Mixing SOS

[Monkey Allen]

yeah, i found that too with amplitude. i find neural dsp's stuff usually works better for me, at least for a more balanced guitar tone rather than consisting of only mid.

with addictive drums i would use their midi stuff as a baseline, and then add/remove to it. you can also look at the velocities for hints towards whatever new hits you might add.

if your bass di sounds that bad, i would be worried that the pickups or wiring might be fucked?

anyway, private message me the tracks or however you wanna share them and i'll have a look and see what the story is with your source material.

Ok, thanks very much. I'll pm you in a bit. I've got to take care of a fish tank and some other stuff first. Then I'll get the tracks sorted and get them ready to upload somewhere. Appreciate your generosity. I'll be real interested to hear your assessment of the raw tracks. Yeah, the bass...I just dunno what's going on. The actual playing might be a large factor...I'm not experienced there. Which seems to be a general thread all round really...limited experience.

 

[mjbphotos]

Addendum/ revelation:

Dragging this thread back again...I've really been trying to work things out here and the conclusion seems to be this:

My raw tracks are quite poor. It's less to do with mixing issues and more to do with poor raw tracks. I took a long hard look at one of my songs (Building a Fire) totally stripped down and this is what I found, in no order:

- there was so congruence of volume between recorded tracks...the drums were a certain volume...the bass was 6db louder, the vocal was 12db quieter, the tambourine was 18db higher etc. Not bad in and of itself...you can always just adjust volumes. BUT...the discrepancies manifest in terms of tone. If you track something way too low or way too hot you've baked in that mic response.
- my selection of electric guitar tone (Amplitube) was just odd...really raspy around 2khz, lots of 100hz, 200hz, 500hz etc. Because I've spent the last decade and a half writing songs on a nylon string guitar strumming with my thumb...I have almost no clue about selecting and shaping electric guitar tone.
- bass guitar just a sea of ill defined low end...no character...just a wash of D.I. Really poor sound.
- the ezDrummer drums just sounded bad. Straight up bad. I dunno how I managed that...EZD basically already sounds good right off the bat. Somehow I mixed each kit piece down to audio and it sounded terrible.
- vocal sound was possibly ok...but anemic...small. Admittedly, I don't have a creamy, rich voice. I see a lot of people recording vocals much closer to the mic than I do. I'm usually a foot away or so. Might have something to do with it.
- keys/ organs mainly just a wash of 400-600hz...can sound ok if not much else is going on but gets lost in a busy mix
- lead guitar just screaming at 2khz. I was eq'ing out up to -18db @ 2khz.
- there's no acoustic guitar in Building a Fire...but acoustic guitar is always an absolute villain to record...very bad


Ok, so that's some of what I noticed. And I ask myself, shit...how could anyone mix this stuff? Believe me on this...all the raw tracks sounded pretty bad. They were either really dull and lifeless or really stabby and raspy...or really washy and ill-defined. I've heard people throw up faders on a completely raw set of tracks...and the good ones already have a pretty nice sounding song. I have a vortex of shit...already...before I do anything.

So...I've put this thread in the wrong part of the forum. It should be in the recording/ tracking section. I need to record better, smarter. I need to get better sounds before I start mixing. It's not really mixing's fault. Hell, I might be a pretty good mixer.

This all brings up a couple of massive issues:

1. Being able to dial in good sounds...this includes amp sims, mic placement, preamp settings, any eq/ compression (or not) on the way in etc
2. Being realistic about what kind of sounds I can get out of my cube shaped spare bedroom full of nulls, standing waves, boxiness, dullness etc

If I can't dial in good sounds it's over. You might as well forget about it. I've spent the last few weeks DIY'ing treatment in my room...so will see how that pans out tracking-wise. If it doesn't work I may have to record things like acoustic guitar and vocals out in the much bigger front room or something.

So, it's not mixing as such...although mixing is certainly a frustrating mess when you can't hear accurately what's going on. It's more to do with not having good tracks recorded. So, I need to spend MUCH more time focused on getting better sounds from the start. The version of Building a Fire I just mixed has compression, eq, reverb and limiting on the master...and the rest of the tracks are totally empty of plugins...except for about 20% of the tracks which have a single eq. So...what I ended up with is basically a better sounding mix (it's still really bad) than the earlier versions where I had tape sims, delays, reverb, compression, harmonic distortion plugs, distortion, channel strips etc.

Before I was sure that somehow the answer was in mixing...I'm doing it wrong...or I need more of this...or maybe this tape emulation will do the trick. But the answer isn't in mixing. Mixing is part of it. The real issue is the poor raw recorded tracks. I'm not really sure I talked about this at all in this big thread. I just assumed the tracks were ok. They are not ok.

If I can work out how to record nice sounding, rich, full tracks that sound just like what they are, without all the wool and the without the dullness and lameness...then I'll have half a chance at mixing.

And I won't have to start whining threads like this.

You are right - you have to record decent sounds first. "You can't polish a turd' is an old recording axiom.
I don't know why you are having issues with EZDrummer - other than setting the 'hit' levels (in the MIDI piano roll), it's pretty much all ready to go. Note: I do not use the EZD 'room' sound at all in my mixes, I use the same reverb IR as other instruments.
Why are you adding "compression, eq, reverb and limiting on the master"? What are you trying to accomplish? Reverb should be on a bus that instruments/vocals are sent to, not on the master - you don't want the same level of reverb on everything, that will create a mess.

 

[rob aylestone]

I'm wondering like the others, I think, if your recording are as bad as you think? What doe web recorded commercial music sound like when played in your room? Are you hearing those nulls and peaks?

 

[Monkey Allen]

You are right - you have to record decent sounds first. "You can't polish a turd' is an old recording axiom.
I don't know why you are having issues with EZDrummer - other than setting the 'hit' levels (in the MIDI piano roll), it's pretty much all ready to go. Note: I do not use the EZD 'room' sound at all in my mixes, I use the same reverb IR as other instruments.
Why are you adding "compression, eq, reverb and limiting on the master"? What are you trying to accomplish? Reverb should be on a bus that instruments/vocals are sent to, not on the master - you don't want the same level of reverb on everything, that will create a mess.

I'm not 100% sure what's happening with EZD apart from the kick and the snare always seeming to be so hugely present in the OH's...meaning the individual snare and kick tracks are almost useless in terms of tone control for the snare and kick...since they are so present in the OH's. I think I talked about that somewhere in this thread...the inability to shape the snare (in particular I guess) tone...when most of the snare is in the OH. If you know what I mean. Again...just limited experience with drum mixing doesn't help. I really don't know what I'm doing. But as you said...EZD already sounds mixed. So I just dunno. I've started not using the 'Room' and sometimes the Ambient sounds in EZD as well. I think for the song Building a Fire all I mixed down to audio was Kick, snare, Hihat, OH.

Ok, the compression, eq, reverb and limiting on the master is not something I do as a rule. I only did it this time as an experiment in using as few plugins in the mix as possible. I'd done umpteen mixes of this song...with plugins on every track...all manner of tape sim, harmonic distortion, eq, compression, delay, reverb etc. I was like...this is shit every time. Every mix is bad. What happens if I just try to mix this whole thing with only panning and volume? So I tried that. The only plugin I used was the stock Studio One eq...on about 15 or 20% of the tracks. Nothing else was used in the mix apart from panning and volume adjustments. Absolutely nothing else. On the master bus I just mixed in about 4% reverb, did about 3 eq adjustments, used a glue kind of compression and then a limiter at the end to bring the overall volume up. So, the mix was almost vanilla really...you look at the tracks and there's almost no plugins. Just the odd eq. And what's funny is the mix turned out probably better than all the many mixes I had done before where I was mixing the hell out of everything with all sorts of plugs and scores and scores of eq adjustments. So it was just an experiment to throw on that reverb in the way I did across everything. Just experimental.

 

[Monkey Allen]

I'm wondering like the others, I think, if your recording are as bad as you think? What doe web recorded commercial music sound like when played in your room? Are you hearing those nulls and peaks?

Pro stuff in my room sounds really good. It's not like I throw on The Beatles or something and they're drowning in overly represented low end or they're sounding hollow. Pro stuff just sounds excellent. I've listened to a lot of great mixes...from Abbey Road to Vulfpeck to Dark Side of the Moon to Steely Dan...whatever. Just search for "greatest mixed albums of all time" or something. They all sound brilliant in my room. Everything sounds good. I'm not hearing problems. Stuff sounds balanced and good.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

I don't know why you are having issues with EZDrummer - other than setting the 'hit' levels (in the MIDI piano roll), it's pretty much all ready to go.

Is it? The folks at Brainworx have shown in demo videos using numerous pluggins to create the drum track.

Audiothing also has a demo lofi'ing Ezdrmmer with some VST. It seems pretty common.

 

[R D Smith]

When I use EZ drummer, I use the built in mixer to adjust the levels. That makes it much easier to get the individual drum kit piece levels right without (me) screwing up the sound using external processing. I also turn the overheads down. Since they are catching everything, they make it hard to balance the separate pieces using their faders. I've been pretty happy with the results.

 

[Pinky]

I live in Australia. But you're right. I'd love to be able to one on one with someone more experienced than me. Unfortunately, I don't know a single person into music or recording. I'd have to hit up a stranger or bug some studio dude. I'm not really that gregarious I guess. I mean. I'm somewhat gregarious...but not that gregarious.

I wasn't suggesting befriending someone to get them over to your place. Google for local sound engineers (music studios also a good potential search criteria) and offer them money to stop over for a training session. Create a list of things to address and stick to it to maximize their time. It's going to potentially save you a lot of your own time and heartache. Studio engineers already know you're not interested in using them as a one man band, so it's money they aren't ever otherwise going to make off you.

 

[Pinky]

When I use EZ drummer, I use the built in mixer to adjust the levels. That makes it much easier to get the individual drum kit piece levels right without (me) screwing up the sound using external processing. I also turn the overheads down. Since they are catching everything, they make it hard to balance the separate pieces using their faders. I've been pretty happy with the results.

In Superior Drummer (the slightly more robust version of the same product) I have to use the overheads because of the cymbals. Are you saying there's another way to capture the cymbals?

 

[Pinky]

The thing about Amplitube is it sounds awesome on youtube...and that's not just the manufacturer's vids...so may characters on youtube nail great sounds. I can't emphasize enough my lack of experience in electric guitar tone creation. For the song I mentioned, I remember just scrolling endlessly in the Amplitube presets just going nope...nope...nope. I ended up settling for, I think, the default Amplitube setting. Like the setting you get when you first launch Amplitube.

I've identified some well known guitarist tones I like, and Adam Jones from Tool's "Lateralus" era guitar tone has been a solid starting point for my primary heavier guitar sounds for a number of years. There's databases online of various Amplitube presets created by users, it does require however you have the amps/sims needed for that particular sound (I have the largest Amplitube package so I have most everything the product has to offer and rarely encounter any presets that don't function fully). I'd recommend maybe getting a few presets of the 'sound' you're looking for, then adjust from there. Again, starting from scratch or the presets included within Amplitube is going to be limiting and requires some knowledge about effects, cabinets, and tone shaping (as well as virtual mic placement within Amplitube once you've graduated to that level of granularity).

 

[mjbphotos]

I don't know what you guys ^^^ are doing with EZD. In the mixer section of the GUI, there is a 'mic bleed' section (I think that some of the EZD 'kits' may NOT have this, but the ones I use do). One knob for snare bleed, the other for OH bleed. I keep the OH bleed off, so only the cymbals are on that track.
The snare has bottom and top mics - I put them into the same Reaper track, by mixing them in the EZD mixer first. You can adjust the pitch of any of the drums or cymbals with a slider in the kit window (same place you choose which drums/cymbals to use)

 

[Monkey Allen]

When I use EZ drummer, I use the built in mixer to adjust the levels. That makes it much easier to get the individual drum kit piece levels right without (me) screwing up the sound using external processing. I also turn the overheads down. Since they are catching everything, they make it hard to balance the separate pieces using their faders. I've been pretty happy with the results.

I need to do this more...or need to pay more attention to it. You turn the OH's down...like off...or just turn 'em down to a level you're happy with?

I wasn't suggesting befriending someone to get them over to your place. Google for local sound engineers (music studios also a good potential search criteria) and offer them money to stop over for a training session. Create a list of things to address and stick to it to maximize their time. It's going to potentially save you a lot of your own time and heartache. Studio engineers already know you're not interested in using them as a one man band, so it's money they aren't ever otherwise going to make off you.

Yeah Pinky, great idea. I would seriously consider this.

I've identified some well known guitarist tones I like, and Adam Jones from Tool's "Lateralus" era guitar tone has been a solid starting point for my primary heavier guitar sounds for a number of years. There's databases online of various Amplitube presets created by users, it does require however you have the amps/sims needed for that particular sound (I have the largest Amplitube package so I have most everything the product has to offer and rarely encounter any presets that don't function fully). I'd recommend maybe getting a few presets of the 'sound' you're looking for, then adjust from there. Again, starting from scratch or the presets included within Amplitube is going to be limiting and requires some knowledge about effects, cabinets, and tone shaping (as well as virtual mic placement within Amplitube once you've graduated to that level of granularity).

Ok, good idea again. I'll need to look into that. Starting completely from scratch with no amp tone dialing skills is not fun.

I don't know what you guys ^^^ are doing with EZD. In the mixer section of the GUI, there is a 'mic bleed' section (I think that some of the EZD 'kits' may NOT have this, but the ones I use do). One knob for snare bleed, the other for OH bleed. I keep the OH bleed off, so only the cymbals are on that track.
The snare has bottom and top mics - I put them into the same Reaper track, by mixing them in the EZD mixer first. You can adjust the pitch of any of the drums or cymbals with a slider in the kit window (same place you choose which drums/cymbals to use)

Yep...another thing I need to pay more attention to...the mic bleed. And yeah, some of the stuff in EZD doesn't have the bleed option but much of it does.

 

[R D Smith]

I don't know what you guys ^^^ are doing with EZD. In the mixer section of the GUI, there is a 'mic bleed' section (I think that some of the EZD 'kits' may NOT have this, but the ones I use do). One knob for snare bleed, the other for OH bleed. I keep the OH bleed off, so only the cymbals are on that track.
The snare has bottom and top mics - I put them into the same Reaper track, by mixing them in the EZD mixer first. You can adjust the pitch of any of the drums or cymbals with a slider in the kit window (same place you choose which drums/cymbals to use)

This ^. I forgot about the mic bleed. EZD has the same thing.

 

[Pinky]

I don't know what you guys ^^^ are doing with EZD. In the mixer section of the GUI, there is a 'mic bleed' section (I think that some of the EZD 'kits' may NOT have this, but the ones I use do). One knob for snare bleed, the other for OH bleed. I keep the OH bleed off, so only the cymbals are on that track.
The snare has bottom and top mics - I put them into the same Reaper track, by mixing them in the EZD mixer first. You can adjust the pitch of any of the drums or cymbals with a slider in the kit window (same place you choose which drums/cymbals to use)

Exactly, 99% of the needed controls are baked into the drumming software.

 

[Monkey Allen]

EDIT: I recently spent 2 weeks trying to mix one song of mine. It was a bloodbath. I mixed it numerous times. It never worked. It always sounded bad, really bad. No words can describe the 2 weeks trying to mix this thing. Literally turned my brain inside out trying to make it work. I finally gave up. The only thing left that I had to reason with were:

a) the song wasn't quite good enough
b) the arrangement of the song was poor
c) the recorded tracks were weak and poorly recorded
d) I chose THE worst sounding ezdrummer kit and midi known to man (Vintage Kit Original Mix for anyone who wants to check that out)

Since I had tried everything I knew mixing, the only thing left was to admit that the tracks and the song and the arrangement were poor. I had tried to be open minded. I had always considered the fact that they might be poor...but was also convinced I could mix them all and it would be ok. But they weren't.

So this is a lesson for novice mixers...when you don't even KNOW that what you're dealing with is not good enough, you are apt to just bludgeon forward...into hell. A better mixer would be able to:

a) call a spade a spade and simply declare the tracks/ song/ arrangement unfit
b) if he had no other choice...use all his powers (which the novice mixer just doesn't have) to work low grade miracles

So I gave up on the song. I gave myself a few days then stripped down another song that I'd mixed a couple of months ago which I always thought was a decent song, recording and arrangement but a mix that wasn't doing justice. I stripped it down and started a new mix. Took me no time at all. I had a mix that was a huge improvement on the original and a huge improvement on my general level of mixing.

So the lesson is, know when the song you're mixing just aint quite right.

That was a tough lesson, learned the hard way.

EDIT: I might add...the new mix still sucked. Don't get me wrong. It was an improvement. But it was still awful.

 

[wavestar]

You're music is great. Amazing guitar work in that Landslide tune

 

[mowtontom2]

I think you may be "over listening". I have listened to "Better Me Better You" on a couple different systems that the typical listener listens on, and it sounds fine, outside of mixing it in a pro studio I think you've done well. I have a similar problem with over listening at the mixing stage and have been trying to rectify that. There comes a time when IT'S MIXED. Also when you reach out to places like this forum for mixing advice, even on great sounding tunes someone always will have an opinion on changes, just like if it was mixed by multiple Grammy winning engineer's, they would most likely all sound a bit different.
Rock on brother!
Cheers

 

[Monkey Allen]

You're music is great. Amazing guitar work in that Landslide tune

Appreciate that man. That song was kind of one that came after all this thread where I really tried to make a good mix with all the advice. Still think the mix is a bit clunky. Will mix it again one day. I've made some ground in my understanding of mixing, I'll go into below...

I think you may be "over listening". I have listened to "Better Me Better You" on a couple different systems that the typical listener listens on, and it sounds fine, outside of mixing it in a pro studio I think you've done well. I have a similar problem with over listening at the mixing stage and have been trying to rectify that. There comes a time when IT'S MIXED. Also when you reach out to places like this forum for mixing advice, even on great sounding tunes someone always will have an opinion on changes, just like if it was mixed by multiple Grammy winning engineer's, they would most likely all sound a bit different.
Rock on brother!
Cheers

Appreciate that about Better Me Better You. I did that song about 5 years ago and it was one of about 20 songs I recorded and mixed back then. It was the ONLY song out of all of them that I felt worked pretty well as a song and a mix. The other 19 songs ranged from pretty lame to utter stink lame. I always wondered what it was that worked about it, why it worked...and why I couldn't seem to ever repeat it in other songs and mixes. And you're right about over listening. But seriously I needed to (and still do) really listen and work out stuff across the board...from writing, recording to mixing. Every step of the way.

So...

I came back to this thread to post a few things about what I've learned and the areas I have been going wrong...so this might be a tad lengthy. But I do it because you never know, someone may stumble in here some day going through all the disappointments in recording and mixing that I've gone through and something might tweak for them. It's hard to say if stuff you read helps you or not because reading stuff or watching videos is one thing but having it click in your own brain and really understand it for yourself is another. I dunno, it may just be the way I learn or whatever. Maybe some people can just follow a video or two and bingo, they got it. Not me. I've read thousands of words and watched hours worth of videos. But none of them made my brain truly understand. It's like I had to get hands on and really methodically rationalize everything for myself. I still have a long way to go but I think finally I'm on the right path. But these are just the thoughts of a guy who has STILL to make consistently good music and who doesn't claim expertise in any of this.

Anyway here's some of the key stuff I've come to understand about recording and mixing. I'll start with what I was doing wrong time and time again:

What I got wrong:

- All manner of arrangement issues...open position guitar chords strummed all the time all the way through a song, not thinking in terms of identifiable musical styles or genres like country, funk, folk, rock whatever, poor tone selection etc. I could go on for 1000's of words on arrangement. But I'll try to just be more specific on actual recording and mixing.

- all manner of tracking/ recording issues...poor tone selection, thin sounds, boomy sounds, too low a level, too high a level, horrible acoustic guitar tones, awful bass, massive transient crazy electric guitar etc (see the bass guitar example below for a more detailed idea of such issues)

- all manner of monitoring/ headphone/ room treatment issues. No base line frame of reference that I understood or could trust. I owned Sennheiser HD600's for a full year thinking that everything sounded boomy and muddy in them. It wasn't till recently that I realized that it wasn't so much the headphones, it was my music...my recorded tracks. I started using SoundID headphone correction with Goodhertz CanOpener and started to make stuff sound as clear and defined as I could. If it sounded boomy...I eq'd so it was not boomy. It sounds really dumb. But I spent a full year basically with the HD600's sitting on the shelf because I thought they made everything boomy. This was not so. It was my poorly recorded stuff that was boomy. This mindset reversal was a lightbulb moment. Sounds insanely dumb. But making this realization has helped bigly. Once I had a reasonable frame of reference in the HD600's I could kind of compensate for my Mixcubes, my Yamaha HS8's and other headphones I have.

- not listening closely enough to the music I love...not paying super close attention to what is going on in pro mixes...simply not noticing things about pro mixes and not making key mental notes naming and labelling what I notice. I reckon this is harder than you think because pro mixes are so good they kind of don't draw attention to themselves in an obvious way...because everything sounds so good. It fools you because everything sounds so natural. You try to listen critically but wind up just enjoying the song without noticing that the kick is understated with a gorgeous, deep but not muddy thump...or that the acoustic guitar has a beautiful reverb on it or that the vocal is rolled off way up around 500hz with a reverb that accentuates only the most flattering singing tone at 4khz or something.

- not using reference tracks. I dunno about you guys but for me I had this huge part of me that unconsciously avoided comparing what I was doing to reference tracks because the disappointment was always immeasurable when you heard how good the pro stuff sounds and how provincial and amateur your stuff sounds. But lending an ear and keeping regular tabs on a pro track or two is something that you should force yourself to do. Some people don't use reference tracks and still make great stuff. But for those of us who need all the help we can get...reference up...make your stuff sound as close as you can to the sounds you like.

- Lack of understanding about levels...levels and gain staging in tracking, mixing and mastering. I'd often mix into a limiter (people DO do this but...) where peaks were already receiving reduction of up to 8 or 9db. This is just poor handling of levels to have peaks raging over 0 by that much already in the mix stage. I'd have peaks getting reduced by multiple db's...but have a weak average level...something like -25db rms. You can imagine trying to get my song to a robust enough average level...something like -12db rms. I'd just be slamming through a limiter, ripping everything to shreds.

- not having any idea about mixing drums...pretty key isn't it? Drums are the foundation of a song. Now I'm an EZD and AD2 guy and I'd just pick a kit and insert some midi and that was that. I forgot to shape the kick to suit my song. I paid no mind to the levels of the snare, the tone of the high frequencies, the drum bus level, the kick level. You name it, I got it wrong mixing drums.

- recording bass straight DI, no eq, ending up with THE most woolly, muddy, overblown, drowned in mud bass that was virtually impossible to eq after the fact. I ended up with a Sansamp pedal just taking away mud with a view to getting a simple clean deep, rich, articulate tone that could be manipulated in mixing. I decided this was better than trying to record an already distorted, growling bass. Not to say you can't do that. But in the home studio...my studio and setup, getting an articulate bass tone has been a revelation.

- singing and performance that lacks conviction...straining to sing rather than relaxing and singing calmly.

Anyhoo...

I could go on and on about the things I got wrong. To summarize: EVERYTHING...ALL areas. Every step of the way. If there's a thing I do well I think it's writing a song. They aren't great, great songs, I get that...I'm not The Beatles or ACDC or whatever, but for a guy at home you know, not bad. But EVERY other step of the way kills the song slowly, bit by bit. Bad tracking, bad mixing, bad decisions etc. Whatever is good about the song just doesn't make it to the final mix. Regardless of the song, good or bad, all I want is for it to be sonically good...to sound nice. And I've said that in the thread...it should be possible, if it's a good song, an average song or even a bad song...it still should be possible to make it sound nice.

Anyway, whatever...I'll get to the nuts and bolts of recording and mixing now. These are things that became concrete in my mind and that I understand and that I think will produce better results for me. Your approach will be different. I'm not saying this stuff is lore. Only that it could be helpful.

*** Take as given that: your arrangement is good, you've selected and tracked good tones, the performances are how you want them. And that your monitoring is squared away and you know the characteristics of your headphones, correction software, speakers etc.

To be continued...

 

[Monkey Allen]

Continued...

1. Track stuff so it peaks around -12db digital scale in your DAW. You don't have to be a stickler here. It's just a pretty good rule.

2. Once all your tracks are recorded, gain stage all of them. If you've recorded well, they should be reasonably close. Use a meter...a VU plugin calibrated to -18dbvu or a digital meter plugin that you can look for -18db rms. You want to try to get your tracks hovering around -18db rms. This likely won't be possible for very transient things like kick, snare, hihats, a tambourine etc because they are fleeting sounds...the transient comes and goes. They are not consistent sounds like you'd get from say, an electric guitar playing rhythm or from a vocal or an organ. These sources have transients...but they are sustained sound sources way more so than a snare, which is very transient. It hits then it's gone, hits then it's gone. In the case of transient stuff like a snare, just aim to get the peaks consistently around -12db or so. A little more or less won't kill you. Most DAWS will have some kind of trim built in to each channel. Use that, not the channel fader. Just adjust until your levels are as described above. Approximate levels are fine. If you're a bit out here and there it doesn't matter. Just get it in the ball park. You can then do the same thing for the busses. Say you've got a bunch of guitars all going to a bus...gain stage that bus. Same with the drums, the vocals, the BU vox etc. Just get those busses close to the -18db rms. Again, the drums being transient will be a balancing act between boosting too much and having peaks running too hot, and keeping peaks in check but losing rms level. I would tend to maybe be happy with -8db peaks on the drum bus. Something like that. Though it could be -6, -10 for some people. Just a little give and take. The great benefit of this kind of early attention to detail in gain staging will be rewarded all the way through mixing and in mastering. I did something like 200 mixes before I realized this step. I had kicks and snares slamming -0.5db right off the bat. I had other tracks peaking at -30db. All over the place.

3. Go through channel by channel (track by track) and familiarize yourself with the nature of the tone and the sound. Use your favourite EQ and tidy them up in terms of frequency if your critical ear notices stuff. Roll off the low end, take away some mud, roll off some high end. Whatever you think the track needs. These eq moves should not be surgical at this point. You're not going to be notching and boosting all over the place here. Remember to keep in mind the final 'sound' you're going for. Let this inform your decisions at this early stage. I've also heard some people say they apply a basic compressor at this stage and shave off a db or 2 from all tracks. They then bounce those tracks rendering the EQ and the compressor. Sounds reasonable to me, although I don't take this step.

4. The next thing to do is to get a rough mix going. Use the channel faders here and just follow your ears. If you find that you have to make large volume adjustments for a track it might be better to use the trim control rather than the fader. You might start with the drums and just balance them in and of themselves, then add in the bass and so on. Your goal is a rough mix. You could start to pan here. You will probably already have in mind how you want to pan. Don't really reach for any plugins at this stage. Just get a balance going. Keep in mind things you notice like masking or frequency areas of build up. Note which channels share similar frequency profiles. If you look at your spectrum analyzers you might notice the bass and kick hanging out in similar areas. You can solve these kinds of clashes later.

5. You might want to throw a couple of different headphones on at this stage, switch monitors, listen in mono, listen a bit quiet, listen a bit loud, listen at a normal basic volume and you might want to just reference some pro tracks that you feel are similar to the feel you're going for. The key here is to notice things...make mental notes, write stuff down, whatever. Just notice stuff. If you're a patient, patient dude, you can even throw limiter on your stereo bus and render the song at a robust-ish level, say -14db rms...then send this mixdown to your phone and listen to it on your phone. What problem areas do you notice? What is good, bad? Don't go overboard on this step...just let it inform you here and there. Just notice stuff.

6. Go back to your mix and remove that limiter. Take note of what you're dealing with in terms of levels. Again, notice stuff. If you find that the master bus is being overshot by 6db or something, or even a db you need to obviously turn stuff down. There's multiple ways of doing this. You could insert a trim plugin as the first thing on the master bus and just turn everything down. You could group link (each DAW has a way of doing this) all trim controls on each channel and just turn them down. Same as if everything is too quiet, just turn stuff up. But if you've tracked at the right levels and you've gain staged as described, you should be sweet as in terms of levels. Everything is relative and there's many ways to pat a cat but in terms of numbers, what's going to work for master bus levels is this: ideal would be -6db peaks -18db rms...real good would be -8db peaks -20db rms and my goal, when I realized all this levels stuff was -8db peaks and -22db rms. These numbers are going to work for you 99 times out of 100. I used to get myself in situations at the very start of the mix where I had a master bus reducing peaks with a limiter that were ALREADY over 0db and an rms level of something like -28db. I did a hundred mixes like this and never knew why everything sucked. If I want to create a song that has a decent (for example) -12db rms, average level, you can see that if I'm ALREADY overblowing the 0db and my rms is -28db...I'm going to have to crush my mix into a limiter to get the -28db to -12db rms. I'll need +16db! Things are going to sound bad. Much better is to follow the gain staging, record proper levels and aim for those numbers above: -6db peaks -18db rms/ -8db peaks -22db rms. Etc. Now when I'm mastering my song, getting it up to a decent volume, I've got -8db headroom before I hit 0db and I only have to go from -22db to 12db...that's +10db. This will send my peaks only 4db over 0db because I have the -8db buffer and my limiter will not be going insane reducing huge peaks. People often say to forget about the numbers and all that...but for me, deliberate, rational and logical meditation of 'the numbers' really helped to make stuff concrete for me. It helped my brain understand.

7. Now you're ready to start mixing. At this point you might decide that you want to mix into a compressor. From what I gather this is a pretty common method. But you don't have to do this. I settled on mixing into a compressor...slow attack, quick release, setting the threshold so the reduction shows a couple of db being shaved off. Follow your ears here.

To be continued...

 

[Monkey Allen]

Continued...

8. So, I start with the foundation...the drums. This is the start of concerted mixing. I'm keeping a lot of things in mind here...I'm thinking of the style of music, the genre, the feel, the message of the song. All of that stuff. I'm keeping in the back of my mind stuff like reverb...fx, things to highlight, things to strategically submerge, future clashing, possible masking issues between tracks I'll have to deal with down the road, whether I'm not noticing that I'm using a big rock kick sound for a mellow country/ folk tune etc. There's a lot of stuff floating around the old noggin that you need to have on deck, fresh in your mind...you're juggling a lot of variables all a the same time. It pays to be methodical and to keep all those things in mind and to let all those things of which you are aware, inform your decisions. I'm working with drum VST's...EZD3, AD2 etc but I guess I'll just talk generally about drums. I guess I'm aiming for about -8db peaks on the drum bus. I think that works ok. I won't go into detail about drum mixing because I'm not an expert but I will just mention a couple of things that I see as useful...get the gain staging right, shape the tone of the kick and snare for your song. A lot of EZD and AD stuff have kick drums from rock heaven...these gargantuan things...huge, huge kicks, massive snares. Just watch whatever processing the vst already has. Shape stuff appropriate for your song. Follow your ears.

9. Get the bass guitar involved and check masking with the drums. Check for mud. Check and notice the relationship between the bass and the kick. If they sound weird together, eq and shape until they sound nice together...more on that below. Check on all your monitoring...headphones, monitors, in mono, stereo etc. You might want the kick present in the sub 100hz range...maybe 70hz. You might want to roll it off from 50hz. Depends on your song. You might want the bass present around 100hz through 200 odd with a push for clarity up around 1000hz, depending on where it's presence and fundamental lie. Again, I won't go into detail about shaping your bass sound. Remember that you should have tracked it how you want it as close as possible. The key is to be aware of how the bass relates to the kick and how it plays with the drums. Watch for masking and frequency clashing. Solve these masking and clashing issues in any way you feel you can handle. You can use sidechain compression, dynamic eq's etc. I'll let you look into that.

10. I get the rhythm guitar involved next. (I start off this concerted mixing kind of part by part...drums, bass, rhythm guitar, vocals...that's about it...then I throw up all the faders and unmute all the channels and just start attending to whatever catches my ear). So, the rhythm guitar...in my case it'll either be an acoustic or an electric or maybe a nylon string guitar. I'll be panning this somewhere, getting it well off the centre where the kick and the bass already are. Again, really key is to consider masking issues. The rhythm guitar will likely be present down at 100hz and all over the low and mid range and up into the high mids. So you need to account for all the potential clashing and masking. I always want to tell myself to create space. I want space in the mix. I want to let the tracks be what they be so to speak...I don't want to rob them of their nature...but as a whole, I want there to be a sense of space. At this early stage of mixing if you're getting it wrong things can already start to sound wrong and ugly really quickly and that can be very discouraging. I think the key is to be conscious of masking at all times and to deal with it by sidechaining or dynamic eq or even regular old eq. Whatever works.

11. Next I'm getting the vocals up and then the backup vocals. Same story...I'm listening for masking. I'm noticing loud words or phrases or quiet ones. I'm noticing the volume relationship with the drums, bass and rhythm guitar. I'm determining if the relationship is discordant or seems wrong or out of place. I make myself aware of mud and brittleness. I might do stuff like sidechain the vocals into an overhead channel compressor so the cymbals are lowered when there is singing. Again, it's all masking and clashing related observations that inform the decisions you make in shaping the vocal sound.

12. At this point I pretty much unmute everything and start to just go round and round addressing things as I notice them. At this point also I feel like I should have a good core developed because I've been checking on all my monitoring scenarios...headphones, speakers etc. At this point also I bring to the front of my mind stuff like reverb decisions, fx, the need to highlight and kind of showcase some parts of the mix, or to push other things into the background at the required moment. I've also got one eye on my master bus...regularly. I'm not obsessing over numbers...I'm just aware and noticing what the readings are telling me. Because I don't want stuff getting peaky, I'm making decisions about compression on every channel. Is it required...or not? Will I be able to reduce peaks and maintain the tone? Should I use compression as a creative tone device...or is it more technical...to keep peaks under control so my master bus stays sweet? I'm thinking of all this stuff.

To be continued...