always sounds %^&* no matter how much i try.

I may just be my own worst critic but im never happy with how anythings sounding and i could fool around for hours and never get it any closer to what i want it to sound like.

There are 3 or 4 stages if ive read correctly and im always stuck at level 2/3 depending on how many stages there is.

I can record all the tracks...... then its the next part i struggle badly with... getting correct levels for all tracks together... and eq/comp/reverb etc...

I understand the basics of eq and trying to give each track no conflicting frequencies.. also trying to remove bad frequencies etc... but i dont have the ear for it or at least im not sure if im cutting a good frequency or a bad one.

I have watched a few conflicting videos so this may be why....

1st video raised the gain up +12 and the swooped from left to right until there was some extreme noise cant remember the word was it dissonance ? then they boosted this frequency by 6db however ive seen others cutting this as they described it as a troublesome frequency.

What i would really need is a video of a guy mixing a whole song and being able to see what they are doing and hearing on the monitor to see what they listen for and how they overcome things etc... indie/rock.

any tips as its frstraiting me that i have 100s of songs and have been constantly going over the same 3 songs trying to make them sound how i like.... big issue i have is more than 2 guitars for starters... years ago i used to record with one or 2 parts and it was easier that third guitar is where im needing to get better at eq for.

one panned laft... one panned right... one down centre and then eq all to give serperation.

thanks
 
1st video raised the gain up +12 and the swooped from left to right until there was some extreme noise cant remember the word was it dissonance ? then they boosted this frequency by 6db however ive seen others cutting this as they described it as a troublesome frequency.

This technique is used to identify a frequency that might be giving trouble: a note that is booming, for example. You boost a narrow band, then sweep until it really takes off. That's where you then lower that frequency so that it does not boom.

What DAW are you using? That is useful to know.

One thing that will cause problems in mixing is how the instruments are payed. The more you have, the greater the chance there is of the parts messing each other up, specially if the paying is a little bit inconsistent.

What other instruments do you have in the mix?
 
Hi Fendertelemusik

I understand your frustration, and i also understand you are NOT going to like what I have to say. Knowing how to mix is not nearly enough to give you solid mixes. Understanding the concepts, application of concepts and the "why" together with a trained(and keen) ear, experience and trial and error over time will help you get those mixes(though there are exceptions to this rule from time to time). I wish it was easier, but that is the exact reason we are all here on this forum.
I see you are also frustrated with conflicting tutorial videos. This is partly due to the fact that there are sometimes 100's of ways to get to the desired result, but your ears and workflow will help you decide on the path taken. That, and the fact that some of the tutorials out there are pure garbage.

I'm aware none of that helped you.

I would suggest taking in what you can from the tutorials and feedback from here and work off the concept of what they are teaching, and finding how to apply it to your project/mix/track. For example, a tutorial i watched a few weeks ago concentrated heavily on the frequencies eq'd on a particular vocal. It worked well and the vocal sounded great in the vid. If i apply those exact settings on my vocal, it would sound harsh and thin(i know because i used it as an example for my son, now learning how to mix). The concept behind WHY he was doing those exact settings is what will help you.

There are several youtube vids that do songs from scratch to finish, i suggest those by Musician on a Mission.

Also, do a mix or ten, post in the MP3 Mixing Clinic and get some feedback from the folks on here. That will help you a ton!!
 
This is how i believed the technique was used... as you mention a thin band and sweep to listen for loud ear destroying noise then cut said frequency... but ive also seen videos of people doing the same thing but when they find that booming frequency they dont cut it but boost it .... obviously its at a much higher gain to find it but once found they dont drop it back to zero but boost it a little bit.... and this just confuses me now.

Reaper is the Daw i use just because i know my way around it... years ago i used adobe audition.

Tends to be drums,bass, 2 or 3 guitars, lead vocal and backing vocal.
 
hey thanks for the reply, yes i understand there is never going to be a set rule because every instrument will sound slightly different, how its played and tone etc... so just copying someone elses inputs would wield different results unless my track was identical to theirs in every way... so yeah its very much knowing why they did it rather than what they did that will help me... and as you mentioned there is so many contradictary videos on the net you end up more confused than before.

A perfect video would be just hearing the persons voice whilst they constantly play their full song and tweak things... that way i could hear what they are hearing... what they tweaked and why by listening for what they are listening for etc but so far havent found one.

i will check out musician on a mission

thanks ;)
 
they dont drop it back to zero but boost it a little bit.... and this just confuses me now.

It would confuse me as well. It makes no sense.

Reaper is the Daw i use

That's good, There are plenty here who can help you with that.

For example, it would be possible for you to load your files and the Reaper rpp file up to googledrive or similar, and for someone to do a mix in Reaper, then send it back. YOu can then see what was done, change what you don't like, leave what you like.

Tends to be drums,bass, 2 or 3 guitars, lead vocal and backing vocal.

I don't know what you've tried, but here's one approach that might help

1 Start with percussion. Get that sounding right.
2 Add in bass so that drums and bass work together ok.
3 Add in lead vocal. You should be able to play drums, bass & lead vocal together and it should sound fine.
4 Add in guitars, taking care that they don't take over (which is easy for them to do because they are acoustically very dense)
5 Add backing vocals
 
Sometimes, people lack discrimination on YouTube. In real life we decide instantly if we trust what people say, and we categorise and form opinions very quickly and as young older, more accurately. However on YouTube we do it differently. We seem to switch off our discrimation switch and forget that the people who do the videos might be an expert, but could be one page ahead of where we are and showing off.

When we didn't have the net, we had to spend time, frustratingly learning by doing. Now we have technique videos without any understanding. When I hear something, I mentally think - ooh 500Hz, and can zap the honk quickly, or I instantly realise the lack of sparkle is missing content above 8K. This is what you need to learn, and get comfy. You CANNOT mix by numbers. I place a mic, do the routing, then listen. Often before I even touch EQ I move the mic. EQ is polish, not automatic process. Id rather do minimal eq by adjusting the source. I think my only routine that is preset is to apply a compressor onto my bass and lightly squish it before I listen because my bass and my fingers make it 99% a certainty I'll need it.

Your task is to learn to listen and learn to balance before you add any processing or eq.

Go back to a project, and remove every single thing you added. Listen critically and learn what is good about your instruments, your mics, your synths and samples. Learn how mic adjustments can work. better than eq.

Learn where YouTube needs you to skip videos. Learn how to read people. Lean how to go to YouTube to find where a function is hidden, and then when to switch it off. I use cubase and often am amazed when I see the crazy tutorials that totally miss far easier ways to do things, because the person really hasn't learned how it works properly. There are some excellent videos of course, but surrounded by totally damaging stuff that force you into rigid ways of working. Equally, I subscribed to one guy who had very strange ways of using cubase with templates that seemed way too complex. However, I tried his solution and it saves me hours now! Never too old to learn from people who really know!
 
I remember back in the early 70s, going to a local shop that had a new Tascam Model 10 mixing board with an 8 channel recorder. They had a recording of a group with drums, bass, guitar and piano. Everyone was invited to sit down and mix down the song. It was eye opening to listen to all of the variations, good and bad, between different people using exactly the same equipment and tracks. There were no outboard effects, just the basic EQ/Pan/Volume control and very well recorded tracks.

With all the "stuff" that you have available in your DAW, it just gives you lots of opportunity to really screw things up. If you can't first get the basics right, all the plugins in the world won't make it shine.

Just because I've got the ability to track and mix 24 tracks doesn't make me Eddie Kramer or George Martin. Practice and a good ear takes time. The more you do it, the more you learn.
 
It would confuse me as well. It makes no sense.



That's good, There are plenty here who can help you with that.

For example, it would be possible for you to load your files and the Reaper rpp file up to googledrive or similar, and for someone to do a mix in Reaper, then send it back. YOu can then see what was done, change what you don't like, leave what you like.



I don't know what you've tried, but here's one approach that might help

1 Start with percussion. Get that sounding right.
2 Add in bass so that drums and bass work together ok.
3 Add in lead vocal. You should be able to play drums, bass & lead vocal together and it should sound fine.
4 Add in guitars, taking care that they don't take over (which is easy for them to do because they are acoustically very dense)
5 Add backing vocals

That would be amazing in bold!

Yeah this is usually how i work it... i bring the drums up to a decent level, then bass making sure to not over power the kick drum... ill admit i never do vocals until ive gotten the whole backing track sorted maybe this is where im going wrong ?

As for the drums this too might also be a problem i tend to record the snare/kick and sometimes toms together as i use one of those drum pads.... so tend to record my bass or guitar first to a click then the drums once i've got the other parts down along with the click.
 
I am using reaper and all my inputs are direct, so straight into my audio interface.

Guitar> interface > amp/fx plugin > reaper record.
Bass > interface > amp/FX plugin > reaper record.
Drum pad > interface > reaper record.

So if im reading this right you plan for how you need the guitar to sound to match whats going on already in the song.

Its strange now that you mention it.... i used to record years ago with a lot less thought behind it and it would sound a lot better than what im doing today despite not thinking about it.

The biggest difference was back then i would play what had already been recorded.. and whilst it was playing i would play my next guitar part whilst quickly changing through all the guitar effects until i found one that sounded right with the rest of the song... i guess i was listening for an effect that allowed me to hear what i was playing but also just fit with the rest of the song... i did this unconciously.

Where as this time round telling myself i was to do this the right way and more professionaly i have been choosing the guitar effect without using the rest of the song.... i've been choosing based on how i would like the guitar to sound... and it sounds great until played wiht the rest of the song.

Has this tiny little change been the difference ? i never used eq or anything back then but it just seemed to fit... because i choose the fx that suits the song regardless of whether or not it was how i intended the guitar to sound..

Dont know it that makes any sense... but TLDR i used to select my guitar fx whilst playing along with the rest of the song... quickly toggling through them until something sounded right.. be it a tone/right frequencies etc... then once it fit i used it.
 
I forgot to mention with earphones on when levelling one instrument next to another i can hear a point where they compliment in terms of frequency if i was to go above this point then they would clash however this method doesnt work because usually the point they compliment each other and i stop means that one of the instruments its too quiet to be heard in the full song...
 
So here is two mixes of one of the songs im trying to get right but just sounds like one big fuzzy noise i think mix 2 is getting closer but maybe you can say whether 1 or 2 is closer to being right sounding.

Just read your pm ill also get to work on sending it over for you to work some magic thanks for doing this!

Ignore horrible timing and sloppyish playing once i feel i have an idea what im doing ill rerecord from scratch just looking to get tracks sounding how i imagine then ill tighten things up.... the biggest difference ive made is a plugin by focusrite called balancer... it automates each track giving them all a bit of life on their own.

Your place mix 1 by Fendertelemusik | Free Listening on SoundCloud


your place mix 2 by Fendertelemusik | Free Listening on SoundCloud
 
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Man, your post sounds like I wrote it. Word for word. I began recording on my 4 track Foster X15 back in 1984. I recorded over 100 songs throughout the 80s and early 90s. I am amazed that I could record all of the instruments and sing it and be done in an hour. Maybe it was the lack of choices I had. I had a Yamaha RX11 drum machine and a Rockman. Usually one or maybe two guitars, one bass and a few vocals. Of course I had to bounce tracks. I still have all the tapes. Of course I cringe when I hear most of them because the mixing and choices are sloppy as hell.

So, these days, I decided to record the best of them over again. I am trying to keep them true to the originals so I even bought an old Korg DW6000 keyboard to get the exact sounds, I have a Yamaha RX11 vst for the drums. I do re-write lyrics since I gave nearly no thought to them at the time. I seemed to only be concerned with the music. I would output to a Fischer boom box. But, I churned songs out a few per week. These days, cannot &inish one.

I record all the parts in my DAW. Everything sounds so promises. No mistakes. Lyrics better and on key. But I can’t mix for crap.i have good monitors. some acoustical foam, no bass traps. No matter what I do, I seem to put most things up front. I seem to want to hear everything equally. I seem to make the songs too bass, not because of my room but because I love hearing it and don’t want it to get lost. I have read and watched tons of videos but nothing seems to work. I think the closest thing I did is to compare my song to a similar sounding song as a reference track. Have you tried that? No matter what o do, it never sounds real or glued together. It always sounds like a rough mix, even if I spend hours on gain staging, eq’ing and other things. I just want to get them mixed right and delete all of the tracks. I won’t need them again for some massive box set release in 20 years. I just want it all to sound correctly and similar so that one song isn’t bass heavy and one tinny.

Keep going
 
So here is two mixes of one of the songs im trying to get right but just sounds like one big fuzzy noise i think mix 2 is getting closer but maybe you can say whether 1 or 2 is closer to being right sounding.

Mix two is much brighter and has more 'life' to it, but maybe dial back that a bit, as I think mix 1 is actually more balanced. In mix 2, the guitar part after the break is a pretty bad sound (bad as in not good!). Without looking back at your previous posts, I assume this is a plug in, not a miked amp? When it comes to distortion on guitars when recording - less is always better.

To trusso11783 - you need to work on your mixing environment. 'Acoustic' foam, by itself, will suck some of the mid to high frequencies out of your room, but not in a balanced way, leaving the low mids and bass to bounce around.
The comment about 'gluing' brings up a couple of things that can be done - one is to use a bus for your reverb, and send all instruments to it, this tends to put everything in the same 'room', especially important if you are DIing any instruments or using virtual instruments. The other thing is to put a little bit of compression across all the instrument tracks (together, not on each individual track) - in Reaper this is easy to do by putting all the instruments in a 'folder' (group) and putting the compressor on it.
 
i only listened to mix 2.

A lot can be resolved by just improving the guitar tone, there is no smoothness to the song and it's a little fatiguing. Just do a simple master EQ cut sweep and find that point where you get that lush smooth guitar tones, probably around 2-3k once you find it, disable master EQ again (this is just to pinpoint problem area) and then EQ those guitars until you get that desired smooth harshness under control again.

Drums can do with more aggression, try parallel compression.

Snare needs a lot of work, plate verb, play with boosting 200-250hz until you get desired punch, rebalance. juggle plate verb til you get it so it sounds up front but without being louder. saturate it if you are struggling to bring thickness up, peaks down.

Kick has no lows (I can't accurately listen to it at the moment but either way there is no oompf to it) , i'd put rbass on it and high pass bass guitar at 60hz for some seperation. You may not need to do this if parallel compression does the trick.

Guitar sounds faaaaaaaaar too dry, blend in some slapback or slapverb or something.

Those ampsims are much harder to get a tone with imo. with my metal amp I just shove the 57 or 421 upto it, (or both) and hit record and it's so easy to get kickass quality smooth tones with. If I were to do that this song would sound really great, even if you'd say you are not happy with the mix, so bear that in mind. Work on guitar tones and NOT the mix for now. because it seems like you might not have much place to go with those tones as they are.
(you should be able to just balance your track, and the song sound pretty good with no EQ/Compression etc, if your song sounds bad, address it, try to get your tracks sounding good before you start to mix.)

just my 2c

Edit: (that 2-3k area is a bitch to get right at first so don't get discouraged, you are aiming for a mix that will not sound harsh at high volumes, but not too dull at lower volumes. I'd say just play with the 2k on the guitars only. if still no luck, work on a new tone) Tracks like yours I find benefit from more of a scooped sound because it's better to tuck the leads dow lower in the mix, you are not putting a highly compressed vocal track 3db's louder than the guitars so imo your tracks need to be treated slightly differently. Scoop the rhythms a bit, tuck leads in, control that shitty 2k. you will know when you nail it.

Also, nice song. good work. Not really much wrong with it you're closer than you think, for the hundredth time though, sort guitar tones out, and save the preset.
 
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All completely IMO.

Yeah, those drums. Time to trigger some samples I'd say, or pick a different kit if this is already sampled.

The rhythm guitar in the middle should be EQd into a space of its own (and one that's less annoying). It, along with the leads sound like way over fuzzed or whatever. A more natural OD with some extra reverb/slapback as suggested - try something (EQ, etc.) to at least differentiate the timbre of each guitar.
 
general advice from someone still learning on a portastudio. Concentrate on the recording, not the mixing. Agree with the poster above about samples. You can drive yourself crazy trying to eq everything. Good sounds may not need much treatment, they are pleasing to the ears, and sit good in the mix. That goes for guitar too. If you are struggling with sound, a guitar direct box with direct in speaker simulation isn't bad. I'm talking about stand alone recording; I'm sure that excellent plug ins are available on computer. Put your energy into the source. Sometimes, your amp/mic combo and/or drum recording can make you crazy. Hands on experience is great too. If you have any buddies that record in a pro studio, go check it out and see how they do it.
 
You apply eq to make things sound better, and if you've recorded properly, then any eq will be very, very mild. A gentle country horizon NOT a mountain range. The sweeping thing - you do this to find the problem, to make it jump out, then you fix the problem. If I have a nasty honk from a Tom at say 300Hz, I use a narrow q then reduce the annoying resonance, but then I'll use another eq curve to smooth out what is left. In many of my projects there's plenty of sources that won't have any eq, they sound ok as they are. Nowadays people are encouraged to do think and do by using somebody else's rules,mass if they're mandatory, not advisory. This notion to use a common one is that you always add eq and compression automatically, not if it's needed. The other thing is the notion that you randomly fiddle with these things in some forlorn hope it all suddenly coalesce into magic. Ears link to brain, then you assess what is more likely to work and try it, not random fiddling.
 
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