Your best advanced mixing techniques

  • Thread starter Thread starter BeniRose
  • Start date Start date
Sonice Surgeon said:
My best tip/advice to share right now would be turn your monitor off from time to time, and just listen. A lot of musicians, especially with the advent of the digital age, have become much better editors, sequencers, etc, than musicians and engineers as a result of staring at the screen and performing endless technical tasks.

Turn the pc screen off, and listen to what those monitors are telling you.
Click to expand...

I'm a bit behind on my own thread, but I just caught a glimps of this one, and I can certainly atest to this.
 
BeniRose said:
Unfortunately, I'm never going to be able to get tracks "right before the mix" with cheap gear like my firepod and NT1a...but like I said, I know there's ways to compensate for my lack of decent gear
Click to expand...

I Love the NT1a I started on a MXL and a AKG (a and b model) and I now have the NT1a and I love it much better sound than what I was used 2 because I don't have a couple of grand to spend on a mic, just don't underestimate the NT1
 
When you Eq. Try and liten to the other sounds and how it's affecting them, rather than focussing on that particular sound.

NEVER EQ A SOLO'D TRACK. If you have to then you didn't record the sound properly in the first place.
 
Thanks RAMI. Got enough problems learning without taking that on board.
Must be a qoute of the day.
 
RAMI said:
No.

.................
Click to expand...

lol... agreed. I've never seen a distorted guitar swept and notched for nasty resonance while the rest of the mix is playing...and I've seen some pretty "high-profile" distorted guitars swept and notched for nasty resonances. (To provide one example of EQing a solo'd track).
 
iqi616 said:
A ducker is a device that lets radio personalities (can't call them DJs any more - they are what marketing tell them to play) talk over the music - it ducks the record so it gets turned down while they yap.

Basically it's a compressor. You run the signal that you want ducked into the input and you feed a control signal into the side-chain input. Instead of reacting to the input signal, the compressor reacts to the control signal. So if you have the aforementioned lame guitar, you feed the kick drum into the side-chain input. The compressor will compress the guitar every time it detects the kick drum. You adjust the settings so that the guitar gets squashed on the on-beat but has recovered by the off-beat. Magically you get the guitarist grooving along with the drummer. Alternatively feed the lead vocal into the side chain and the guitarist "reacts" to the singer and strums a bit louder in the gaps in the vocal.
Click to expand...

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! BRILLIANCE! I read about getting your compressor to pump in time long ago, but never really understood how to do it - thank you so much! (I'm showering you with rep points, lol)
 
TyphoidHippo said:
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! BRILLIANCE! I read about getting your compressor to pump in time long ago, but never really understood how to do it - thank you so much! (I'm showering you with rep points, lol)
Click to expand...

You're welcome :)
 
I'm quite new too all this but i can share 1 little tip.

Put ur recording with similiar styled music u like on ur mp3 player and put it on shuffle (YOU MUST USE SHUFFLE OTHERWISE OVER TIME U WILL ANTICIPATE IT) and go hang out with friends or something. It will then randomly pop out and u will notice it. U will then hear (At least i hear) what is too loud or not panned good etc. Just keep on mixing until it sounds "normal" when it's in ur shuffled playlist.

Hope it helps:)
 
WhiteStrat said:
Cool Vocal Sweetener

Duplicate your vocal track 2 times (so now you have three). Take one of the duplicates, detune it (downward) by12 cents, delay it by 25 ms, and pan it hard left. Take the other duplicate, detune it (upward) by 12 cents, also delay it 25 ms (you’re delaying both of these 25 ms behind the main vox—they’re in sync with each other) and pan this second dupe hard right.

Now bring the faders all the way down on these new “mangled” tracks. While your listening to the original vox (which is still in the center), bring these 2 new ones up gradually. Too low—there’s no difference. Too high—it just sounds wrong. Just right—the voice is nice and thick with a cool edge to it.

If you’re doing reverb on the vox, you can also just add it to the two new tracks—so you get some depth, but your main vocal in the middle stays big and present.
Click to expand...


A nice technique, but is't detuning going to mess up the sound a bit?

I mean... Ricci Martin is like stev Martin without the jokes ;) (enough already, I know it has nothing to do with the Martin guy ;))

I tend to use different effects in delay (changing the sound but not the tuning) on the left and the right side to get a similar effect. Maybe detuning is the whole point of the technique...... :p
 
TheMule said:
A nice technique, but is't detuning going to mess up the sound a bit?
Click to expand...
It's really pretty much just a simplified version of a stereo chorus. The man difference is that here the amount of detuning and delay are static, whereas in a true chorus the detuning and delay are modulated by an LFO.

Also, a stereo chorus usually includes a bit of phase delay in that LFO between the two sides to widen things up a bit. Here, no LFO, therefore no phase control. Which is fine; with the exception of a mix meant to mess with your head, phasing the vocals wide is not necessarily always a desired effect.

And just like a chorus, it's all in the wet/dry mix (as Strat made a point of mentioning as well). Too much can sound like a circus, but just enough to add some fullness around the edges can sound very nice.

G.
 
TheMule said:
isn't detuning going to mess up the sound a bit?
Click to expand...

I tried it yesterday on a background vocal that I thought it might work on from what I read of the poster's descriptions in this thread, and I'd have to say that messing up the sound a bit would be the exact opposite of what happened, heh... I have used dirty little tricks like this for years when I can't find any other way to get something done, but for some reason, this specific recipe (one side up 9 cents, the other side down 9 cents, one side delayed 20 ms, the other side delayed 40 ms) sounds phenomenal in a low dose. In fact, it's sounds so good, that I wouldn't even call it a dirty trick anymore...more like the secret I'm happy to have been let in on. Too much makes it sound unnaturally powerful and uncomfortable in the mix...but after tweaking with the faders and busses/sends for each of the doubles a bit, I found it be a fantastic effect that I left in the final mix - I'll try and get before and after samples uploaded tomorrow if I have time so you can hear exactly what it did for yourself.
 
This is probably common, but I like to make "virtual room mics" by creating a track with reverb and sending whatever I want in my "room mics" to it. I'll adjust the send levels until it sounds good, maybe eq it a bit to keep it from mudding up too much. Then I'll gradually mix it in until it gels everything together. This is mainly for drums, but depending on feel I want, I might add guitars or anything else.

Example:
 
Pardon me while I bump this oldie but goodie. Hope some people get some good out of it, I know I did.
 
my "trick"

i don't know about the validity of this "trick", meaning i don't know if it's a huge rule breaker, but i had an epiphany on my last project that i believe will change the way i do things; i was mixing a song and i copied the main vocal track and panned them hard as i always have before. but at some point i decided to cut the right track into the middle a little more, like 65 right. and the change i heard in my headphones made me do an aural double-take! so i then pushed my main guitar on the left a little into the center, this time 35 left. i have gone back and tried similar treatment on some of my older mixes and i am astounded with the results. that's my "trick"
 
StonedSunset said:
i copied the main vocal track and panned them hard
Click to expand...

Are you saying you literally just copied the track, as opposed to doing 2 takes???? And you're claiming this actually does anything other than make the track louder????

I call bullshit.
 
Honestly, I find it even more disturbing that not hard-panning and instead using the whole stereo image is considered a "trick". Have things really gotten that bad these days?

G.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top