Mix tips for a positive difference.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:15 pm

Ok, here are a couple of tips to start any mix.

First and foremost, select "save as" and rename your session.

Set a few sub groups. All pro mixers do this and so should you. Buss your drum tracks to a stereo aux input. Buss your BG vocals to a stereo aux input. Buss any multiple similar tracks like this. Stirngs, guitars, synths etc. Leave those sub faders at 0. They will be important if/when you start to overload your master fader.

Begin with zero plugins and balance your audio raw. Get the "best" balance you can with no eq, no compression, no fx. The cool thing about this is you can really hear how well you recorded it. Good recordings balance easy. So how easy did you make the mix? This will tell you. Do this "every" time and you will see your own patterns emerge, plus improvements in your recording chops will creep in.

Ok, so you want to start tweeking. EQ is first. You are going to refine your balance with eq only. Don't even look at the compressors yet. Your first eq goes on the foremost thing that is not sitting well in said balance. Most raw mixes sound muddy. So, find the muddiest track first, throw on an EQ and subtract or cut the mud. 200hz-ish is the most common cut freq to clear up a track or mix for that matter. This will expose the next muddy track, so now find "that" mud and back it out a bit. Go down the line and listen to the mix clear up. Stay with this until you feel cutting mud is done. Your mix should not sound thin at this point, just better. If it's thin you cut too much, so put some of that 200hz etc back in. You will find that when you cut the mud, you will need to turn up the track a little. This is good. Ok, keep nudging that stuff around until feel you've done all you can with this. After this step, now you can boost or cut your high's and lows with greater ease and fidelity.

Beginning with EQ only and nudging those faders around will set you up for a better foundation in the next steps of dynamics control and fx.

drewdrops · Post by **drewdrops** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 3:48 am

nice advice will give this a try, the more i learn the less im using, it appears subtly is the key when using eq, compression fx etc..

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:07 am

drewdrops wrote:nice advice will give this a try, the more i learn the less im using, it appears subtly is the key when using eq, compression fx etc..

Yes, and if you feed the compressor a balanced sound, it won't respond to the problem of the sound so much. Make it sound clear and balanced then hit the compressor. It's better.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:25 pm

"save as" or as I call it, "save ass" is a powerful mix tool and is underutilized. After important mix stages on a mix, select "save as", append a number and/or a note then go forward. Then you can always go back to a mix stage that you liked. Undo is useful too, but it can be confusing if you have a ton of undo's and no refernce point. Using a lot of save ass's will give you more confidence and a more agressive experimental outlook when mixing. I can easily have 30 to 40 session files and go back in time to any important stage in the mix. The less you worry the better the mix.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 6:51 pm

it can be difficult to notch out a problem frequency band simply because you cant hear what you are aiming for. A common trick is to boost a frequency and sweep it around until you find the horrible zone, narrow the Q a little then cut that frequency.
It will take a little twiddling to find exactly how much you want to cut.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:43 pm

Angstrom wrote:it can be difficult to notch out a problem frequency band simply because you cant hear what you are aiming for. A common trick is to boost a frequency and sweep it around until you find the horrible zone, narrow the Q a little then cut that frequency.
It will take a little twiddling to find exactly how much you want to cut.

Yeah, thats a good one. When deciding how much to cut on one track, find the freq, get out of solo, listen to the whole mix, then cut and hear the total relation.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:09 pm

another good related point to all the above is ...

don't solo your kick and eq up a 'monster' kick drum. Things that sound great in isolation generally don't sound good in a mix. That goes for most stuff, the demo synth pad that sounds really fat in isolation will just sound messy in most tracks, unless you are a real arrangement minimalist, in which case - lucky you!

solo to find problems, but get your sounds with everything up on the board, if you have a board!

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:15 pm

Angstrom wrote:
solo to find problems, but get your sounds with everything up on the board, if you have a board!

Huge tip.

Obineg · Post by **Obineg** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:22 pm

Don´t be afraid to kill a good deal of low end on channels competing with kickdrums and bass , such as pads , leads , atmospheric sounds etc

Lord Kahn · Post by **Lord Kahn** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:54 am

knotkranky wrote:"save as" or as I call it, "save ass" is a powerful mix tool and is underutilized. After important mix stages on a mix, select "save as", append a number and/or a note then go forward. Then you can always go back to a mix stage that you liked. Undo is useful too, but it can be confusing if you have a ton of undo's and no refernce point. Using a lot of save ass's will give you more confidence and a more agressive experimental outlook when mixing. I can easily have 30 to 40 session files and go back in time to any important stage in the mix. The less you worry the better the mix.

There's a few tools for handling multiple versions of files, although many were designed with programming source code in mind (a professional coder can't work without version control of some sort).

I use tortisesvn (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/), which integrates into windows explorer very nicely. There's Subversion clients for Mac OS as well, but I've never used them, they may require a bit more geekery

What you do is create a repository where all your changes go, then you add all your project files to it. Then when you save a change to your project file you "commit" it to the repository. Only changes to the file are saved, so it's very good for large binary files, where only a little bit might have been changed. You can then easily view changes and tag them with comments so it's easy to see what's what.

It's also a great way for people to collaborate on a project without being in the same physical location as you can serve repositories over the net

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 1:32 pm

Angstrom wrote:another good related point to all the above is ...

don't solo your kick and eq up a 'monster' kick drum. Things that sound great in isolation generally don't sound good in a mix. That goes for most stuff, the demo synth pad that sounds really fat in isolation will just sound messy in most tracks, unless you are a real arrangement minimalist, in which case - lucky you!

solo to find problems, but get your sounds with everything up on the board, if you have a board!

True and read up on such topics in Michael Stavrou's excellent book, "Mixing with Your Mind" ....

To quote Stav "Maximum Illusion Minimum Voltage".

Also don't forget a good mix often requires a better arrangement.

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:06 pm

jasefos wrote:
Also don't forget a good mix often requires a better arrangement.

YEAH!, the mother of all tips, because the biggest mix improvements come while writing and before the parts are recorded. The key of a song has a huge impact on high's n low's. If a song is vocal centric, the key of the song is picked for that. If driving bass beats is your thing then the key choice will have the biggest impact on your mix much more than EQ or compression. Michael Jackson would record one song separately in 5 different keys to find the pocket he was looking for.

Even something as simple as two parts in the same octave can complicate things let alone six parts in the same octave, or more for that matter. Having all your sounds out of each others way and working in concert before mixing, will make for a big phat and clear, jump out of the speakers mix.

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:31 pm

knotkranky wrote:
jasefos wrote:
Also don't forget a good mix often requires a better arrangement.
YEAH!, the mother of all tips, because the biggest mix improvements come while writing and before the parts are recorded. The key of a song has a huge impact on high's n low's. If a song is vocal centric, the key of the song is picked for that. If driving bass beats is your thing then the key choice will have the biggest impact on your mix much more than EQ or compression. Michael Jackson would record one song separately in 5 different keys to find the pocket he was looking for.

Even something as simple as two parts in the same octave can complicate things let alone six parts in the same octave, or more for that matter. Having all your sounds out of each others way and working in concert before mixing, will make for a big phat and clear, jump out of the speakers mix.

Ahhh someone understands !

drewdrops · Post by **drewdrops** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:24 pm

Nice works peeps all good stuff...

drewdrops · Post by **drewdrops** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:29 pm

knotkranky wrote:
jasefos wrote: Having all your sounds out of each others way and working in concert before mixing, will make for a big phat and clear, jump out of the speakers mix.

Whats 'in concert'? Filling up the frequency range as if there real instruments ie strings = pads or am i way off?