Tips to EQ and mix my first ever home-recorded song

[amc252]

Hello everybody,

I'm about to mix my first-ever home-recorded song.
Here's some info:
- genre: Mexican cumbia
- 4 tracks: voice, drums, bass, brass (trumpet + trombone)
- DAW: Audacity (plus any free Linux plugin I might need)

What I'd like to hear your two cents about:
- Tips to EQ each instrument
- Tips to EQ voice (cleaning Ts, Ps, and Ss, nasalness, etc)
- Tips to add reverb to instruments and voice
- Tips to EQ final mix
- Tips about how to mix the 4 tracks, meaning which levels would be best for each instrument and the voice.
- Any other advice you might think is valuable

I know it's impossible to give precise values, and I don't need an insane level of details, but I'd sure appreciate some starting points.

Thanks in advance for your time and expertise.

 

[Papanate]

Can you post the track?

 

[TalismanRich]

Can you post the track?

Agreed. There's no way to know what changes are needed. It's a bit like asking "what should I do to make my cooking taste better" without us knowing what you are even cooking.

 

[amc252]

Sure. Here goes a snippet of a very raw mix.

 

[Slouching Raymond]

EQing everything is not compuslory.

 

[ecc83]

I don't know, I only read but I think SUBTRACTIVE EQ is the way to go? That is, do not, if you can possibly avoid it , boost* any frequencies. There is also the "Skyline" principle where you visualize each instrument/voice as part of a cityscape?

*This can run you into headroom problems. The received wisdom is that each track should average about -20dBFS before you start messing with them.

Dave.

 

[JamEZmusic]

I don't know, I only read but I think SUBTRACTIVE EQ is the way to go? That is, do not, if you can possibly avoid it , boost* any frequencies. There is also the "Skyline" principle where you visualize each instrument/voice as part of a cityscape?

*This can run you into headroom problems. The received wisdom is that each track should average about -20dBFS before you start messing with them.

Dave.

-20dBFS!!! ?

Is this what people are doing since I've been away?

 

[ecc83]

-20dBFS!!! ?

Is this what people are doing since I've been away?

Yes because each time you mix two tracks at the same level the resultant is some 3dB higher. You can see therefore that as you mix more and more tracks you are going to bump into 0dBFS before long! Once you have EQ'ed and mixed the **** out of your tracks you can always boost it to as close to 0dBFS as you want.

0dBFS is also the highest level you can get out of an interface, equivalent to the maximum output of a mixer, say +22dBu and you wouldn't run mixer tracks at that would you?

Dave.

 

[rob aylestone]

Cubase certainly doesn't work like this Dave - in truth I have no idea how it actually works in the mix bus. Most of my individual tracks in cubase are sitting around -3 - and look right in the display, waveform wise. If they are lower than that for some reason (probably less care on the input gain adjustment), I'll normalise them to -3 too.

When mixing, few faders will be over 0, most probably between half scale and 75% I would guess. Only occasionally does the master need to drop, but if the bar has gone red, I will drop it, play the track again, and if the red over level bar does not come on, that's it. My monitor volume is never adjusted, and I use my ears for setting the levels. I could turn on the meter that tells me LUFS and other stuff, but I don't. Some tracks I do are quiet, and will be nowhere near maximum for the length - others will be louder and more continual. My old system of find the red light level and back off, still works perfectly well, and because I don't change the monitoring level, it seems to work. No distortion, but no massive attraction to a meter at all. I have no idea what the LUFS level is. Online streaming services probably mess up everyone's levels anyway. Oddly, my ultimate check is Spotify playlists - my stuff mixed in with other people's stuff in similar genres. If mine don't stand out as wrong, either too loud or too quiet, job is done. out of hundreds of tracks on Spotify, only one was wrong - a bit too quiet. I reworked it into a new track, and didn't delete the old one. Ironically, that track tops my list of shazzam'd tracks, every month!

Anecdote time - many years ago I was on a Soundcraft course. Students to real pros were on it. One was Big Mick Hughes from Metallica. One of the students from Liverpool's LIPA uni was totally spec-bound. He asked Mick what level he had FOH. Although clearly he knew, he sized him up and said "I turn it up till my teeth rattle" - the student said "what happens if you don't have enough sub-bass?". His answer was simple GET MORE!

I think I'm happy being not normal with levels. I just want faders with good travel, and no added distortion I can hear. It's very rare for Cubase to generate distortion from over loud individual tracks. I don't know how they do it, but it is not common at all.

 

[ecc83]

Rob, you are the LAST person I am going to have a cow with about computer recording! I am but a worm.

I can only go by what I have read over many years and the whole thing is complex, involving as it does floating point math INSIDE the DAW which cannot I understand be overloaded? And the analogue world which certainly can!
That snapshot is of the Samplitude Pro X 6 demo tracks and you can see that each track runs quite low, certainly below -10dBFS (at which most peak) Some average a bit more than -20. I suspect the engineer was of the "neg 18" school? The master stereo output is crowding 0dBFS.

If you have say 8 tracks all peaking to -3dBFS then I don't see how you can bring anything up? To do so would mean bringing all the tracks down some dBs to "make room" for it?

And yes, stuff posted to streaming services will be forked about according to their personal proclivities but I would not know, don't have any chops to do that.

A few years ago, in forums people were saying, "Ooo! you must not record down at -30dBFS! Not enough bits and the results will be noisy and distorted". Or/and "Ooo! You mustn't record close to 0dBFS* your results will be distorted" We don't get such posts now . I think peeps now realize it is all bollocks!

*Mind you! That IS apparently true with a certain range of budget interfaces? I am sure that info will "ring a Bell" with many here?

Dave.

 

[TalismanRich]

RE: the raw mix snippet posted

I'm not at all familiar with the music style, so my opinions might be contrary to the norm. I think that the different elements need to be better balanced. I would bring up the backing vocals slightly, as well as the percussion. The horn and voice actually both are pretty natural sounding to me. Using some compression might help the balance but too much will take some of the life out of the sound. There aren't a lot of elements to work with, so just getting the right blending is the first goal.

I don't go crazy trying to get rid of every bit of sibilance, which is a natural part of a voice. If it's clearly distorting then it should be addressed. Sibilance is found in the ~5-10kHz range so putting a bit of a dip in the range can help if needed. I don't like taking out a lot of that range to limit .2 seconds of "S" because it affects the rest of the track as well. A de-esser compresses the signal when it detects lots of energy in that frequency range. Just like any compressor, use it sparingly. More is not always better.

The reverb seems to fit pretty well. I would imagine this music to be performed in a smaller venue, so using a hall reverb with a long tail might not be appropriate. If it was normally played in a cathedral, then a hall reverb might work.

 

[rob aylestone]

I mentioned in another topic I was doing my first Hindu recording. A really nice lady turned up and we had a chat. We agreed an experiment was required to find out if what she wanted could be recorded and then progressed in little sections through the year. She had an ipad that produced drones on an Indian instrument I had never even heard of. Three strings. it also allowed other sounds - melodic and percussive to be added. I got the drone into cubase, and she selected A as a 'key'. The prayer she needed to record, over it was a part spoken, part sung prayer, but the words occasionally had a pitch, and the the singing revolved around the A, but were not in our usual Dorian, or any of the other usual scales. I didn't work it out at all. I heard 'th' type sounds, 'd' sounds and lots of mmmmmmm sounds. I explained that we could probably remove some of the sounds western music would consider mistakes or odd breath sounds but no - these were important and deliberate. It was fascinating - all my years of experience counting for nothing. The first test with an AKG 414 was considered a failure - it captured things she liked. Everything was reversed good is bad, bad is good, and as for EQ, every adjustment she liked what I considered the wrong way. Plus of course I cannot understand a word, apart from a word that said yogi - who I'm assuming is one of the Indian yogi wise men? As in the Beatles forray into Indian music. Then she mentioned she didn't like the sound of the droning sitar type instrument, and I loaded up an Indian instrument sampler - I'd never really used it. Her eyes lit up at the graphic images of instruments and she picked one - the drone sound she had on the ipad, but a sampled one - I thought I could just use this, but that instrument seems to have Keys, and different ways of playing that are totally outside my comfort zone. She played me a piece from youtube she thought was excellent and worthy of her attempting, but it started with drones and tablas - in my head was a rhythm, that she then chanted totally in a new rhythm. This is how it is done. I just have no frame of reference, and I just don't get it. She's promised to try to educate me, but for the first time, I feel totally out of water - I want to be able to help and assist, but if I cannot tell good from bad I am struggling!

 

[shmaller]

Sure. Here goes a snippet of a very raw mix.

I think the percussion could come up a fair bit, and the main vocal down. But here's one general approach to mixing:

First, mix the drums. They are going to be the driving force of the song. Get each drum properly mixed and panned so that you can hear them all clearly and you're happy with the volume. The kick and snare should be panned centrally, other drums / percussion can be spread out a bit to taste.

Then, bring in a bass instrument, and get it to work with the drums. This should also be panned center. You may want to EQ maybe like a 100 Hz hi-pass on the bass so that everything below that is left to the kick. You may also set up sidechain compression on the bass to be triggered by the kick, so that the kick blasts the bass out of the way and they don't argue for frequency space.

Then your melodic instruments, like guitars and horns. These are usually panned off to the sides, maybe like 20-70% panning. These will usually take a hi-pass at 150-200 Hz to leave room for the kick and bass guitar. Probably just start with presets for your EQ and try to pay attention to what happens when you adjust the bands up and down.

Next, bring the vocals in on top. To make space for the vocals, you may need to adjust the EQ of your melodic instruments. Vocals should be panned center.

So at the end you would have kick drum, snare, bass, and vocals center. Panned around it are the horns, other melodic instruments, and maybe other percussion for effect.

EQ your reverb as well! I usually put like a 200-500 Hz hi-pass on the reverb.

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Y por fin ojalá que esta canción no sea tan autobiográfica pero si es así te deseo mucha suerte en tu esfuerza de recuperarte. Escribiendo y grabando canciónes es muy buena manera de escapar de la realidad por unas horas y crear nuestros propios mundos. Ánimo amigo.