What aren't I doing wrong?

[Monkey Allen]

Dudes, I've been recording on and off for let's say 3 or 4 years now. In truth I've been dabbling since around 2005 or so...but only in the last few years with a room to do it in and some decent gear. I'm a home hobby dude...guitar player...mediocre...not a good singer, especially when the mic is on and the REC light is on. I use vst drums and play everything else. I'm fully prepared to wear it that:

a) I'm not a good musician
b) I'm not a good song writer or arranger
c) my performances are mediocre
d) I'm inexperienced (but man, I've done a lot of mixes)
e) my monitoring situation MIGHT be my biggest problem

My problem is that my mixes suck like a vortex of sh1t like 49 times out of 50. I have managed to jag a couple of, to me, and others have said, pretty ok mixes. But most of them suck.

I hear real music and it's effortlessly smooth and balanced. It blends seamlessly with itself and doesn't have a shred out of place...there's no crazy overtones or boom or harshness or deficiency. It's natural and sounds just like it should sound.

Then there's my stuff which pretty much always sounds great...in my Senn 600 headphones and Yamaha HS8 speaks. I can mix a great sound in those cans and on those speakers. But when I hear my stuff elsewhere, as thousands of people have said, and as is a well known problem...it...just...sucks.

What appeared to be well balanced and well crafted is revealed to be...a vortex of poo.

The reverb I thought I had on the vocal has disappeared. It's dry and weak. The guitar fill that sounded perfectly balanced with the track now sounds 10db too loud. The vocal sounds thin and inept. The guitars that I spent an age finding the right sound for now sound harsh...they make my 5 inch speakers that I have rigged to my lounge sound system almost shake with harsh weird, spikey resonance. My stupendous Martin D28 acoustic guitar sounds like a $45 fake Yamaha knock off. It doesn't even sound like an acoustic guitar. It sounds like I strung fishing line between two coat hangers and strummed the contraption with a piece of apple peel. The bass guitar that had sounded right in the pocket now sounds crazily loud in all the wrong places. The Addictive Drum stuff or EZdrummer stuff that comes pre-mixed to a high standard anyway now sounds, unbelievably, like the snare is a dull hammer smashing on my skull and the cymbals are spiking into my ear like sharpened chopsticks.

You get the idea, I'm sure.

I just don't get how I can put on (let's say the Rolling Stone's "Angie"...and yeah I know it was written, tracked, mixed etc by elite geniuses the whole way)...so Angie...I have like 6 sets of headphones...a quick roll call...600's, 880's, 7506, 770's, m50's, m70's, Yamaha 220, Senn 280...I mean I have a lot of headphones...I put on Angie through ANY headphone...it sounds like Angie...the individual characteristics of the headphones can't stop Angie from sounding just like Angie. But...

...I put my song mix on each headphone...and it's an unmitigated BLOOBATH...it lurches in tonal characteristic from one headphone to the next...leaving me a jabbering, twisted mess curled into a ball on the floor wondering what the hell I need to do to make it stop. Here it sounds thin and reedy...tinny and cold...the next headphone makes it sound flabby and woofy and drowned out with honk and wool.

I close my eyes and choose one of the scattered headphones on the floor, plug it in and put on Angie...perfection. Doesn't matter what headphone.

So, I'm at the point where I'm thinking that this gig is not for me. Maybe it's time to sell up the gear and end the torture. I'm just going from one mixing nightmare to the next. I like writing songs and I like recording them pretty much. It's fun and while I'm doing it I feel as if this song is going to turn out good...but it pretty much never does.

I see people pick up guitars, acoustic or electric, on youtube and just play away on camera and it sounds 100 times better than me with my U87 and LA610 combo in my "studio". I just don't get how people can appear to do this at will...and all I seem to encounter is one horrific recording after another. But it's more than that...I think the recordings are decent enough...it's in mixing that I think I truly suck.

I can't get past being able to mix stuff that sounds good on my 600's and HS8's...and that suck everywhere else. And I can't work out how Angie plays good on all headphones...but my mix sounds wildly different on all headphones.

Sorry for the RANTTTTTT

Any tips?


`

 

[Track Rat]

I feel your pain. My only advice to anyone mixing is to LEARN HOW YOUR SYSTEM SOUNDS. What I mean is to critically listen to commercial recordings that are similar in style or genre you're interested in (and shit loads of ALL styles) on your system. Try to memorize where the bass is, drums, etc. Once you learn your system, getting stuff to translate to other systems gets easier. I will say for me mixing with headphones is a non starter. I always misjudge bass. I have to mix on nearfields.

 

[Monkey Allen]

Thanks man, good idea. To be honest, I haven't put enough time into that. So you got me pegged in one suggestion.

On an unrelated note and just to add to my original rant...I've read SO many mixing forum threads, I have the books, I've watched a ZILLION youtube videos.

For nada.

 

[subvibe]

Hi

I empathize with you

Mastering a Mix is a Dark Art that very few people learn A lot of the old Professional producers

Started at the bottom & worked their way up so many years of experience

Does this effect you ? Well not really in the recent years there are so many plugins that can give

Clear & Defined mixes based on a algorithm of 100s of popular songs Ozone being one of the best VST plugins

I have a pile of Out Board Studio equipment that has more or less become redundant, in my opinion digital

Is far easier to work with , Tannoy near field monitors & a good Quality Headphones But I nearly always use

Cheap ear buds from AKA for all my mixes & personally find these the best

EZ drummer is not brilliant but if you separate all your outputs you can get decent sounds Superior Drummer

Has the option to drag in a Kick or Snare wav sound so you can easily build up the Kit you like

There are also plenty of Free Mastering & EQ plugins you can Google them

It’s a learning curve & my advice is don’t give up , look at Tutorials on YouTube , ask questions on Forums

People are generally nice & like to Share the Knowledge

Good Songs can be made on the minimal equipment

Success

subvibe

 

[mjbphotos]

Do you have acoustic treatment in your room? From what you describe, it does sound like a monitoring issue.

 

[Mickster]

I'm a bit confused. Normal for me. You seem to be saying that almost every part of your mixes comes out bad.....even after sounding good on the 600's and the Yamahas. Most people would be ok with them sounding good on those. So....I guess you're saying that your mixes sound bad on everything else you play them on outside of your room. What are you listening to them on other than the 600's and the Yamahas?

So...yes....the room could be fooling you.....but the cans eliminate most of that idea.

To be honest....I think we could help you a lot more if you posted some of your stuff.

Mick

 

[Monkey Allen]

Thanks fellas. Here's my stuff:



Of all these songs, the only one that I'm happy with is the mix for "Better Me Better You".

And I have no idea why that one turned out so well balanced and good. Every other song has been a real demon to mix. Maybe "Head of the Company" was ok. But for "Better Me Better You", I did that 3 or 4 years ago...and around that time I did another 18 or so songs...ALL of which were leap years behind the quality of Better Me Better You...but I have no idea why that one turned out so well. I can't repeat the standard.

My room is treated...I have a lot of stuff in the front corners and stuff on the sides and rear corners. But I did not calibrate or measure anything at all. It's in a roughly 4 meter x 3.5 meter spare bedroom with wood floors. Thing is, I see so many people mixing in all sorts of rooms...with way, WAY less treatment than me. And they pump out glorious sounding stuff. I seem to only excel in harsh, bloated, wooly rubbish sounds.

Other places I listen are in ear buds, on 5 inch speakers, on laptops, phones, that kind of thing. And I can't make things work. As I said "Angie", the Stones song, sounds like "Angie" on all those listening environments...phones, 5 inch speakers, 8 inch, all headphones, buds, laptops etc. But my stuff varies all over the place depending on the thing I'm listening to it on.

The most recent song I did is called "Sound of Drums" and I was thinking, well I got it, this one sounds pretty great...then I heard it on the laptop and phone and it just sounded like ass.

 

[Papanate]

a) I'm not a good musician
b) I'm not a good song writer or arranger
c) my performances are mediocre
d) I'm inexperienced (but man, I've done a lot of mixes)
e) my monitoring situation MIGHT be my biggest problem

Any tips?

Yes - you have to get better at Musicianship, Songwriting, Performance and fix your Monitoring. When those things get better your mixes will get better.

 

[Mr. ROUSH]

Quite the objective assessment of your own abilities, though maybe a bit harsh. lol. I think most of us have struggled with the same feeling throughout the journey. Here's my advice, for what it's worth.

1. Experience in mixing doesn't automatically come with time. Some people have been doing it for much longer and still haven't developed sound techniques. So, don't gauge your success by how long you've been at it, especially if you haven't had a trusted reference to tell you what you're doing wrong and what you're doing right.

2. Ear training. We should always mix with a purpose. Never do anything just because it's common. As with anything else, you get better results when you truly understand why you're doing something. You're doing it because it's needed, not because of the assumption that you need it. Every chance you get, look up some ear training exercises. Once you truly understand what to listen for, you'll be making much more educated moves in your mix.

3. Sound selection. I think this is one of the biggest problems for a lot of people. It's imperative to select sounds that fit well together to fill up the spectrum. In the case of live instrumentation, this comes down to EQ mostly. You've got to carve out the space for all of your elements to be cohesive together. Here's an example: If one of your melodies is playing on the third octave, then other elements might fit better at a higher octave, filling up more of the whole frequency spectrum. At the end of the day, the better your source sound is, the better your mix will end up.

4. Spectrum analysis. Throw a frequency analyzer on your sounds to get the facts. This will give you visual confirmation of how much of the spectrum a given element is taking up and if it's clashing with anything else. Sometimes, I think an eq move is right by what my ears are hearing, but then after looking at the analyzer, I've realized that it was not aggressive enough or too aggressive in some examples.

5. Saturation. Saturation is probably the one thing that has made the most noticeable difference in the fullness of my mixes. Most modern songs have saturation on just about everything, including the mix buses and the master. Essentially, saturation is adding harmonics that fill up the frequency spectrum. This kind of goes back to ear training. Some things used to sound full to me, but then when you add saturation, you realize just how thin the sound actually was. For several years, I rarely reached for saturation. I didn't understand the value of it, or how to use it effectively. That was a huge mistake on my part.

Well, there's a few suggestions. Music production is a blessing and a curse, but just keep at it. Eventually, with the right references, things will click for you more and more. Good luck to you!

 

[grimtraveller]

Sometimes, I think an eq move is right by what my ears are hearing, but then after looking at the analyzer, I've realized that it was not aggressive enough or too aggressive in some examples.

If something sounded right to you, why in the world would you need to look at something to cause you to do something other than what your ears were telling you was right ? That's a bit like thinking your wife of 25 years is gorgeous and a great match for you, but some online test you took ends up with a low score and concludes the two of you are incompatible, so you decide to divorce her.

 

[Monkey Allen]

How about this fellas...for the song "Sound of Drums"...the original 4 mixes I did sounded so bad...and with the advice here I just took it all down...removed all plugins except for the limiter on the Master, set all faders to 0, set all panning to 0...basically reset everything. I thought...right start from scratch and try to complete objective 1...get a basic balance, no eq, no nothing. So I mixed it on my Yamaha HS8's...zero plugins, zero panning. Just trying to get a basic level balance.

Hearing this, what do you think...and what does your mixing brain tell you should be the next steps? Or should it be recorded again or what? Here is the stripped down mono balance: (the ONLY plugin is the limiter on the master so I could give it a bit of volume)



I should point out...I'm by no means saying this bare mix is good or well balanced. It just as I heard it in my room with my speakers with my ears. ANYTHING could be going wrong due to acoustics and shoddy "treatment" in the room etc.

 

[Track Rat]

Quite the objective assessment of your own abilities, though maybe a bit harsh. lol. I think most of us have struggled with the same feeling throughout the journey. Here's my advice, for what it's worth.


5. Saturation. Saturation is probably the one thing that has made the most noticeable difference in the fullness of my mixes. Most modern songs have saturation on just about everything, including the mix buses and the master. Essentially, saturation is adding harmonics that fill up the frequency spectrum. This kind of goes back to ear training. Some things used to sound full to me, but then when you add saturation, you realize just how thin the sound actually was. For several years, I rarely reached for saturation. I didn't understand the value of it, or how to use it effectively. That was a huge mistake on my part.

Well, there's a few suggestions. Music production is a blessing and a curse, but just keep at it. Eventually, with the right references, things will click for you more and more. Good luck to you!

Not EXACTLY sure what you mean by saturation. I mean I do and don't. In the context of gain staging or some kind of "plugin"? The reason I ask is that I should mention I mix on a hybrid system of a MOTU driving an Alesis HD24 like a 24 channel soundcard into a Tascam M-3500. I like being able to use plugins and hardware side by side. And back to "saturation", Mixing thru a console introduces a certain amount of that I feel.

 

[mjbphotos]

Ok, unless you are really just trying to get 'listens' on your SC page, how are you moving files around to listen on other devices? I ask this because the mixes on the songs I listened to sounded fine, maybe a little bit of balancing levels (vocals in some spots are little loud, as is the bass) - might even be enough to put a little compression on both after doing some level automation.

 

[Monkey Allen]

Ok, unless you are really just trying to get 'listens' on your SC page, how are you moving files around to listen on other devices? I ask this because the mixes on the songs I listened to sounded fine, maybe a little bit of balancing levels (vocals in some spots are little loud, as is the bass) - might even be enough to put a little compression on both after doing some level automation.

Man, I could give 2 fcks about "listens". Seriously come on now. The only thing I'm concerned with is improving my mixing.

And yeah, as I said...I listen to the mix on all of my many headphones...in the DAW...that's like 7 or so different headphones. Plus on my studio monitors Yamaha HS8. I also listen to the mix via soundcloud on my phone, on my laptop and on my lounge room 5 inch speaker set up. I'm sure I mentioned all this in my first post, yeah?

 

[Mr. ROUSH]

If something sounded right to you, why in the world would you need to look at something to cause you to do something other than what your ears were telling you was right ? That's a bit like thinking your wife of 25 years is gorgeous and a great match for you, but some online test you took ends up with a low score and concludes the two of you are incompatible, so you decide to divorce her.

If I had a dollar for every time something sounded right to me, but didn't end up being right, I'd just pay someone to mix everything for me. lol That's where training the ear comes into play. What sounds "right" is very subjective. Just because someone thinks something sounds right, doesn't make it right. The golden rule.. "if it sounds good it is good." Very true. However, if it doesn't sound good to others, then that's not really a success. Things are not always as you would expect. Often times, certain elements in a mix may sound "good" to a person, but may also be ruining your mix and sucking the life out of it. Beginners often ignore how a single element needs to be monitored in context with the whole mix. In many cases, individual elements sound bad in solo, but sound great in the mix. I'm sure that's not foreign to you, assuming you produce or engineer. Also, let me fix your analogy. A better one would be that I have a gorgeous wife that I think the world of. But, it turns out she is shallow on the inside and actually ruining my mix. lol

 

[Mr. ROUSH]

Not EXACTLY sure what you mean by saturation. I mean I do and don't. In the context of gain staging or some kind of "plugin"? The reason I ask is that I should mention I mix on a hybrid system of a MOTU driving an Alesis HD24 like a 24 channel soundcard into a Tascam M-3500. I like being able to use plugins and hardware side by side. And back to "saturation", Mixing thru a console introduces a certain amount of that I feel.

We're on the same page. Analog consoles definitely introduce saturation. Mixing in the box, we are talking plugins. Good saturation plugins emulate the saturation that analog consoles and other hardware add to a mix. A good, free saturation plug is "Softtube," while we're on the subject.

 

[Monkey Allen]

Often times, certain elements in a mix may sound "good" to a person, but may also be ruining your mix and sucking the life out of it.

I think this is what I am good at doing. I have a reasonably ok recording. The playing is fair enough...but when mixing I am very good at sucking the life out of the song. I think the advice on this thread has already been very good. I think I need to:

a) listen to and study pro recordings on my monitors
b) keep things simple...start with a good basic balance

 

[grimtraveller]

the mixes on the songs I listened to sounded fine, maybe a little bit of balancing levels (vocals in some spots are little loud, as is the bass)

I'm with Mike on this one. I don't think any of the mixes sound bad at all. They may not be in the higher echelon of home recordings, but other than the things mjb pointed out about levels {and they may just be subjective to me}, the way you describe your mixes is way out of kilter from how they sound to me.

What sounds "right" is very subjective

Well, precisely. That's why conversations like these are always going to be fraught with difficulty.

Just because someone thinks something sounds right, doesn't make it right

While that seems logical, and is true in some cases, it presupposes there being some universal standard to which everyone subscribes. And that simply doesn't exist. I'd say most people that mix songs have an approximate idea of what sounds terrible. But the scope of "right" is pretty wide.

The golden rule.. "if it sounds good it is good." Very true

As you said, it's subjective.
Ever since recordings were first made, there has been variable quality in terms of mixing.
But who determines what sounds good or right ? How does one square a "good" punk rock mix to a classical buff that thinks it's all noise ?
I love the Rolling Stones 60s work, but I think they're pretty poorly mixed. It doesn't stop me listening to them but compared to even the Pretty Things, they're surprisingly crummy.

However, if it doesn't sound good to others, then that's not really a success

Yes and no.
This comes back to subjectivity again. You might detest my mix because I've panned the drums hard left, the bass hard right and the lead vocal at 2 o'clock. Or you might like your bass light and feathery, but dislike my mix because I like my bass heavy and dominant. In either case, does this make a bad mix ? Is a mix bad just because 2 million people don't like it ?

Often times, certain elements in a mix may sound "good" to a person, but may also be ruining your mix and sucking the life out of it

Fair enough, but how and what determines that the life is being sucked out of it ? What if the mixer actually wants the mix sounding that way ? Why should your determination of "good" have pre-eminence over that of the mixer ?

Beginners often ignore how a single element needs to be monitored in context with the whole mix

I agree. The key word here is "Beginners."

Also, let me fix your analogy. A better one would be that I have a gorgeous wife that I think the world of. But, it turns out she is shallow on the inside and actually ruining my mix

Unless you were deliberately jesting, I don't think you have rightly understood the point I made or the analogy I used to illustrate it.
My question to you was about the fixed and inanimate against the dynamic and living. The spectrum analyser and the online test represent the fixed, inanimate and cold that do not engage in an alive way with the living. Your ears and your view of the wife represent the real time, living, thinking human being.
If you thought a piece of music or a mix sounded good, it matters not one jot if the analyser "tells" you that it's not aggressive enough or too aggressive.
I remember back in 2001 when my wife and I had our first child. The "manual" that the NHS sent us told us to not have the room we were in more than 18° as this would be harmful for the baby and could lead to cot death. Well, our son was born in December, and December in London is flaming cold ! The thermometer never went below 20° and even at that, we were freezing our butts off. After a couple of days, we said 'stuff this !' and put the heating on so the room was hot and our son is now 19 and alive and well ! We didn't need an inanimate object telling us we should be warm enough when we were cold....and if a mix sounds good to you, then it shouldn't need all the jiggery pokery to correct your impression.
Now, that said, it's a common occurrence to many of us to think something sounds good/right/great and then to come back to it a while later and it doesn't sound good at all. But it's the individual making that assessment, not some machine. Your correction of my analogy actually, unwittingly, made my point for me; in realizing your wife was shallow after 25 years, you've reached that decision yourself, through living with her, not because some online test {frequency analyser} you filled out told you that this is how she must be.

 

[Monkey Allen]

After much teeth gnashing, I've come up with this new mix which I think sounds more natural and sucks less than the other mixes...first song here:

 

[mjbphotos]

After much teeth gnashing, I've come up with this new mix which I think sounds more natural and sucks less than the other mixes:

The rhythm guitar does not sound as good as it was in your original mix or even as good as the original in the plug-less one. What did you do to it?

Your initial post said that when you listen to your mixes on OTHER SYSTEMS they suck, which is why I asked how you are moving the files.