Question about HipHop/Rap Mixing

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SwurVe

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Hello,

My question comes about hiphop mixing..Most of the stuff you see about mixing has to do with mixing the instruments seperate and all that like in rock music...but when it comes to hiphop/rap mixing...its instrumentals/beats as the background music....these are done by the producers and sent to the artist...the question i have is....should mixing of the beats since they are on just 1 wav file still be done or since they ahve been made by the producer he will have them already eqed right....

and if anyone has any good articles on mixing hiphop/rap music I would really appreciate it...


Someone please also delete the other 2 posts i accidently posted...lol my bad
 
Well, if it's a big label professional project, the beat and all it's elements are mixed along with the vocals as a multitrack and are mixed as one session. But if your talking about downloading an instrumental from the internet and adding your vocals later....

1.) If your just doing this for fun, you can just mess around with the levels, but will probably never get it sounding perfect because the beat was mixed before hand.

2.) If you are purchasing a beat from someone, usually they offer to send you each track as a different file so when it comes time to mix your vocals in, you can mix the beat along with it.

This is what I've come across as I've done both. Hope this helps.

-Springfield
 
Yea I have a producer who customly makes me beats but I just usually had him send the beat as a .WAV file to me...
 
but now my question is....when it comes to mixing a beat thats just in one file...is it just alot of eqing??
 
yes i haev that site on my favorites and have been through ALOT of articles on there....but still all them when it comes to mixing the beat goes instrument by instrument......but i dont have each instruemnt on a seperate track....im talkin strictly just beat mixing....not vocal or any of that in the mixing procedure...just the instrumental
 
Ok here is the deal...

An instrumental is all the differant instruments that where once in there own tracks on a multitrack mixed down to what is referred to as the instrumental 2mix.

Once you are holding instrumental 2mix all the mixing of those instruments is already done whether it is good or bad.

There is no such thing as beat mixing...

You can lay vocals to a instrumental and mix the vocals to fit the instrumental 2mix however this won't give you the best results.

You cannot mix the instrumental it is already done.

As stated earlier most professional producers give you all the tracks and a 2mix.

That way you can mix your vocals in with all the tracks. Then your do what is called a MIXDOWN and you end up with hopefully is a good sounding 2mix with vocals that is ready to be mastered.
 
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Why don't you record your vocals and then give them to your "producer" to do a proper mix of the whole thing? Isn't that what producers do?
 
metalhead28 said:
Why don't you record your vocals and then give them to your "producer" to do a proper mix of the whole thing? Isn't that what producers do?
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It depends. Some do and some don't. Some "producers" just throw together an instrumental and sell it and don't care what the finished project sounds like. Other, more professional producers, one again as stated earlier, will maybe throw a quick instrumental together and give it the the artist to do his thing while working with him and then get the vocal track and mix it in with the beat (track by track) wile adding fills, breaks, whatever.

In the pro recording industry, from what I've heard, the producer for the most part will go through the steps stated above and when the vocals are layed in the studio an engineer will be present to mix the whole thing down. The producer may or may not be present.

Of course, the most in depth you get, the more it's gonna cost, but when it comes to quality, if your serious about this and planning on releasing something somewhat professionally, quality>$$$.

I would ask your producer if they could supply you a track by track beat so you or an engineer or someone could mix the whole thing down as a final song. Or just ask the producer if they will be willing to mix the track with your vocals added.


Hope this made sense. I just woke up, so my heads a bit cloudy.


-Springfield
 
I have a friend who raps to some of my beats, and my normal process is to hand him a stereo mix (usually just an interleaved stereo file on cd) and let him write lyrics to it, rap while listening to it, etc. so that he gets an idea of how he wants to lay the lyrics down with it.

Then once he's written his verses he brings them into my home studio where I have the 16, 24 individual tracks seperated (the tracks I had before I bounced them to the stereo file I handed to him in the first place) and we record his chorus, verses, whatever we're trying to do. At this point I have more flexibility when mixing the whole song, because I can process his vocals, layer them, and rebalance the rest of the mix so it meshes better with his vocals.

Then you would bounce to two tracks, do any final processing or instead send to a mastering facility to polish.
 
herein lies the difference between a 'producer' and a 'beat maker'.

a producer is involved in the entire recording process. if you are an individual artist, then the producer ensures that you have quality musicians playing your music, and that you have quality engineers recording your music, and the recordings themselves contain the sounds and song component parts (intro, verses, chorus, bridge, etc...) necessary to make it a song. then the producer sits in during the mixing process to make sure that the tracks are mixed and necessary effects are added to make give your already lively song even more life so that the mastering house has great mixes to work with.

a beat-maker makes a hip-hop beat, and passes you a stereo mix of that beat, or if he's really feeling generous gives you the actual tracks for that beat. you get no guidance from a beat-maker.
 
You'd be suprised though..nowadays a lotta hip hop tracks are actually done with a 2-tracked beat with vocals on top of it.

A good argument I've read was one from Madlib who said this was also a means of "not letting someone fuck you mix up" in other words, mixing your instrumental totally different... so "not caring" is not always the case
 
Well to your reply metalhead "Hip Hop" People aren't throwing the term around. The role of the producer has changed in general since the beg. of the music business. Therefore, people may be a little confused when the term Producer is used. You should pic up a book on the Music Business for better understanding b/f you make such an ignorant comment.
 
...ignorant comment?....
Come on dude, I am making that statement simply based on reading a bunch of posts around here about hip-hop tracks and the term producer seems to always pop up when someone downloaded a beat off of soundclick.com or something. People recording instrumental music just don't deal with such things. That is what my point is based on....not from an ignorance of the music industry.
 
BTW - I was going to give you some bad rep for that crap....but I decided to just do it here instead.....I was making a general statement about this board, not busting anybody's balls. So don't bust mine, ass.
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
 
jamaaljay said:
Well to your reply metalhead "Hip Hop" People aren't throwing the term around. The role of the producer has changed in general since the beg. of the music business.
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What a load of nonsense.... MetalHead is right.... the term "producer" is thrown around a lot, particularly in the Hip-Hop genre - although in fairness, they use the term "produca" instead of "producer".....

The definition of producer has NOT changed. The producer is the person responsible for all decisions of the recording process - from how the track should sound, to the tone of the vocals and all instruments, as well as interfacing between the studio engineers and the artist. They are essentially responsible for realizing the recording artist's vision - or in the case of a "produced act", they're responsible for realizing the record label's marketing vision for the artist.

Most of the time, the producer DOESN'T actually track or mix themselves - that's what the sound engineers are for (although they might if they have an engineering background.) Sometimes the producer will dictate the audio direction for the engineer, other times they will have sought out specific engineers because they want their sound for a particular project.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
What a load of nonsense.... MetalHead is right.... the term "producer" is thrown around a lot, particularly in the Hip-Hop genre - although in fairness, they use the term "produca" instead of "producer".....

The definition of producer has NOT changed. The producer is the person responsible for all decisions of the recording process - from how the track should sound, to the tone of the vocals and all instruments, as well as interfacing between the studio engineers and the artist. They are essentially responsible for realizing the recording artist's vision - or in the case of a "produced act", they're responsible for realizing the record label's marketing vision for the artist.

Most of the time, the producer DOESN'T actually track or mix themselves - that's what the sound engineers are for (although they might if they have an engineering background.) Sometimes the producer will dictate the audio direction for the engineer, other times they will have sought out specific engineers because they want their sound for a particular project.
Click to expand...


Many hip-hop/rap producers do their own sound engineering although some do not. In hip hop there are usually producers and "executive" producers. The "executive" producers are usually doing exactly what Blue Bear is talking about. Honestly, I can agree that the "executive producer" title is getting throw around just so the owner of the label can get his name in the credits. The "producer" are essentially the "beat makers" who provided the beat to the label, for a fee. I think the term "produced by" should be there instead. I think the fact that some of the hip hop producers learned sound engineering and started calling themselves producers started making it a universal thing to do in the genre.

Now take a guy who makes his own beats, does his own mixing and mastering, and directs his own vocals (as well as everyone else involved with his label). That's what should be labeled an executive producer.
 
Fieva said:
The "executive" producers are usually doing exactly what Blue Bear is talking about.
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No........ the executive producer is the guy putting up the money for the project -- he hires the producer. The producer hires the studio and engineers, or sometime will do it himself.

Executive producers are the business guys - record labels, or other investment capital suits -- they're the person the producer has to answer to..... and the only time they're in the studio is when the producer has something to actually show them (usually close to the end of the project).......

*sheesh* Where do you people get your info??????????
 
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