to expand...

Amen.

RAMI said:
....also, and this is meant as no offense to the OP, because in this case he really was trying to help and learn at the same time, and he doesn't seem to be spamming anything.....

....but....can we somehow put a kibosh on "Advice" threads? 90% of the time they're just one person posting their opinion, and most of the time it's someone's under-handed way to generate traffic to their 2-bit site. These types of threads never lead to anything good, and they're almost never helpful.
Click to expand...

This ^^^^

Enough with the "advice" from those that shouldn't be giving any.


Also, tracking is way more than just sticking mics. Stick them correctly, and mixing becomes infinitely easier. I personally find mixing way easier than tracking, and maybe that's because I spend time trying to track the best sounds I can to begin with. At that point, the mix damn near mixes itself.
 
In context to the OP's post, it was in the correct spirit of advice. He didn't say how to do something, just here are some of the steps you need to know as a beginner. Which many on this board have forgotten because they have been doing it for so long.

I thought it was pretty good.
 
Noted.

I was just attempting to be helpful, I wasn't trying to promote anything other than some tips that I wish I would have had when I first started recording / mixing / mastering.

Thank you all for the feedback!

TheLurker
 
RAMI said:
....but....can we somehow put a kibosh on "Advice" threads? 90% of the time they're just one person posting their opinion, and most of the time it's someone's under-handed way to generate traffic to their 2-bit site. These types of threads never lead to anything good, and they're almost never helpful.
Click to expand...


Well . . . that's a bit tricky, because every time some asks a question about something, they get pages full of advice. And sometimes they are getting the same pages of advice even if they haven't asked a question. This whole site's existence is predicated on the giving and receiving of advice.

"Advice threads", as such, are a relatively rare occurrence in this particular universe.

But I agree that nearly all advice is personal and imminently ignorable. But that's the real neat thing about advice; it is not compulsory to heed it.
 
gecko zzed said:
Well . . . that's a bit tricky, because every time some asks a question about something, they get pages full of advice. And sometimes they are getting the same pages of advice even if they haven't asked a question. This whole site's existence is predicated on the giving and receiving of advice.

"Advice threads", as such, are a relatively rare occurrence in this particular universe.

But I agree that nearly all advice is personal and imminently ignorable. But that's the real neat thing about advice; it is not compulsory to heed it.
Click to expand...

Do you seriously not know what I mean by "advice threads"? Or are you just having fun with semantics? Of course every time someone asks a question they get advice. I'm talking about threads like the "Top 10 ways to blah blah blah...." that are usually authored by someone who either A) is not qualified to start teaching us all, or 2) is just trying to direct traffic to his site.

Weird, I could have sworn that Jimmy got rid of one guy's links yesterday for that very reason. You guys also banned Paschiallis because his advice threads are just spam. Same thing with this thread: https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...ns/10-tips-improve-your-mixing-skills-380124/

Seems like, until yesterday, pretty much all the mods agreed that this is a problem. I guess today everything changed. Weird.
 
Maybe the thread should be renamed "Tips and Tricks"? Lots of folks here have some pretty good information.
 
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