General tips on how you improved the most at producing, overall?

A

adam125

New member
Hi,

Started producing 8 months ago and almost everyday I've found the time to improve in some sort of way, and I'd say I develop fairly rapidly at the craft.

Recently though I've felt I need to broaden my understanding/technical ability to reach a higher level of professionalism that can take my mixes to that "wow factor". For one I realised I need to get information from a few more different sources and not just watching Youtube and sitting in Logic learning by myself. (So started reading an extensive book about it for example).

Now I've always been a bit of a freak when it comes to attaining the best possible knowledge and try to learn from the journey/lessons others already made.

So my question is, which things, people, techniques, mindsets or investments made you improve the most in mixing? Just in general, if you were gonna spawn a list of experiences or sources of true mixing knowledge/big decisions you had to make, what made you improve the most?

Did you invest a lot of money in it, if so, on what specifically?

It can be 20 things, or just one that is significant to you. (I produce Indie-rock myself but I'll happily take advice from anyone mixing death-metal to straight pop).

You can be a beginner or a total kickass producer.

Cheers, Adam
 
Perhaps not a path available easily with the way music is often produced these days. I started out just before the first home studio revolution in the 70's. Prior to multi-tracking, I was recording music with a mixer and a couple of cassette decks, just bouncing and adding tracks from one to the other. Next came the 4 track and I learned a lot still bouncing tracks. What I learned is how to hear what I wanted in my head before putting it together.

The next biggest breakthrough for me was taking a gig at front of house mixing for bands. I had started out doing monitor mixes but quickly moved up. Different bands week in and week out. Started my own live sound company and eventually even ran an open mic night. Want to get good? 10 to 20 acts, 3 songs each, all different. The ability to quickly discern what you are hearing and dial it in all within the opening banter and instrument tuning and you are happy with what you hear a couple bars in. Live taught me so much about making sonic space for all the voices and instruments.

The biggest recent investment I made was I redid the acoustic treatment in my studio. I have a difficult room and always struggled discerning what was going on in the bottom end. New treatment afforded me a room that is +/- 3db (measured at mix position) down to the limits of my monitors and I can trust what I am hearing out of my monitors.
 
Having decent playback equipment and using the same plugins consistently across all projects helped a lot. Not a huge investment, good monitors on stands with a small studio caliber sub, two different pairs of headphones with their own strengths/weaknesses that highlighted different things in the mix, and deciding on what plugins I felt worked best and sticking to those on most things [required purchasing of some licenses but worth it, in hindsight].

If your recording and mixing space are garbage, then room treatment/addressing the issues making playback a challenge would also be someplace to look. I'm lucky with how my setup is done that this isn't something I've needed to spend much time on. Garbage in (the mixer's ears), garbage out (the listener's speakers/headphones).
 
+1 to Pinky's post!


I will add that not mixing at high volumes is something many ignore and that I had to learn. Listening at almost barely audible volume is a great way to hear things you miss when at higher volumes.
Oh, and reverb is your enemy if not used in small amounts. Less is more.
Pinky said:
Having decent playback equipment and using the same plugins consistently across all projects helped a lot. Not a huge investment, good monitors on stands with a small studio caliber sub, two different pairs of headphones with their own strengths/weaknesses that highlighted different things in the mix, and deciding on what plugins I felt worked best and sticking to those on most things [required purchasing of some licenses but worth it, in hindsight].

If your recording and mixing space are garbage, then room treatment/addressing the issues making playback a challenge would also be someplace to look. I'm lucky with how my setup is done that this isn't something I've needed to spend much time on. Garbage in (the mixer's ears), garbage out (the listener's speakers/headphones).
Click to expand...
 
What do you mean by producing? Outside of rap/hip-hop, the producer doesn't necessarily have his hands on the gear. He's mostly an artistic decision maker.
 
If you mean mixing...I dunno, I've been tinkering with recording and mixing my own stuff for over a decade. It's only in the last year that I truly appreciated the very large deficiencies in my entire process. I haven't made any breakthroughs or seen the light or anything, or produced nice mixes yet. But I think after a lot of critical thought I have realised I need to be much, much smarter about the source, including song arrangement. You need good tracks to mix or its a bloodbath.
 
Superb, could take or relate to something from all of your replies to reinforce what's truly important when mixing. Appreciate it! Cheers guys
 
Most of my improvement has come about through a combination of guesswork, gambling, and experimentation.
As I would listen to my mixes, I'd find myself thinking more about not so much what I was aiming at {I never know until I'm actually mixing}, but whether I was actually happy with what I was hearing. It's one thing to be happy with a mix in one's monitors at a certain volume. But crucial to my mixes was hearing how they translate in different spaces, different situations, and different volumes.
But the biggest signpost to improvement came when I started mixing in sections. Work in little chunks and get that chunk right before moving on to the next, then join them. Then move to the next chunk, and so on. I use two Akai DPS12is to do this and I call it poor man's automation. On a 12-track DAW, I can track share if I have to and it makes no difference. It's rare that all 12 tracks will be running at once. When I had a portastudio, I would have to remember every move on the fly and if I was working on a 15, 22, or 37-minute song and I forgot one move, it was back to the start ! :cry:
But I still never know what a song will sound like until it has actually been mixed ! I think many of my songs are odd until they are actually mixed. Then they're odder.....
 
One of the best ways to learn new techniques is to work with other people. Sometimes it could be a producer or engineer who has a different approach while other times it could be working with musicians who are pushing you for a different sound. It helps to be challenged and taken out of your comfort zone sometimes.
 
my recordings and mixes improved with gear unfortunately. alot of people like to say gear doesn't matter but it really does. UAD stuff really helped. The twinx and uad plugins sound great especially when stacking alot of tracks. Buying a u87 helped my vocal tracks alot. Getting a friedman, a les paul custom, an american tele, and a martin acoustic helped alot on guitar tone. replacing my shit ibanez bass with a american fender pbass helped for the tones I was after on bass. treating my room helped but that was done prior. Obviously you still have to know what you are doing but I was doing similar things with my previous gear and instruments and it didn't sound anywhere near as good. it depends what genre you are doing but for the rock I do gear helped.
 
I've recorded on a lot of different media and a lot of different gear and I think the biggest improvement for me was understanding the frequencies of elements being recorded and how they interact, musical arrangement, how to achieve the desired sound via mixing and use of effects and signal processing. All that takes time and learning how to use the gear at hand.
 
adam125 said:
Hi,

Started producing 8 months ago and almost everyday I've found the time to improve in some sort of way, and I'd say I develop fairly rapidly at the craft.

Recently though I've felt I need to broaden my understanding/technical ability to reach a higher level of professionalism that can take my mixes to that "wow factor". For one I realised I need to get information from a few more different sources and not just watching Youtube and sitting in Logic learning by myself. (So started reading an extensive book about it for example).
Click to expand...
Produce and engineer more songs would be the first thing to do - then understanding gain structure, compression, and level setting would be the next - and probably most important to Producing - Learn how to arrange - down to the minutia of the song - arrangements make producers sound great.
 
i think the biggest leap in my improvement was psychological.

Let go of ego
Encouraged critical and hard hitting critique on my process
Learned to listen as if someone else mixed it
Developing and trusting gut instinct
Bold Mixing as opposed to safe and tidy


Currently im looking at changing my type of work from ghost production to straight mixing. So im re visiting my processes , choices and improving my studio environment so that i can mix better , faster and improve reception / delivery options. ( currently studio is gutted for refurb )

Something that worked for me a while back was to only import drums to a new project. Work them to sound decent and peaking at -6 , then using that as a basic head room guide for the rest of the instruments to bring them in proportionally.
 
[Broken record mode] Although it's been mentioned already, just doubling down on the "two rules" (everyone says there are "no rules" but there are two) of recording:

[1] No matter your years of experience and tens of thousands in top-flight gear, you will only ever hear as accurately and consistently as your monitoring chain allows you to (period, end of story, no exceptions).

[2] No matter if you have the theoretically most accurate and consistent loudspeakers ever designed, they will only ever be as accurate and consistent as the space they're in allows them to be (again, there are no exceptions).

I have clients that have been at this for decades that send in "okay" sounding material. I have clients that sank a bunch into proper speakers and proper (*proper* - not foam panels on the walls) room treatment that have been at this for less than a year that are sending in excellent sounding stuff. I have clients that had "good" speakers and rooms that made a substantial investment into *better* speakers and treatments that immediately went from "pretty nice" to "exceptional" in weeks.

One guy I've been working with for probably close to 20 years -- His mixes have always been pretty decent, nothing special, but nothing terrible. He was obsessed with my speakers (Tyler Decade D1) the first time he heard them. A bit ago (some time COVID-ish), he found a set of the smaller version (D2's) for sale - used, good price, etc. and bought them. Literally overnight, he went from "good" stuff to "big-time pro" stuff. There is no more guesswork. He knows what he's hearing and can either adjust for it accurately and confidently, or he knows something needs to be redone. No in-between. The mixes he's sending me now never need any "fixes" - they just need "tweaking" (which is how it's supposed to be). He used to send mixes hoping they sounded good. Now he sends mixes and he *knows* they sound great - Now I'm just an unbiased set of ears with some specialty toys (which is fine with me).

Now if he'd just bring those speakers to his studio, we'd save some time. He put them in is house, he works the mixes at the studio, listens in his living room, takes notes, drives back to the studio and makes the adjustments. I keep telling him he needs to go laptop-based. One of these days...
 
One thing that has made a difference to me recently is getting better at using width. Some of the elements I'd pan used to sound slightly odd when they were panned fairly wide. But I've been really working on that and now my mixes sound better balanced. They may be semi-crap mixes but at least they're balanced and don't hurt the ears or brain !
 
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