- 583
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- Jul 25, 2009
The stickied thread seem to have come to a standstill, I figure I would go ahead and post my contributions here and try to get a more lively discussion going again.
ATTN CONTRIBUTORS: When sharing an article from the web please post direct links to articles with short description instead of the whole thing so we can keep the thread clean. Thanks!!
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For everyone doing the whole home budget studio thing, I highly recommend reading the following books:
Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Mixing With Your Mind, Zen And The Art Of Mixing, Acoustic Design For The Home Studio
If you plan to be an engineer, the books I mentioned above are a must-read. For the producers, you'll find that it will be much, much easier to translate your ideas exactly as your mind imagines once you have a really solid understanding of sound and its properties. There's no getting around the mixing phase, you're gonna either have to get good at it yourself or find an engineer to translate your ideas into their full potential. Had I read those books when I first started as a producer I probably could have saved myself five years worth of chasing my own tail..
Create, Mix, Read, Repeat..
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-The room that you work in sets the tone for how well you will be able to mix. Sound is a wild beast to tame, and without a proper environment you will never truly understand what your mixes are doing; it is essentially the same as trying to paint a picture in an extremely dark room. You'll find that spending money on acoustic treatment for your room will seem to make all your other gear sound that much more expensive, which is a much more efficient means of progressing than buying high-end gear that will underperform due to an improper environment.
-Mixing is entirely relative, there are always two sides to the coin. If your snare is too loud, you can either turn everything else up or turn just the snare down. Mix smart, find the solutions that are most efficient for the problem.
-The volume balance sets the frame for the entire mix. If you want your 808 to be huge, it only makes sense to have it be the loudest sound in your mix. If you're going to make any sound particularly loud, there must be a very good reason as to why.
-Compression, by its very nature, makes sounds smaller. Think about this before you compress your drums..
-Tune everything.
-If you're not using every aspect of the frequency range in some form or fashion, your mix will sound outdated, lo-fi, rough draft etc.
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For those who have a hard time figuring out exactly what EQ, compression, reverb, etc do, here's my basic interpretations of the concepts..
EQ - Used to remedy issues with tone, or to give a sound a different tone.. in that sense it is somewhat related to pitch. A general rule of thumb is that cutting makes things sound "better", while boosting makes things sound "different"
Compression - Affects the "shape" of sound, squeezes it. Higher compression (lower thresholds, higher ratios) results in a sound that is more tight and firm, enabling a sound with less volume to punch through the mix more. Almost everything in my mixes undergoes some type of compression, but you typically want to compress "just enough"; it literally feels likes your squishing the life out of a sound if you compress too much. Finding the sweet spot compression-wise for each sound is where the artfulness comes in.
Reverb - Adds a spatial element to a given sound.. can be used as an effect (i.e. to place an artist in a certain type of room) or as treatment (i.e. to blend a sound into the beat more). You almost never place reverb directly on a channel insert unless you're going for a drastic effect; typically you will want to create a dedicated reverb channel that you will send sounds into. This also helps to give your mix a more unified sound as it places them all in the same "space". The more reverb that is applied to a sound, the further away it will seem.
--------
My general approach to mixing.. I get the volume balances figured out as best as I can, as that creates the foundation for where the mix is going to go.. Then I find the sounds that need compression and apply as necessary.. these are typically sounds that have too much variety in volume, or simply aren't punching through/sitting in the mix right. Once I have the shape of everything somewhat figured out, I will apply EQ in order to achieve more specific goals (give vocal more clarity, bring out more punch in the kick, etc). The point at which I apply reverb tends to vary, as it very much depends on the type of song.. for instance, if I'm doing something that sounds more like The Weeknd, you would expect that reverb would come into play sooner rather than later.. as opposed to say, mixing something like "Watch The Throne".
This formula is definitely not set in stone, there really are no rules to mixing..
--------
One last random tip for my FL Studio users who don't read the manual.. In the piano roll, if you set your "Snap" to "None", highlight a note and press Shift + Left Arrow/Right Arrow, it will nudge the note in that direction by the smallest possible increment, allowing for very precise adjustments. Extremely useful
--------
Hope you all find this helpful, I'll be revisiting this thread and contributing as much as I can..
ATTN CONTRIBUTORS: When sharing an article from the web please post direct links to articles with short description instead of the whole thing so we can keep the thread clean. Thanks!!
--------
For everyone doing the whole home budget studio thing, I highly recommend reading the following books:
Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Mixing With Your Mind, Zen And The Art Of Mixing, Acoustic Design For The Home Studio
If you plan to be an engineer, the books I mentioned above are a must-read. For the producers, you'll find that it will be much, much easier to translate your ideas exactly as your mind imagines once you have a really solid understanding of sound and its properties. There's no getting around the mixing phase, you're gonna either have to get good at it yourself or find an engineer to translate your ideas into their full potential. Had I read those books when I first started as a producer I probably could have saved myself five years worth of chasing my own tail..
Create, Mix, Read, Repeat..
--------
-The room that you work in sets the tone for how well you will be able to mix. Sound is a wild beast to tame, and without a proper environment you will never truly understand what your mixes are doing; it is essentially the same as trying to paint a picture in an extremely dark room. You'll find that spending money on acoustic treatment for your room will seem to make all your other gear sound that much more expensive, which is a much more efficient means of progressing than buying high-end gear that will underperform due to an improper environment.
-Mixing is entirely relative, there are always two sides to the coin. If your snare is too loud, you can either turn everything else up or turn just the snare down. Mix smart, find the solutions that are most efficient for the problem.
-The volume balance sets the frame for the entire mix. If you want your 808 to be huge, it only makes sense to have it be the loudest sound in your mix. If you're going to make any sound particularly loud, there must be a very good reason as to why.
-Compression, by its very nature, makes sounds smaller. Think about this before you compress your drums..
-Tune everything.
-If you're not using every aspect of the frequency range in some form or fashion, your mix will sound outdated, lo-fi, rough draft etc.
--------
For those who have a hard time figuring out exactly what EQ, compression, reverb, etc do, here's my basic interpretations of the concepts..
EQ - Used to remedy issues with tone, or to give a sound a different tone.. in that sense it is somewhat related to pitch. A general rule of thumb is that cutting makes things sound "better", while boosting makes things sound "different"
Compression - Affects the "shape" of sound, squeezes it. Higher compression (lower thresholds, higher ratios) results in a sound that is more tight and firm, enabling a sound with less volume to punch through the mix more. Almost everything in my mixes undergoes some type of compression, but you typically want to compress "just enough"; it literally feels likes your squishing the life out of a sound if you compress too much. Finding the sweet spot compression-wise for each sound is where the artfulness comes in.
Reverb - Adds a spatial element to a given sound.. can be used as an effect (i.e. to place an artist in a certain type of room) or as treatment (i.e. to blend a sound into the beat more). You almost never place reverb directly on a channel insert unless you're going for a drastic effect; typically you will want to create a dedicated reverb channel that you will send sounds into. This also helps to give your mix a more unified sound as it places them all in the same "space". The more reverb that is applied to a sound, the further away it will seem.
--------
My general approach to mixing.. I get the volume balances figured out as best as I can, as that creates the foundation for where the mix is going to go.. Then I find the sounds that need compression and apply as necessary.. these are typically sounds that have too much variety in volume, or simply aren't punching through/sitting in the mix right. Once I have the shape of everything somewhat figured out, I will apply EQ in order to achieve more specific goals (give vocal more clarity, bring out more punch in the kick, etc). The point at which I apply reverb tends to vary, as it very much depends on the type of song.. for instance, if I'm doing something that sounds more like The Weeknd, you would expect that reverb would come into play sooner rather than later.. as opposed to say, mixing something like "Watch The Throne".
This formula is definitely not set in stone, there really are no rules to mixing..
--------
One last random tip for my FL Studio users who don't read the manual.. In the piano roll, if you set your "Snap" to "None", highlight a note and press Shift + Left Arrow/Right Arrow, it will nudge the note in that direction by the smallest possible increment, allowing for very precise adjustments. Extremely useful
--------
Hope you all find this helpful, I'll be revisiting this thread and contributing as much as I can..
