Mixing and Producing that professional sound

[Thez_Valken]

I have recorded some songs of my own on my own. The recording sounds OK, but not good. A friend of mine employed a producer to produce his stuff, I want to accomplish this on my own. His stuff sounded very rough and almost unlistenable. After the producer it sounds great, and without changing the songs or arrangements.
My songs also sound rough and improperly mixed. The individual tracks sound far away from each other and almost unrelated, how do you mesh the sounds together to form a professional sounding song?
Perhaps it's where I've mixed in the instruments. Where do you put the drums, 20% to the left or right, or straight down the middle? Or perhaps, split them up separately on to left and right?
2 guitars, should they have some bleed through on to either channel or be kept completely alone on left and right?
Can anyone give any advice on how to think like a producer?

 

[BrettB]

this is a very braod question.... And you can just answer that in a few sentences.

Getting a 'pro' sound is much a matter of practising a lot, listening to professional records to hear what they have done and reading heaps of articles on the subject!

Regarding the drums: in a traditional way, you pan the overheads (not too hard, keep 'em realistic), pan the toms like they are visually and keep bassdrum ansd snare in the middle.

Regarding your guitars: do they play the same? what's the style? When you got doubled guitars, like in heavy rock, you can pan the left-right to create space. If it's a rytmn and lead guitar, we have a different story.


maybe if you ask more precise questions we can help you out.

 

[Thez_Valken]

It's mostly Hard Rock, Metal kind of music.
Perhaps someone could give me a couple of basic rules of producing, tips and tricks perhaps.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

You want "PRO" sound, then get a PRO to record and/or produce it!

 

[jazzrich9]

what blue bear said is the gospel truth, it's like learning to play the piano. eg:

My friend hired a classical pianist to play for his party. It sounded incredible, the way he poured through Debussy, his power of Tchaikosky, and he's not playing different songs... I want to accomplish this on my own, but I can't seem to play it as well... what's the secret?

practice.

you don't need to get a PRO to do it for you, but you do need to practice just like any other instrument, and become a pro yourself, there are NO shortcuts to that.

Not trying to be rough, just add perspective.

 

[malcolm123]

You may not get "Pro" probably because of your gear,, but if you read BlueBear's article on mixing,, that should help you for the meantime.

Just remember,, Its not so much the gear,, but the ears and experience.
Well maybe the gear too, but I have heard some killer stuff mixed on gear that couldnt even cover the cost of my room treatments done by experienced ME's that wanted to proove a point to me back in the day !

Malcolm

 

[Ronan]

It's mostly Hard Rock, Metal kind of music.
Perhaps someone could give me a couple of basic rules of producing, tips and tricks perhaps.

Its tough to say with out hearing what you have recorded already, but a big part of it is having exerience and knowledge. I have literally mixed thousands of song and I often feel that I am just starting to figure things out. But here are a few things that you could try (I have mixed plenty of metal/rock).

Except for your overheads and toms, try panning everything hard left right or center. put the kick, snare, bass and vox in the middle

Go easy on the reverb.

Do a lot more cutting than adding with your EQ.

If your bass sound is really clean try distorting it. This can give the track more energy and help tie the parts together.

 

[Thez_Valken]

Thank you Ronan.
That's exactly the sort of advise I needed. All the other advise here is a little like: so you want to play golf, you need the most expensive clubs, on the other hand, give up and watch a pro, you'll never be a good golfer. When you play golf you make mistakes, you need someone to help rectify those mistakes, show you what you're doing wrong, it's not worth practicing bad habits. That's what I thought would happen when I asked a question here, that's why I joined.
Where might I get more information on how to do what I want to do myself?

 

[BrettB]

Thank you Ronan.
That's exactly the sort of advise I needed. All the other advise here is a little like: so you want to play golf, you need the most expensive clubs, on the other hand, give up and watch a pro, you'll never be a good golfer. When you play golf you make mistakes, you need someone to help rectify those mistakes, show you what you're doing wrong, it's not worth practicing bad habits. That's what I thought would happen when I asked a question here, that's why I joined.
Where might I get more information on how to do what I want to do myself?

You'll get the best advice if you ask more detailed questions; Look at every instrument each, on how you mic and mix it, and you will get great advice here,


cheerz

Brett

 

[Dom Franco]

Listen then try...

Quite often what is percieved as a "Professsional" sounding mix is:

Highly Compressed mix (Like it sounds over the radio)

Over accentuated Bass (Like a big subwoofer)

Super Bright High end (12k-15K boost cymbals etc)

My suggestion is to listen to one of you favorite recordings through your playback system (Mixer, AMP and MONITORS)

Then try to match the overall sound of the mix using a 31 band grapic EQ, and compressor on the whole mix. You may get very close if the original tracks were recorded fairly well.

This is no substitute for a high dollar Professional Mastering session, and an experienced set of ears doing the EQing and compressing. But have fun anyway!

Dom

 

[ecktronic]

I am recording my bands album at the moment and it aint easy when mixing down. Probably the hardest part as thats when the pieces fit together. Recording part still needs to be spot on though obviously.
we are two guitarists in this band and we are BOTH rythym and lead, so this make things quite tricky for mix down. We might be playing different rythyms at the same time so then it makes it difficult to pan the guitars as this could produce a panning effect. What i mean is that one stroke on a guitar will be on the left speaker and the next stroke (from the other guitarist) would be on the right speaker. So ALOT of thought and automation is needed to get a nice full tight together sound with a spacial feel.
When 2 rythym guitars try and pan as little as posible while still being able to distinguish clearly what each guitar is doing from each speaker. (maybe around 10 and 2 on a clock face).
A great way of getting the right levels for the two guitars is to pan hard left and right. This makes it real easy to get good levels. Then pan to around 10 and 2.
Hope i was of some help.

 

[Ronan]

Thank you Ronan.
That's exactly the sort of advise I needed. All the other advise here is a little like: so you want to play golf, you need the most expensive clubs, on the other hand, give up and watch a pro, you'll never be a good golfer. When you play golf you make mistakes, you need someone to help rectify those mistakes, show you what you're doing wrong, it's not worth practicing bad habits. That's what I thought would happen when I asked a question here, that's why I joined.
Where might I get more information on how to do what I want to do myself?

Well this is pretty unabashed self promotion (and you did ask), but I do run a school that addresses the kind of issues you are talking about:

http://www.homerecordingbootcamp.com

I know you are in South Africa and I am in LA, but its a hell of a lot cheaper than going to a big recording school. We teach how to make great recordings without a million dollars to invest in a studio. (we do not teach you how to be an intern at a big studio)

The thing with gear is that you do not need the "best golf clubs", but you need the right gear. If I was doing a metal record I would rather have a dozen Shure SM57s, than a dozen vintage Neuman U47s. I love U47s but they are not going to get me the mid range punch I will want in the guitars or the bit I need on the kick to get it to cut through big guitars. If I was doing a Jazz record I would rather have the U47s.

Your golf analogy is good. Its tough to learn golf from a book or a web site. Since the old world of recording is dying, young engineers do not get a chance to follow Tiger Woods around and watch his moves. Getting to watch a great engineer work can be such a great learning experience. I have been in studios for 20 years and its been my day job for about 14 years and I still learn something everytime I stop by and visit a great engineer in another studio and see them work. See if you can find an opportunity to sit in a corner and watch a great engineer work (and keep your mouth shut while you are there!!) you could learn a ton.

 

[4-Man Takedown]

Thank you Ronan.
That's exactly the sort of advise I needed. All the other advise here is a little like: so you want to play golf, you need the most expensive clubs, on the other hand, give up and watch a pro, you'll never be a good golfer. When you play golf you make mistakes, you need someone to help rectify those mistakes, show you what you're doing wrong, it's not worth practicing bad habits. That's what I thought would happen when I asked a question here, that's why I joined.
Where might I get more information on how to do what I want to do myself?

Hey man, I think the advice was more along the lines of, 'to play golf you need to practice and take lessons from a pro.' It's very true, you need to put in the time. Panning this and adding that frequency aren't going to help unless you really know what you're doing. But I agree, getting responses like this can be frustrating to someone starting out, and praticing bad habits is not good.

Some advice for metal:

Keep the guitars out of all the frequecy ranges. You don't need to the guitars to have a huge bottom, the bass usually should take care of that. Nothing makes a mix more muddy than having to big sounding guitars, if you give a listen to all the great metal tunes, the guitars aren't really as low as they seem, take good metallica for example.

Distorting the bass a bit was good advice and has worked for me a lot. Also subtaractice EQ rather than adding, helped me out a lot when I was starting.

Careful of the mud. If things soud really muddy, try taking out some frequencies around 300-400 on the low stuff, that may help a tad, but you really do just need to listen and practice and make more educated desicions.

take it for what it's worth though, since I'm really no pro.

 

[Thez_Valken]

Thanks, Ronan, Dom Franco, Ecktronic and 4-Man Takedown. I'm going to try all you have said. I have a much better idea of what to do now, that's what I wanted, thanks again.
Be assured that as soon as I run into trouble, I can come here and ask more specific questions next time round.