What is the secret of mastering&mixing? Please help.

F

FreddyG

New member
Hi there,
I am a musician trying to understand the secret of mastering&mixing. I would like to show you a few of my works, maybe anyone could be so kind to help me how to improve their sound. Thank you so much.
Sincerely,
FreddyG
 
Carnige Hall is that way...

Fred,

The secret to engineering is the same as the secret to musicianship.

Practice.

:)

That is probably the mst useful tip you'll get. But if your looking for more, you'd probably be best starting of with an explanation of what tools you have to work with (music style, microphones, recording gear, etc.)

G.
 
All the secrets to mastering and mixing are in Sonusman's article. Very worth your time, Ed, I mean, random new member.
 
If we told you it wouldn't be a secret anymore :)

I don't get this "secret" stuff, it's marketing hype.

There are no secrets, it's as SouthSIDE Glen wrote, practice, skill, a good ear, and some decent gear and musicians.

Read as much as you can in mags like Mix, and all the books you can. Sit in on a few sessions with some pros. Then rinse, lather, and repeat.
 
masteringhouse said:
practice, skill, a good ear, and some decent gear and musicians.
Click to expand...
House,

Thanks for bringing up the decent musicians. That's a very important point that now seems as good a time as any to amp...

Without musicians, we would not be here. Whithout decent musicians, we would not want to be here ;)

Great musicians/performances make great recordings, Lousy musicians/performances make lousy recordings. To paraphrase, "It's the content, stupid."

Job #1, Fred, is to not hit the record button until you are ready to give a performance that is worth sticking to disc. Practice until you can do it in you sleep.

Job #2 is exactly what Massive Master's sig says.

Job #3 is to then, and only then, hit the record button.

If you follow jobs 1-3, the rest will come a lot easier.

G.
 
yeah mixing guys that can't play is something i won't even do (unless im getting paid quite well). Also, the quality of the singer is parammount. That's what I care about the most.

But bad players really can ruin a mix.

It is not enjoyable at all to track, and makes it damn hard to get good sounds. My friend started a studio a while back, and after a crappy band would leave, we would go in and retrack about everything. They would never even notice because they thought it just sounded "mixed".
 
I can't believe no-one else suspects. I started not just a trend but a barrage of fake usernames, joke characters and pretend newbies with $7-8000 to spend on a mic, and by the way, can I buy a punch-in compressor please.

It's beyond stupid.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Job #1, Fred, is to not hit the record button until you are ready to give a performance that is worth sticking to disc. Practice until you can do it in you sleep.
Click to expand...

Actually I find that it's best to get a draft recording down as soon as possible.

Remember the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Crafting a song is about getting every part to play a roll.

But when you are playing live, say a bassline, it is difficult to pay attention to the overall sound of the song and we tend to hone in on the part we are playing.

So I use draft recordings to make sure that the parts I'm writing are going to work well for the song overall. At this stage a few mistakes here and there aren't important.

Once you have written the parts perfectly, then you rehearse like hell and record that perfect take...

In the old days when recording was expensive it maybe made sense to rehearse before recording but nowadays recording can be a great creative tool

Al
 
Handsome Al said:
Actually I find that it's best to get a draft recording down as soon as possible.
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Yeah, I can see that would especially be true if the band is doing it's own recording and there is no outside listener's perspective.

But insn't a "draft recording" really just part of the practice process, as you allude to later? A draft recording does not "stick to disc", nor is it intended to. It's just "practice" for whoever on the business side of the stage monitors has to do double duty on the business side of the studio monitors as well, as well as providing a "test" for the musician who is doubling as the producer/arranger.

This is not what folks like Massive and myself are referring to when we talk about "hitting the record button". That's just a stylistic way of referring to the actual attempt to commit your performance to electronic memory. No dress rehersal, but the real performance in front of a live "Recording in progress" light.

G.
 
You have 111 posts in under a month. At least I bother to closer the door and get my feet under the table before I start handing out the insults.
 
noisedude said:
You have 111 posts in under a month. At least I bother to closer the door and get my feet under the table before I start handing out the insults.
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Which is about half of what you have at 3800 posts in 18 months, which averages over 211 posts in the same amount of time. Plus my posts answer questions or discuss topics relevant to the forum and thread (this one being the exception).

And who have I insulted? You called your own actions "beyond stupid". All I did was question why you keep doing them then.

G.
 
Uh-huh. So now you're insulting my posts too. Great. Thing is, if you were that clever a person, or so valuable a member, you'd check up on the kinds of things I've posted on over my tenure here. You won't find a great many one-line wise-cracking newbie-flaming soundbites amongst them.
 
noisedude said:
Uh-huh. So now you're insulting my posts too.
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Again, who or what have I insulted? I said absolutely nothing about the quality of you posts.

If you're looking to pick a fight with me, you got the wrong man. I'm not going to stoop to that. I'm here to learn and share learning; I don't have time for this.

You keep going your way, and I'll keep going mine, and we'll let posterity decide what it wants to regarding of each of us and the quality of our posts.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Which is about half of what you have at 3800 posts in 18 months, which averages over 211 posts in the same amount of time. Plus my posts answer questions or discuss topics relevant to the forum and thread (this one being the exception).
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At least have the decency to stand by your words. I came here to share and learn too, and I've been doing at least half of that since long before I actually signed up to be a member.

You 'stooped' to whatever you're on about by setting about me to start with. So what if I'm prickly? Jeez, at least I'm self-aware. You carry on making snide comments and claiming you never saw them if you like. I couldn't give a shit what 'posterity' makes of either of us - there are decent and talented people here and I will continue to listen to them. The jerk-offs, well I have the benefit of an undermoderated and anonymous forum ... for whatever sad worth that can provide!
 
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