Mixing: The science of actually not being a science.

[morejaylesswar]

"Glib" means "fluent and easy, often in an insincere or deceptive way", you know, kind of offhand.
By the way, another good book is "The mix engineer's handbook" by Bobby Owsinski.

I think I pirated that book when I was in high school trying to record. LOL! As you can tell, I didn't read it. I'm going to order this one from Amazon as well as the other one diggy_dude suggested.

 

[morejaylesswar]

That's the general idea, but as mixsit said, you don't have to chop it up so that one and only one instrument occupies each section of the spectrum. You have to listen and determine whether one instrument is really undermining the other.

Congrats on your 1,000th post. LOL.

Would this process make certain things stand out over others? Because I've always been told "push the other stuff to the back to make your vocal stand out over it" but I never knew what that meant. All I know is left and right on the panning knobs! LOL! I have no idea how to move the stuff to the front or the back of the mix; although I can hear when it's done in professionally recorded songs (or just by a really great engineer).

 

[diggy_dude]

(Partly because he didn't come with a tracked out beat and the quality of the instrumental sucked!)

If the tracks are poorly recorded or non-existent to begin with, the recording engineer hasn't finished his job, and you shouldn't be mixing them yet.

Going back to your previous question, high-pass filtering the vocals would be the wrong approach. The vocals should be the dominant instrument in the mix. You don't want to cut the fundamental frequency and lower harmonics out of them. Instead, low-pass the instrument that's masking the vocals.

With all of that said, you need to set the relative levels before you do any EQing. Vocals out front, the next most important instrument behind them, the least important instruments in back. That will clear up a lot of masking problems right off the bat and make more clear where and how you need to EQ.

 

[diggy_dude]

Because I've always been told "push the other stuff to the back to make your vocal stand out over it" but I never knew what that meant.

You heard correct. Use the faders and pan pots to position instruments front to back and left to right. Then see where you need to EQ.

 

[grimtraveller]

I think I pirated that book when I was in high school trying to record. LOL! As you can tell, I didn't read it. I'm going to order this one from Amazon as well as the other one diggy_dude suggested.

Funnilly enough, as I was looking for the book, I came across a few sites that printed the whole thing in it's entirety. It was tempting to just download and print the whole thing and Bobby gets no renumeration from me because I bought it secondhand in the end. But I read that book in London, in Sheffield, in the bath and in the loo. So honesty was the best policy.
The Rory Izhaki one, I'm currently reading. It's quite good and reader friendly.