I'd like to share what I've learned.

[sausy1981]

Hi people, I've been recording the last few years on and off but in the last 6 months I've started to do a lot more again. I've learned a lot from people in these forums and have decided to share what I've learned and what I know do different to what I used to do. The following list is not in any particular order with regards to recording and mixing start to finish. So here goes,

1. I used to record at the hottest signal possible without clipping, this is wrong, I now record with my peaks being -12db
2. When recording try and get as close as possible to the sound you want in the finished mix and eq when tracking with the mix in mind
3. Performance is eveything, keep trying until you get the performance your really happy with.
4. Use the meters in your daw when deciding on compression threshold and ratio
5. When eq'ing cutting is far better but if you have to boost do it lightly
6. Bass guitar generally needs a llot of compression, accoustic and clean electric need light compression and I never compress distorted guitars. When compressing vocals, when your happy with your threshold, ratio, attack and release settings decrease your threshold 1 or 2 db.
7. when using reverb do so lightly, create a bus and add a reverb, good starter settings would be somewhere between 1 and 2 second reverb with about 15 ms predelay and diffusion at 50%, then mess with the size.
8. When send to this reverb don't send all instruments to it, generally the drums sound better if just the snare goes to the verb.
9. Listening enviroment is so important, treat you room as best you can and gget the best monitors you can afford.
10. Start of mixing by doing as much eq as possible while mix is in mono, then start panning your instruments.
11. Song arrangement can really help with dynamics, for example instead of 3 guitar tracks played right through the song, maybe just have 2 for the verses and bring the 3rd in for the chorus, bringing instruments in and out of your mix will keep the song interesting.
12. Use a high pass filter on tracks that don't need low frequencies, a few examples would be, acoustic guitar @ 80hz, Vocals @ 100 hz, Electric guitars 150hz.
13. Use a reference track when mixing, import a professionally mixed and mastered song into your mix and compare it with your mix and listen to it on your monitors, it really gives you an insight and really helps when dealing with the low end of your mix.
14. If your on these forums, ask questions, there are lots of more experienced people here that will help.
15. Don't expect to get your mix right first time, most songs I sit down to mix can take up to a week with all the tweaking I do, and I go through countless cds playing my mix on different systems.

I hope these little things help some people who are starting off, I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few things but its hard to remember stuff when I'm not actually in the process of recording and mixing.

 

[gecko zzed]

Hi people, I've been recording the last few years on and off but in the last 6 months I've started to do a lot more again. I've learned a lot from people in these forums and have decided to share what I've learned and what I know do different to what I used to do. The following list is not in any particular order with regards to recording and mixing start to finish. So here goes,

1. I used to record at the hottest signal possible without clipping, this is wrong, I now record with my peaks being -12db
2. When recording try and get as close as possible to the sound you want in the finished mix and eq when tracking with the mix in mind
3. Performance is eveything, keep trying until you get the performance your really happy with.
4. Use the meters in your daw when deciding on compression threshold and ratio
5. When eq'ing cutting is far better but if you have to boost do it lightly
6. Bass guitar generally needs a llot of compression, accoustic and clean electric need light compression and I never compress distorted guitars. When compressing vocals, when your happy with your threshold, ratio, attack and release settings decrease your threshold 1 or 2 db.
7. when using reverb do so lightly, create a bus and add a reverb, good starter settings would be somewhere between 1 and 2 second reverb with about 15 ms predelay and diffusion at 50%, then mess with the size.
8. When send to this reverb don't send all instruments to it, generally the drums sound better if just the snare goes to the verb.
9. Listening enviroment is so important, treat you room as best you can and gget the best monitors you can afford.
10. Start of mixing by doing as much eq as possible while mix is in mono, then start panning your instruments.
11. Song arrangement can really help with dynamics, for example instead of 3 guitar tracks played right through the song, maybe just have 2 for the verses and bring the 3rd in for the chorus, bringing instruments in and out of your mix will keep the song interesting.
12. Use a high pass filter on tracks that don't need low frequencies, a few examples would be, acoustic guitar @ 80hz, Vocals @ 100 hz, Electric guitars 150hz.
13. Use a reference track when mixing, import a professionally mixed and mastered song into your mix and compare it with your mix and listen to it on your monitors, it really gives you an insight and really helps when dealing with the low end of your mix.
14. If your on these forums, ask questions, there are lots of more experienced people here that will help.
15. Don't expect to get your mix right first time, most songs I sit down to mix can take up to a week with all the tweaking I do, and I go through countless cds playing my mix on different systems.

I hope these little things help some people who are starting off, I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few things but its hard to remember stuff when I'm not actually in the process of recording and mixing.

Were someone to follow these suggestions, they would off to a pretty reasonable start. As a set of handy hints, they are pretty useful.

There is a danger that they can become prescriptive, rather than suggestive.

Some extra thoughts:

* I've never particularly worried about what levels I track at. So long as there is something there, and that it doesn't go into the red, I'm okay with it.
* Performance is everything, but be careful about trying to achieve unattainable perfection. The best performance is usually found within the early takes, and repeatedly trying to get it right and kill the life of a performance.
* Reverb is a matter of taste. "Doing it lightly" is often interpreted as "doing it so you can hardly hear it." In fact, you can use considerable amounts of reverb without it swamping everything else. COntext is important.
* Song arrangements are vitally important. Learning when not to play and how to create space is critical.

 

[sausy1981]

Were someone to follow these suggestions, they would off to a pretty reasonable start. As a set of handy hints, they are pretty useful.

There is a danger that they can become prescriptive, rather than suggestive.

Some extra thoughts:

* I've never particularly worried about what levels I track at. So long as there is something there, and that it doesn't go into the red, I'm okay with it.
* Performance is everything, but be careful about trying to achieve unattainable perfection. The best performance is usually found within the early takes, and repeatedly trying to get it right and kill the life of a performance.
* Reverb is a matter of taste. "Doing it lightly" is often interpreted as "doing it so you can hardly hear it." In fact, you can use considerable amounts of reverb without it swamping everything else. COntext is important.
* Song arrangements are vitally important. Learning when not to play and how to create space is critical.

I agree, these were just some remedies to common mistakes I was making, and maybe I should point out that I track at -12db cos I'm recording digitally, if you record on analogue you can scrap that bit of info.

 

[RAMI]

Were someone to follow these suggestions, they would off to a pretty reasonable start.

I agree. There was nothing hrarmfully wrong in the post as a whole. But there are some things that I found a little too general, a few others that come down to a matter of taste, and a couple that I disagree with. But the spirit and intent of the OP are in the right place, and even the few things I disagree with aren't what I would call "wrong", just not totally "right" either, so they're not even worth mentioning at the risk of looking like I'd be nit-picking.

Good post. I give it a 8 out of 10.

 

[sausy1981]

I agree. There was nothing hrarmfully wrong in the post as a whole. But there are some things that I found a little too general, a few others that come down to a matter of taste, and a couple that I disagree with. But the spirit and intent of the OP are in the right place, and even the few things I disagree with aren't what I would call "wrong", just not totally "right" either, so they're not even worth mentioning at the risk of looking like I'd be nit-picking.

Good post. I give it a 8 out of 10.

Thanks man, but please do add to the post, I may be wrong on a few things and it would be best if I was corrected, or if there is something I should be more clear about then let me know, I'd like to post a more comprahensive post at some stage in the future, I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I do now know what I was doing wrong when I started off and I know how hard it is trawling the net looking for tips and hints. These forums and the people on them have been invaluable in my learning curve.

 

[Justsomeguy]

to be fair, i'd hope that most people would take anything written on any forum as suggestive rather than prescriptive And if you're new to recording and mixing then there's certainly some very good starting points in there. However, even the "pro's" still learn new stuff all the time. Recording is an art, not a science. the biggest mistake i see is people assuming that if it worked for one track it's going to work exactly the same for every other track.

my 2 cents;

* Reference, reference, reference! the human ear very quickly adjusts to sound. have you ever been in a super loud night club? if so, you'll know that when you first get in you literally have to SCREAM into peoples ears to get them to hear you. however, after 10 minutes or so you can have a pleasant chat at a normal speaking volume. weird huh? that's because the ear tunes out sounds that it doesn't see as vital and try's to maintain speech recognition. the same happens when you mix, especially if you do it for long periods at a time. you almost have to trick your brain into listening properly again and the easiest way to do that is to listen at different volumes and listen to other music. the other way, and this is important....

* rest your ears once in a while. based on the same principle as above, giving your ears some peace and quiet basically resets them. i know i need a rest when i can no longer really hear the changes i'm making, but it's good to get into a habit of taking regular breaks. go have a coffee/tea, go to the loo, pop to the local shop, write an email, check your Facebook. when you come back to your mix, anything that's not right will suddenly jump out at you! i know a mix is finished when i come back from a break, listen to the mix and don't hear stuff jump out!

* if it works in the mix, it works. People have a tendency to add effects to tracks when they're solo'd. this is dangerous as you may find that it sounds great on it's own, but once you drop it back in the mix it sounds terrible or gets in the way of something else. Kick drums are a real pain for this because you may spend a while getting you solo'd kick to sound "phat", only to drop it back into the mi and it just sounds muddy and flabby! if you can, try not to solo stuff too much and if you do, drop it in to the mix, hit stop, give your ears 10 seconds and then hit play again, which brings me too....

* subjective volume. have you ever EQ'd something and then, being the good engineer you are, thought "i'll just bypass the EQ to see how much of a difference i've made"? the danger is that the EQ'd sound will be either louder or quieter than the original because you either cut or boosted certain frequencies. normally, whichever version is louder sounds better (because our brain says louder = better!). you've got meters with faders, why not make a note of the volume before EQ and after EQ and adjust the difference when checking your EQ to give you ears a chance to be truly subjective. Same goes for comps, but if you've set your "makeup gain" on the compressor properly this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

* the worst time to mix is when your tired or really need the toilet. both effect concentration and i've ruined mixes by trying to finish them late at night (fortunately i normally save each mix with a slightly different name so i can go back to a previous version if this happens)

* Performance, performance, performance. as said earlier, a great performance ALWAYS trumps a great recording. even some of the biggest selling songs of all times have used scratch track vocals because they were the best performance, even though they had the gear, time, and money to capture a better recording.

* making performers comfortable. if you want the best performance, the musician has to be comfortable. A lot of musicians suffer from "red light fever"; the minute you hit record they just fall apart. also, multitrack recording to a click isn't natural, especially if you're in a band and you're used to playing with your buddies. making musicians comfortable and getting a great performance is, by far, the top of my list to a great recording. Even the quality of the instruments below that (look at "something in the way" by Nirvana, the acoustic guitar and vocals were recorded with Kurt slumped on a sofa in the control room with a knackered out acoustic guitar or "i will follow you into the dark" by the postal service where they were trying to record vocals for another track, something went wrong, and whilst waiting the singer picked up his acoustic guitar and played through the song. the one mic in the booth was live and the guys in the control thought it sounded so goo so they just went for it, only took a couple of takes!)

* never stop learning and never stop experimenting. I've been doing what i do for 12 years and every day i pickup something new or try something and think "hey, that really works!"

* have fun

 

[Whaleblue]

This is great! If a few more "old hacks" feel like pouring out a few nuggets of wisdom for the uninitiated, I for one will be all ears. Good job all, thanks.

 

[ConorC]

Thanks guys, lots of great information here.

 

[sausy1981]

to be fair, i'd hope that most people would take anything written on any forum as suggestive rather than prescriptive And if you're new to recording and mixing then there's certainly some very good starting points in there. However, even the "pro's" still learn new stuff all the time. Recording is an art, not a science. the biggest mistake i see is people assuming that if it worked for one track it's going to work exactly the same for every other track.

my 2 cents;

* Reference, reference, reference! the human ear very quickly adjusts to sound. have you ever been in a super loud night club? if so, you'll know that when you first get in you literally have to SCREAM into peoples ears to get them to hear you. however, after 10 minutes or so you can have a pleasant chat at a normal speaking volume. weird huh? that's because the ear tunes out sounds that it doesn't see as vital and try's to maintain speech recognition. the same happens when you mix, especially if you do it for long periods at a time. you almost have to trick your brain into listening properly again and the easiest way to do that is to listen at different volumes and listen to other music. the other way, and this is important....

* rest your ears once in a while. based on the same principle as above, giving your ears some peace and quiet basically resets them. i know i need a rest when i can no longer really hear the changes i'm making, but it's good to get into a habit of taking regular breaks. go have a coffee/tea, go to the loo, pop to the local shop, write an email, check your Facebook. when you come back to your mix, anything that's not right will suddenly jump out at you! i know a mix is finished when i come back from a break, listen to the mix and don't hear stuff jump out!

* if it works in the mix, it works. People have a tendency to add effects to tracks when they're solo'd. this is dangerous as you may find that it sounds great on it's own, but once you drop it back in the mix it sounds terrible or gets in the way of something else. Kick drums are a real pain for this because you may spend a while getting you solo'd kick to sound "phat", only to drop it back into the mi and it just sounds muddy and flabby! if you can, try not to solo stuff too much and if you do, drop it in to the mix, hit stop, give your ears 10 seconds and then hit play again, which brings me too....

* subjective volume. have you ever EQ'd something and then, being the good engineer you are, thought "i'll just bypass the EQ to see how much of a difference i've made"? the danger is that the EQ'd sound will be either louder or quieter than the original because you either cut or boosted certain frequencies. normally, whichever version is louder sounds better (because our brain says louder = better!). you've got meters with faders, why not make a note of the volume before EQ and after EQ and adjust the difference when checking your EQ to give you ears a chance to be truly subjective. Same goes for comps, but if you've set your "makeup gain" on the compressor properly this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

* the worst time to mix is when your tired or really need the toilet. both effect concentration and i've ruined mixes by trying to finish them late at night (fortunately i normally save each mix with a slightly different name so i can go back to a previous version if this happens)

* Performance, performance, performance. as said earlier, a great performance ALWAYS trumps a great recording. even some of the biggest selling songs of all times have used scratch track vocals because they were the best performance, even though they had the gear, time, and money to capture a better recording.

* making performers comfortable. if you want the best performance, the musician has to be comfortable. A lot of musicians suffer from "red light fever"; the minute you hit record they just fall apart. also, multitrack recording to a click isn't natural, especially if you're in a band and you're used to playing with your buddies. making musicians comfortable and getting a great performance is, by far, the top of my list to a great recording. Even the quality of the instruments below that (look at "something in the way" by Nirvana, the acoustic guitar and vocals were recorded with Kurt slumped on a sofa in the control room with a knackered out acoustic guitar or "i will follow you into the dark" by the postal service where they were trying to record vocals for another track, something went wrong, and whilst waiting the singer picked up his acoustic guitar and played through the song. the one mic in the booth was live and the guys in the control thought it sounded so goo so they just went for it, only took a couple of takes!)

* never stop learning and never stop experimenting. I've been doing what i do for 12 years and every day i pickup something new or try something and think "hey, that really works!"

* have fun

Great post

 

[sausy1981]

Another thing I've had to do in my latest mix is use automation, My track starts with an acoustic guitar plucked, piano, vocal, drums and bass, in the pre chorus an electric guitar comes in and the guitar starts strumming with strings coming in aswell, then in the chorus there is backing vocals, another electric and hi strings come in aswell, my problem was that the drums got drowned out in the chorus as they were the only constant throughout the song. I had good seperation and whatever I tried to do with eq the drums were still lost, then I decided to try and bring my drum bus fader up in the chorus to see if it made a difference and hey presto with a tiny adjustment it worked.
This little anecdote shows how I built up through my song to the chorus to improve dynamics (i'm a big fan of this method) and that adjusting the volume of a channel thats constant can make all the difference, eq isn't always the answer and there's no point eqing tracks that don't need it.

 

[grimtraveller]

"I didn't see the writing on the wall until the wall fell down on me !"

It's great to catch that flush of enthusiasm when one has picked up some new techniques.
It'll be interesting to see how the OP feels about all the points they made in 10 or 15 years time. The reason I say that is that as was pointed out, even hardened engineers learn new stuff and for every ''correct'' way of doing something, a song may require an "incorrect" way for a certain effect.

 

[Xdrummer]

I think the original post and the additional comments can all be benefitial to anyone in the early part of the learning curve.

I've been recording for a while now - but looking back - I think I made each one of the errors listed and had to learn the hard way - often ruining takes and or mixes in the process!

I wish there would have been a web site like this when I started (hell, I wish there would have been home computers when I started)

 

[Justsomeguy]

After posting on a completely different thread, i remembered this gem that has been one of the most useful things i've ever heard;

* Noise gating - some people swear by it, some people never use it, some people dabble. The aim of a noise gate is to reduce unwanted spill. the word "reduce" is the key part to noise gates and something that i didn't understand for years. noise gates work by turning down sounds that aren't over a set threshold (it's like a robot turning the fader down by so much unless the volume goes past a set point). By default, a lot of Noise Gate plugins have this reduction set to -100dB, meaning that when the sound doesn't go above the threshold, the volume is reduced by -100db to total perceived silence. As i said in my earlier post, the human ear is truly an amazing thing. one of the many things it can do is tell the difference in volume between sounds very well. so, imagine, that your noise gate is turning the unwanted spill down by -100dB, when the gate opens and the sound pours out, the difference is 100dB! that's a lot. however, if you set the gain reduction between -6db and -20db then the difference between the sound you want and the sound you don't is much, much smaller. "but i want the spill to be silent!" i hear you cry. well, at -20dB, the amount of spill you can hear is practically silent. as i said, the ear is so good at telling even the smallest differences that even -6dB of reduction makes a MASSIVE difference. Noise Gating at with less gain reduction has changed my life; no longer do my drums sound sterile or sharp

* Low Cut Filters (or High Pass filters) - when i'm mixing, i like to think of the parts as pieces in a puzzle; on their own they mean nothing, but if you fit it together correctly then you can see the bigger picture. to me, this relates to two main things; panning and the frequency spectrum. the range of human hearing is between 20Hz and 22kHz and all instruments we can hear fall within this range. the bulk of an instruments individual sound can be found within a smaller snapshot of this range. For example, a kick drum will have a lot of energy between the 50hz - 100hz range, whereas a cymbal will have the bulk of it's sound much higher up the frequency spectrum. Some instruments, such as piano and acoustic guitar, cover a large part of the spectrum. However, only a handful really fall into the lower frequency part of it; mainly Kick, bass guitars, bass synths, and double bass. "Why the rant, get to the fluffin' point!". Ok, my point is that although a lot of instruments will extend down to the low frequency part of the spectrum, only a handful have the bulk of their sound in that range, and so by applying a low cut filter (or high pass filter) on everything that isn't either a kick, bass guitar, bass synth, or double bass, you free up a lot of space for those instruments to sit along side the rest of the mix rather than fighting for it and muddying up the low end of your mix