mixing practice

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doulos24

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I have an idea wonder if anyone would be interested. You know to play an instrument the more you practice the better you get, but to learn something new you have to try something new. Then you usually incoperate it into your routine of practice. Why not the same with mixing? Everyone just says every mix is diffrent, but I think there are fundementals we could work on to learn to mix better in any situation and we could practice these skills to be better engineers why don't we? I have a lot of old projects I'm done with I'd be willing to donate. How about this someone sets up a set of tracks and asks people who want to to try and remix them to do so, but with some limitations. Like saying on this certain project just to only cut eq no boosting or show examples of bad mixing or bad tracking. Say a couple elements a kick and bass on top of each other, muddy guitars an bass, a bad drum kit simple things just 3 or 4 tracks. Things to practice with and work on key situations in mixing anyone interested? You could then post your fix and how you did it and if someone came along and liked the sound they could follow step by step and hear what it does and how it works. Which to me would be far more valuable then telling people on there projects yea your guitars are muddy you should cut 50hz and boost 2.5k etc.
 
doulos24 said:
I have an idea wonder if anyone would be interested. You know to play an instrument the more you practice the better you get, but to learn something new you have to try something new. Then you usually incoperate it into your routine of practice. Why not the same with mixing? Everyone just says every mix is diffrent, but I think there are fundementals we could work on to learn to mix better in any situation and we could practice these skills to be better engineers why don't we? I have a lot of old projects I'm done with I'd be willing to donate. How about this someone sets up a set of tracks and asks people who want to to try and remix them to do so, but with some limitations. Like saying on this certain project just to only cut eq no boosting or show examples of bad mixing or bad tracking. Say a couple elements a kick and bass on top of each other, muddy guitars an bass, a bad drum kit simple things just 3 or 4 tracks. Things to practice with and work on key situations in mixing anyone interested? You could then post your fix and how you did it and if someone came along and liked the sound they could follow step by step and hear what it does and how it works. Which to me would be far more valuable then telling people on there projects yea your guitars are muddy you should cut 50hz and boost 2.5k etc.
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That sounds a lot like you are asking people to do your work for you.

No thanks, I have enough of my own bad mixes that I am trying to fix.
 
Sounds like a post for the newbie section :D.
Just kidding, I'd recommend you to get a book, thats a good way to understand more thigs like "cut this frequency" "high bandwith", "ribbon microphone", "muddy mix", and "polish a turd".

"Guerrilla Home Recording" by Karl Coryat
"The Recording Guitarrist" by Joe Chappell
"The Recording Engineer's Handbook" by Bobby Owsinski

Luck.
 
I'm not asking for help you twits lol I'm offering it. sometimes it gets a bit much with the newbies offering mixes so horibly mixed you don't know where to begin with critique. Then they go remix it and it comes back worse :rolleyes: The only way to get better I feel is to get dirty and mix and mix and mix and spend hrs listening to good mixes on your monitors in your room over and over again. Posibly with a multi band compressor that can solo bands so you can hear the sections of the mix on your monitors as well. Read everything you can on music production and if your lucky intern at a major studio and learn by watching and doing. To me this semi hands on aproach would be valuable for the newbies to practice with they would have a better aproch that's more then say cut and boost here, but it would take time your right once a week a decent engineer would proably need to take 10 mins to rough out a simple mix of 2 to 4 tracks which might be asking to much of the forum members

I'd recommend you to get a book... if you knew who I was you might find it as funny as I do.
 
doulos24 said:
I'm not asking for help you twits lol I'm offering it. sometimes it gets a bit much with the newbies offering mixes so horibly mixed you don't know where to begin with critique. Then they go remix it and it comes back worse :rolleyes: The only way to get better I feel is to get dirty and mix and mix and mix and spend hrs listening to good mixes on your monitors in your room over and over again. Posibly with a multi band compressor that can solo bands so you can hear the sections of the mix on your monitors as well. Read everything you can on music production and if your lucky intern at a major studio and learn by watching and doing. To me this semi hands on aproach would be valuable for the newbies to practice with they would have a better aproch that's more then say cut and boost here, but it would take time your right once a week a decent engineer would proably need to take 10 mins to rough out a simple mix of 2 to 4 tracks which might be asking to much of the forum members

I'd recommend you to get a book... if you knew who I was you might find it as funny as I do.
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I have entire songs with a range of 8 tracks all the way to 53 tracks, and they all need to sound better. I am willing to let anybody help make em better. Where do I sign up?
 
Er... I'm an hyperactive workaholic wannabe sound engineer :D
I'd like to try to mix ONE song, what do you say? 24-bit (16 bit is OK) WAV files uploaded to a web server or ftp. Send me the URL.

PS: I must be nuts.
 
killthepixelnow said:
Er... I'm an hyperactive workaholic wannabe sound engineer :D
I'd like to try to mix ONE song, what do you say? 24-bit (16 bit is OK) WAV files uploaded to a web server or ftp. Send me the URL.

PS: I must be nuts.
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You opened a can now.
Not too sure on the server or the ftp process, but I can send 24-bit wavs through AIM if you are willing. Send a message to me and we can work it out. Thanks.
 
doulos24 said:
I have an idea wonder if anyone would be interested. You know to play an instrument the more you practice the better you get, but to learn something new you have to try something new.
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I agree that it appears like you need to learn a few things first. But please don't let your passion for thinking your own way go awry.

In the 1930's a guy named Adolph Rickenbacker invented the first hollow body electric guitar.

In the early forties a guitar player (Les Paul) with no formal electronics experience invented a way to lay more than one magnetic track on a single piece of tape. Oh yeah, he also invented the first solid body electric guitar in 1941. Purty busy dude.....

In the late forties a guy (can't remember his name) put a speaker in the end of a long hallway and a microphone at the other end. He found that if he recorded the result and laid it in real time with the original track, that a reverb effect was created. He found the he could change the reverb times by moving the mic closer, or farther from the speaker. He also found that by changing the material behind and around the speaker, he could change the stage size and early reflections. There's still a few studios around with "reverb chambers" in the basement. All of our understanding, and application, of reverb today comes from, and is directly related, to this.

In the early sixties a funny looking songwriter guy named Phil Spector invented "The Wall Of Sound." On a side note. Phil is deaf in one ear. When you listen to his mixes, FIRST - isolate the left and right and hear the mixing. (no stereo yet, but....) now cover one ear and listen to the full mix. IT GOES STEREO....

In 1967 The Beach Boys released "Smile." Which had on it, among others, "Good Vibrations." What's so innovative about that? The vocals on this ground breaking album were recorded in the bottom of a drained swimming pool.

The common thread from these examples, and many others, is that they all went outside of the normal practices, and available resources, in order to obtain their passion. Go ahead and try stuff, you never know. Just try it.

PASSION. That's the common denominator.

The one rule to audio engineering is.... "DOES IT SOUND GOOD?"


;)
 
There's still a few studios around with "reverb chambers" in the basement. All of our understanding, and application, of reverb today comes from, and is directly related, to this.
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thats cause of how the studios were designed back then soniclly speaking they were far superior then todays standards. It later evolved into the emt style plate reverbs. When construction of these chambers were no longer worth the time to make them. I'm not saying profesonal studios today don't compare to the ones in the 40s an 50s I'm saying there were no home studios they were all great sonically speaking.

Go ahead and try stuff, you never know. Just try it.
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if you try the same thing over and over again your going to get the same result. there is no way around this. I don't know why everyone here asumes I wanted to start this for me. I wanted to start it for people like this guy

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=277495

remixed 3 times not getting it now giving up. How many people like him on this forum do you think could use some tutorials with sound examples of proper kick and bass seperation or how compression moves things from front to back of the mix or what ringing nodes sound like and how to remove them from a mix or for this guy mixing heavy guitars and bass together lol

I don't want you to remix my songs. I was hoping to work on making a refrence section for newbies to come to to hear examples of problem areas in mixing and how we deal with them. Where someone could download the file and follow along hearing the changes for themselves that was the entire goal of this failed experement. Say 1 simple example a week could turn into a large refrence for newbies to mixing to hear what things sound like. I know when I was starting 12 years ago that would of been a nice refrence to visit. I think it might be asking to much of this forum though It's alot easier to here crappy mix after crappy mix and say yea your bass sounds thin or your guitars sound muddy or you have to much reverb on your vocal.
 
Detroitroadrage said:
You opened a can now.
Not too sure on the server or the ftp process, but I can send 24-bit wavs through AIM if you are willing. Send a message to me and we can work it out. Thanks.
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YouSendIt will work fine. Don't have AIM so go to www.yousendit.com, sign up and send the files (they let you send up to 100Mb in one shot) to my e-mail (which I'm gonna give you in private, ha!)
 
doulos24 said:
I was hoping to work on making a refrence section for newbies to come to to hear examples of problem areas in mixing and how we deal with them. Where someone could download the file and follow along hearing the changes for themselves that was the entire goal of this failed experement. Say 1 simple example a week could turn into a large refrence for newbies to mixing to hear what things sound like.
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Now I get it brother. Well, here are my two cents:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?p=3091006#post3091006

Just for newbies.
 
doulos24 said:
i aim to please
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Let's hear one of your mixes and we'll go from there. It's hard to take someone seriously when you haven't heard their stuff. It just seems like a bunch of talk. Maybe you are some super-pro squash master, or maybe you're just some hack troll. How are we to know?
 
http://www.myspace.com/onesickbend track bring it on or if you like nin style music beautiful noise but beautiful noise was an attempt to make a dark track without any natural instruments 65 noise tracks if you want more just ask i have a lot of tracks about 12 years worth ;)
 
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doulos24 said:
http://www.myspace.com/onesickbend track bring it on or if you like nin style music beautiful noise but beautiful noise was an attempt to make a dark track without any natural instruments 65 noise tracks if you want more just ask i have a lot of tracks about 12 years worth ;)
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That's not bad. I'm not at all a fan of ambient or "noise" shit, but your stuff was pretty good for that style. Seemed more "musical" than most people's attempts at that shit. Good work. :)
 
doulos24 said:
I don't want you to remix my songs. I was hoping to work on making a refrence section for newbies to come to to hear examples of problem areas in mixing and how we deal with them. Where someone could download the file and follow along hearing the changes for themselves that was the entire goal of this failed experement. Say 1 simple example a week could turn into a large refrence for newbies to mixing to hear what things sound like. I know when I was starting 12 years ago that would of been a nice refrence to visit. I think it might be asking to much of this forum though It's alot easier to here crappy mix after crappy mix and say yea your bass sounds thin or your guitars sound muddy or you have to much reverb on your vocal.
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There are some others on this board who were also interested in doing something like this. I think JMorris and crew were on the Mixing section last week talking about ways to get individual tracks from various studios.

I have a file hosting site that I use to transfer audio files to clients that could accommodate this sort of project. If we do it, I would have some general ground rules in mind. PM me if you're interested.
 
thanks I do that kind of music and techno when im not producing real music
 
killthepixelnow said:
Sounds like a post for the newbie section :D.
Just kidding, I'd recommend you to get a book, thats a good way to understand more thigs like "cut this frequency" "high bandwith", "ribbon microphone", "muddy mix", and "polish a turd".

"Guerrilla Home Recording" by Karl Coryat
"The Recording Guitarrist" by Joe Chappell
"The Recording Engineer's Handbook" by Bobby Owsinski

Luck.
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Hello, i stumbled upon this website looking for some guidance. I saw you recommended some books there and i looked them up. How would i go about choosing one? Which one provides the most in depth or most usefull descriptions and explanations for a beginner.
 
how much of a beginner there is always home recording for dummies

for some meat and a thick book I like this one Modern Recording Techniques

by David Miles Huber the Fifth Edition 502 pages very lil math and solid theory
takes you step by step through everything for about 35 bucks

and when your ready to learn about stereo mastering there is this book

Bob Katz: 'Mastering Audio: The Art And the Science'
but don't get that one for at least a year deep theory deep math hard read but great information
 
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