DM60
Well-known member
Heck yea man, first thing one does when you get into the recording and mixing is throw every thing you have, and if a little sounds good, more must sound "more better!" I think almost everyone on this board has been thereThat makes sense. I have been doing some back and forth comparison today using Spotify (don't have the WAV files for what I want to compare it to right now) and I'm pretty close given that my tracks aren't mastered. Made some tweaks and have been A/Bing them with my commuting headphones and I'm almost where I want this particular track to be. Once I have that set, I'll use it to reference the rest of them.
It's interesting how easy it is to go MAD SCIENTIST on tracks with a DAW; I decided this morning to strip down the drum sound and realized that I was doing stuff I didn't need to, especially to the kick drum. I need to develop a better sense of when something is good enough, then stop futzing with it lol. The guitars are a different story; our guitarist is recording his tracks and home and he abuses the spring reverb on his Fender amp like it's an IV drug, while playing really percussively. I'm having to surgically remove the peaks with gain reduction, it's tedious lol. That's probably my next Newbie Thread - "how do I convince my guitarist to turn off the reverb without copping battery charges?"
But really, start with a flat mix, get your levels and mix sounding the way you want, no EQ, no compression. Then once you have a decent mix, then understand how you want to make it better. Also, don't forget you can reduce a frequency in one channel/instrument to help another channel/instrument. Just don't always go for a fader increase/decrease. It can be simple if you just understand what it is you want to do.
Example, I can't hear the vocals, you think, do I have other instruments that sit there in that vocal range? What would happen if I take some EQ and remove out of another instrument that might be in the same space. That is just an example, but not everything is volume, lot more to it than that.
Hopefully it helps you to step back and think about it so you better understand what you want to do, then learn how/go, do it.