The Mixing Thread
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:15 pm
so i went on a little mission in the last two weeks, asking questions, reading, watching videos, and LOTS of experimentation in the studio. i found out what a naive moron i was being and can't listen to my older mixdowns now. in the hopes that others can share in this slightly painful new joy of mine, i decided i'd make this thread. let's have it serve as a repository for all the mixdown advice we can serve up. i'm probably still a naieve moron, so please enlighten me also: feel free to correct anything i may have gotten wrong here.
i would like to thank everyone who got involved in my other mixdown thread, tarekith, laird, andivax, noah pred, meesha, bill bless (audiowash.com) and everyone else who hooked me up over the last little bit. you guys are the best.
ok, so here we go:
first off there is this awesome video from andivax that totally spills the beans on a lot of really important stuff. it's a free download in hi res and totally kicks ass: http://www.udma.com.ua/academy
tarekith's guide to mixdowns:
http://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html
tarekith's guide to levelling in digital audio: http://tarekith.com/assets/Leveling.html
handy eq tips:
http://www.soundpunk.com/index.php?topic=121.0
some tips from me are:
make an exciter to get your high end sounding tight: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40500
percussion routing + drum stacks: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33685
panning!!!!
don't limit yourself to just left/right panning, spreading things is really key. your sound can be upfront but still spread. spreading things often resolves frequency masking, you get a much louder, cleaner, more seperated mixdown if you spread EVERYTHING. some spread suggestions are:
-make an offset panner, it delays one channel by a few ms, creating the effect that the sound is wide, coming out of both speakers individually, instead of all flat and mono.
-create copies of your main synths/samplers and then pan em hard left and hard right. then go in and make subtle changes to things like filter, phaser, eq, redux, etc... this creates the spread without the potential phase conflicts that can result from offset panning.
-make a stereo reverb, the 'enhancer' on most reverbs sucks ass. it's better to make two reverbs, panned ahrd l/r, and then subtly alter their characteristics. also: sounds on the left have more verb on the right and vice versa. this makes things feel a lot more 'real' and '3-d'.
-get a phase scope on the job, and be sure to check everything in mono. you can really fuck yourself over when you get into spreading.
eq tips:
-make sure that you roll the highs off of most of your synths and riffs. it sounds a lot cleaner to have only hihats, cymbals, glitch, and maybe a select few ear candy noises up in the 10k+ range. you just have to make sure that sounds are present in this range throughout the song or some sections will sound flat and empty.
-roll off the low end on everything. <20Hz is no good to anybody.
-roll off everything below about 200Hz on all sounds except for your kick and bass. trust me
-make a notch at 250 on just about every sound that has this frequency. it sound slike muddy garbage on mostly everything. do this before you compress. i put a 30Hz rolloff and a 250 notch first on nearly every channel.
-set all of your eqs to oversampling mode early on. the highs come out a lot cleaner.
-be gentle with your eqs! a delicate tasteful balanceis much better than harshly applying a bunch of 'rules' you just read on the internet!
compression tips:
-easy on the limiters. sure it sounds 'louder' most of the time, but you're flattening the shit out of your highs, and you're also totally screwing your mastering engineer over. it's better to get things loud with careful eq and volume than compression. to shape a sound use the envelopes first!
-sidechain sidechain sidechain! sometimes i even have an 'everything but the kick' bus with a massive sidechain on it. you can not only make things louder, but get a lot of cool musical effects. go listen to sebastiAn or justice to hear what i mean.
-safecracking method: set a ratio of about 4:1, turn the attack up, no release. then set your threshold until you see about 3db of gain reduction. SLOWLY roll the attack back, and then use the release to make the effect transparent (or not).
-you generally don't want more than 6db of compression on anything. it starts to make wierd distortions that if you can't hear now, you will learn to hear and despise. overcompression is like adolescence for a producer. we all go through it, so don't feel like an idiot when you hear it in your old mixes, but you should really make efforts to grow out of it sooner than later. some people get stuck here forever and it's sad.
levelling tips:
-mix at -6db or so. leave the mastering engineer LOADS of headroom, and then render at the highest bitrate you can muster.
-if you set your drums around -10 db, and your bass around -8 or so, you'll end up at -6 db. don't worry about peaking too much. lots of people set brickwall limiters to avoid crossing -6db ever, but that's a bit silly imho. cleaning up all that shit is the mastering engineer's job. if you've left lots of headroom a little 3ms peak here or there isn't going to fuck up your mix.
-don't make the bass too loud! it's easy for a mastering engineer to beef up your bass, but they can't roll it back. if your bass is too loud it'll set the limiter off during mastering and then flatten the life out of all of your drum sounds.
-don't make the hihats too loud either. they become piercing during mastering.
general tips:
-try to solve things with your arrangement first. most issues can be resolved by moving some midi notes around. just take care not to fuck anything up. if you hacen't worked on the tune in a while it's easy to accidentally wreck something. this is best done in later 'tweaking' sessions while you're writing.
-don't be afraid to ask questions. don't be too insecure to listen to the answers.
-establish a talking relationship with whoever is mastering your tunes and ask them for advice. don't be insulted by what they tell you, they know a LOT more than you do about this sort of thing and should be trusted. if you don't trust their advice, get another mastering engineer.
-watch lots of videos and read up. sure there is no 'right' or 'wrong' creatively, but there are DEFINITELY wrong things you can do when mixing. learn what they are and learn to avoid them.
-experiment! if you don't get your hands dirty here and there you'll never make anything interesting. look at the Ed Banger guys, they broke all kinds of 'rules' and created a fresh new sound that is making them rich. mixing in an unusual or creative way can really set you apart form the millions of other hungry kids going after the same genre.
much love!
dylan
i would like to thank everyone who got involved in my other mixdown thread, tarekith, laird, andivax, noah pred, meesha, bill bless (audiowash.com) and everyone else who hooked me up over the last little bit. you guys are the best.
ok, so here we go:
first off there is this awesome video from andivax that totally spills the beans on a lot of really important stuff. it's a free download in hi res and totally kicks ass: http://www.udma.com.ua/academy
tarekith's guide to mixdowns:
http://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html
tarekith's guide to levelling in digital audio: http://tarekith.com/assets/Leveling.html
handy eq tips:
http://www.soundpunk.com/index.php?topic=121.0
some tips from me are:
make an exciter to get your high end sounding tight: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40500
percussion routing + drum stacks: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33685
panning!!!!
don't limit yourself to just left/right panning, spreading things is really key. your sound can be upfront but still spread. spreading things often resolves frequency masking, you get a much louder, cleaner, more seperated mixdown if you spread EVERYTHING. some spread suggestions are:
-make an offset panner, it delays one channel by a few ms, creating the effect that the sound is wide, coming out of both speakers individually, instead of all flat and mono.
-create copies of your main synths/samplers and then pan em hard left and hard right. then go in and make subtle changes to things like filter, phaser, eq, redux, etc... this creates the spread without the potential phase conflicts that can result from offset panning.
-make a stereo reverb, the 'enhancer' on most reverbs sucks ass. it's better to make two reverbs, panned ahrd l/r, and then subtly alter their characteristics. also: sounds on the left have more verb on the right and vice versa. this makes things feel a lot more 'real' and '3-d'.
-get a phase scope on the job, and be sure to check everything in mono. you can really fuck yourself over when you get into spreading.
eq tips:
-make sure that you roll the highs off of most of your synths and riffs. it sounds a lot cleaner to have only hihats, cymbals, glitch, and maybe a select few ear candy noises up in the 10k+ range. you just have to make sure that sounds are present in this range throughout the song or some sections will sound flat and empty.
-roll off the low end on everything. <20Hz is no good to anybody.
-roll off everything below about 200Hz on all sounds except for your kick and bass. trust me
-make a notch at 250 on just about every sound that has this frequency. it sound slike muddy garbage on mostly everything. do this before you compress. i put a 30Hz rolloff and a 250 notch first on nearly every channel.
-set all of your eqs to oversampling mode early on. the highs come out a lot cleaner.
-be gentle with your eqs! a delicate tasteful balanceis much better than harshly applying a bunch of 'rules' you just read on the internet!
compression tips:
-easy on the limiters. sure it sounds 'louder' most of the time, but you're flattening the shit out of your highs, and you're also totally screwing your mastering engineer over. it's better to get things loud with careful eq and volume than compression. to shape a sound use the envelopes first!
-sidechain sidechain sidechain! sometimes i even have an 'everything but the kick' bus with a massive sidechain on it. you can not only make things louder, but get a lot of cool musical effects. go listen to sebastiAn or justice to hear what i mean.
-safecracking method: set a ratio of about 4:1, turn the attack up, no release. then set your threshold until you see about 3db of gain reduction. SLOWLY roll the attack back, and then use the release to make the effect transparent (or not).
-you generally don't want more than 6db of compression on anything. it starts to make wierd distortions that if you can't hear now, you will learn to hear and despise. overcompression is like adolescence for a producer. we all go through it, so don't feel like an idiot when you hear it in your old mixes, but you should really make efforts to grow out of it sooner than later. some people get stuck here forever and it's sad.
levelling tips:
-mix at -6db or so. leave the mastering engineer LOADS of headroom, and then render at the highest bitrate you can muster.
-if you set your drums around -10 db, and your bass around -8 or so, you'll end up at -6 db. don't worry about peaking too much. lots of people set brickwall limiters to avoid crossing -6db ever, but that's a bit silly imho. cleaning up all that shit is the mastering engineer's job. if you've left lots of headroom a little 3ms peak here or there isn't going to fuck up your mix.
-don't make the bass too loud! it's easy for a mastering engineer to beef up your bass, but they can't roll it back. if your bass is too loud it'll set the limiter off during mastering and then flatten the life out of all of your drum sounds.
-don't make the hihats too loud either. they become piercing during mastering.
general tips:
-try to solve things with your arrangement first. most issues can be resolved by moving some midi notes around. just take care not to fuck anything up. if you hacen't worked on the tune in a while it's easy to accidentally wreck something. this is best done in later 'tweaking' sessions while you're writing.
-don't be afraid to ask questions. don't be too insecure to listen to the answers.
-establish a talking relationship with whoever is mastering your tunes and ask them for advice. don't be insulted by what they tell you, they know a LOT more than you do about this sort of thing and should be trusted. if you don't trust their advice, get another mastering engineer.
-watch lots of videos and read up. sure there is no 'right' or 'wrong' creatively, but there are DEFINITELY wrong things you can do when mixing. learn what they are and learn to avoid them.
-experiment! if you don't get your hands dirty here and there you'll never make anything interesting. look at the Ed Banger guys, they broke all kinds of 'rules' and created a fresh new sound that is making them rich. mixing in an unusual or creative way can really set you apart form the millions of other hungry kids going after the same genre.
much love!
dylan