We have all been there. Worked hours or maybe even days trying to get the perfect mix. Finally we feel it’s there. Perfect….that is until we compare it to a commercial record. For some reason it doesn’t sound as puncy, clear and crisp as that. What is wrong???

Here is a few tips that might steer you in the right direction.

Mixing is really about making room for all that is there. Most elements in a production takes up more space in the frequency spectrum than necessary.  A stereo mix is 3 dimensional so we have a lot of options to chose between when making space for a sound or instrument.

First is panorama. Panorama or pan is the space from left to right between the speakers. We can place our sound anywhere between the speakers. A golden rule is that dominant sounds should stay close to the center, like lead vocals. Also deeper bass sounds should be placed in the middle, kicks and bass. The rest can be placed anywhere you like. Try placing pairs of backing vocals hard left and right for a big stereo backing vocal sound. Also you can double a guitar part and place the first take left and the other take right for a much bigger sound. But don’t overdue this trick. Not all your sounds should sound big and wide. Use a combination of small and big sounds for the best blend. A neat trick to make a mix more interesting is to automate a panorama sweep for a single sound. You can do it as an effect and make it happen only once or twice or it can actually be part of the sound when playing.

The second dimension is height. From the deep low sounds like kick drum and bass to the highest treble sounds like hihat and high bells. The important thing here to be aware of is that many of the sounds you will be using do overlap in frequency, so to make the different instruments easier to distinguish, you will need to EQ some of the frequencies out that is not the main part of the sound. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that only the bass and kick has elements under 100 HZ. You can achieve that by inserting a high pass filter on the other instruments. It will help make the mix punch better. Also emphasize the main frequency of the individual sounds. Boost the lead vocals around 1Khz if you are having difficulties hearing the words. Make the hihat stand out by boosting 8Khz instead of turning up the main hihat fader. And so on….

The last dimension is depth. The dry sounds are close to you while you can move sounds further away by adding reverb. Make deep sounds dry and close up by keeping them dry. If you want the lead vocal to stand out, don’t add reverb but use delays instead. It will help making it in front and present but still add volume and lushness. Or if using reverb on vocals try adjusting the predelay in a matter so the reverb element comes  slightly later. It will give a 3D effect to the sound where you actually sense the vocal move from the front to the back when then reverb kicks in.  Also you can use reverb for mid to high frequency sounds like pad’s, strings, electric guitars and so on to move them further back in the room. Again you can adjust the predelay to give the sound a moving effect.

Clever use of all these elements will help making your mixes stand out and become a lot closer to the sound of your favorite reference mixes.

Happy mixing!

JJ.

Technorati Tags: audio production, hip hop tracks, Mixing, Music producer, Music production, Producer, sound mixing, track producer

For me the main foundation for a solid track is the drums.

Depending on the style of music you make, the approach to drum mixing varies. I mostly work in a mixture of pop/dance and R&B, and the way I mix drums here is quite different from rock or jazz. So just know that this is about getting great drums in pop, dance and R&B tracks.  

First and most importantly, get a great collection of drum sounds! Unless you are a skilled sound designer and want to create your own drum sounds, I recommend buying a few good collections like Urban Fire from sonic specialists or the Hitkit from popmusic.dk. There is some great sounding drums in those kits that I use in almost all my songs. Without cool sounds to work from, it is really an uphill battle to get a great mix.

I start by focusing on the kick. It’s usually the loudest sound in the track and it needs to sound great. First decide if the kick you got is the right one for the track. You might need to blend it with another kick for a different attack or sub, or maybe replace it completely. Let’s say in this exsample we decide we need a harder attack. So to get a harder attack we add another kick with a different attack. Go through a few different favorite kicks and pick one that sounds about right . To avoid clashing the sub, I filter out the low frequencies of the new kick. Since I already commited the original kick to audio by recording the midi to audio, I can simply add the soundfile of the new kick to a new track. I match the start of the new kick with the old, filter out the sub of the new kick and copy it throughout the song. By adjusting the level of the new kick I can get as much or little I want blended with the old. Now that we have the right attack we need to make sure the sub in the kick matches with the bass. If not, we can adjust the bass with EQ. Please note that you need a pair of speakers that go pretty low to make this adjustment of the sub. If you don’t have speakers that go low enough, you might get away with using a pair of good headphones.

Next I go to the clap or snare. Is the snap or punch right? Again I will blend different sounds to get it right. Also experiment with slightly delaying one of the sounds to get a fuller sound. I also use a great plugin called Transient Designer from SPL that runs on the UAudio UAD (read more here..) boards. It can really manipulate the attack and decay in a cool way. Finally I add the hihats and percussion/loops. I often use Stylus RMX (read more here…) for that with many custom made loops. It’s a great tool I can highly recommend. Make sure you filter out the bottom end, so the loops don’t mess with the kick. Remember we need the kick to stand out. Also don’t use all the loops throughout the whole song. Cut some of them out in the verses, breaks and bridge so we create variations and developments in the arrangement.

Now that the drums sounds decent, I usually make a drum bus to control the level of the drums on one single stereo fader. I also run the drums through pre-fader sends to another buss to add a touch of hard compression New York style, and maybe even a bit of distortion from a guitar amp plugin. If you feed the second buss using prefader sends from the individual tracks, you can add the effect to certain elements only instead of the whole drum buss. That’s it for now. I would love to hear any comments or questions you might have on drum mixing. See you soon.. Johnny

Technorati Tags: Drum mixing, Hip hop Mixing

The mix can make or break the presentation of a song. A great song with a bad production and mix, will have a tough challenge making it. But it is not really that hard to create a great sounding mix once you know a few guidelines. Here follows how I prepare for my Pop/R&B mixes.

The first thing I do after I finished my production and recording, is to bounce all my midi instruments into audio files, all starting from bar 1. It is not only just to free resources to use for plugins, but also to prepare my mindset for the mixing phase. Bouncing the files also assures me that my sessions will always sound the same whenever I open it - even years later after having changed or upgraded some of my instruments.

I like to keep my tracks in same order from song to song

. I always start from left with kick drums, snare, clap, hihats, percussion and cymbals and FX. Then it’s bass, guitars, percussive synths, pianos and last pads and strings. The vocals I put on the right side starting with lead, dubs, addlibs and finally bv’s. After all the audio tracks I have my groups, FX returns and last the master fader.

First step is to break the mix down into sections eg. drums, bass, guitars, keys and vocals. Focusing on just a part of the picture gives clarity instead of confusion.

I like to create the following 7 groups for my Pop/R&B mixes: Main Drums, Cymbals & SFX, Bass, Percussive Synths & Keys, Strings and Pads, Lead vocals & addlibs, BV’s.

I also set up a few fx channels, 3 different reverbs, 2-3 different delay/echos, chorus and other modulation. If I need more during mixing I can always add them later.

Once you have your session set up the like this, a good tip is to save the session as a template. Then you don’t have to go through this process every time, but can simply open the template and add all the audio files you bounced.

Look out for my next article where I talk about mixing the drums.

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Technorati Tags: Mixing, Music production, Templates