Mixing and mastering tips

[Juho L]

Just some counter weight on all this "hardly audible" babble. Let's share the tips 'n' tricks of mastering and mixing.

I've shared some of my tricks on forum members' music area, so I'll just write some of that stuff again:

1. Bass distortion. Duplicate the bass track (or make a post-fader channel track) and set a heavy crunchy distortion on it. Then set the distorted duplicate just slightly audible. That way your bass track is more clear (you hear the note better istead of just random wooooof) without eating the mix. Works very well for almost all kinds of basses - especially for sub basses. This send distortion trick is also good for other than basses when you want to have grittiness without totally crushing everything.

2. Doubling. This is very basic trick, but still some people are totally unaware of this. Doubling simply means that you re-record (do not copy, rerecord) and pan the re-recording to the opposite of the original. Works especially on vocals (must for backing vocals) and heavy distorted guitars. This way you get wide and thick sound and it sounds sooo good. Of course beware overusing this trick.

3. Highpassed drumloop. Not actually a mastering or mixing trick, but very nice tool. Choose a drumloop and add a very high frequency HPF to it. Then add this highpassed loop on the background of your track (keep the volume of the loop low) and voil?. The loop is faintly on the background and your drums sound more brisk and full. My favourite trick.

I also have a question: How do you guys process drums? I usually end up having quite murky drums. They seem to lack the snappiness and clarity. Probably some EQ'ing needed, but how? Usually boosting the high frequencies makes the drums sound weird. Maybe cutting would do the trick? How to get the drums sounds brisk and clear without getting artifical sound?

[Wandering Kid]

i never use loops for my percs. and i rarely add effects and signal processors that affect the whole drum pattern. depending on what type of drums im doing the EQing will vary massively. for drum and bass type, fast, complex breakbeats ill have an FX channel for kicks, snares, hats 1/8ths, hats 1/16ths for the main parts and usually a few for extra snares or percs to fill out the break. EVERY FX channel i first have a filter, then a parametric EQ and right at the bottom a spectrum analyser. for breaks i keep the kick more in the mid range frequencies and shelve off all frequencies below 50hz although it depends on the kick that is used. hats ill shelve off everything below 500hz straight away. depending on the snare i want to use, ill sometimes have a 750 to 1000hz thunk and add a little bit of air at around 4000 to 6000 hz just for a tiny bit of sibilance. to bring out the SLAP ill sometimes layer a hard clap with the snare, reverse the polarity to avoid similar frequencies doubling up, then add a little reverb tail to the clap and alter the levels till the timbre is right. the snare usually, at this point interferes with something else. and this is why i use spectrum analysers. because for drum and bass i push the kicks further up into the midranges, it usually ends up coming into contact with parts of the snare and i get problems. depending on the timbre im going for i find the where the peak of the snare is on the speccy analyser and the peak of the kick. then use the parametric EQ to make a slight notch at those frequencies. if the problem is more serious ill use the filters instead to push the kick further down and the snare a little further up so the sound of each is a little more separated. the hats usually clash with the snares at this point but i tend to widen some of them in stereo or pan them apart since this is a convenient way of getting rid of clipping problems without changing the dynamic of the sound too much. tuning your drums also works this way too cuz you are changing their frequencies and you can move the hats further away from the snare by tuning it out. if you cut out all the lows on the hats and some of the lower mids, you can tune some of the hats out by a few semi tones and it wont be massively noticeable that a particular hihat sample is out of tune, although you have to be subtle. i rarely have just one snare and just 2 lines of hihats though cuz i like my breaks complex. but once the basic break is down, every layer of percs you add should be assigned to a new FX channel with a speccy analyser. once i have the basic break going ill tend to add a massive bassline or some other dominant instrument because i want the lead and the most prominant down and up beats to be the focal point of the track. that way, when it comes time to add the extra snares i check them on the analyser and compare it with another spec analyser on the entire track. i then EQ my extra percs to fill out some of the gaps in frequencies that are left over. this keeps your track loud and means you are using headroom most efficiently. i wont for instance, build up the entire breakbeat and THEN do the lead instrument because i would have to work the lead around the frequencies of the break. if its particularly complex that means you'll have to notch off or make shallow cuts to the lead and it'll sound thinner and weaker. if you keep the lead as is, and just whack it on top of a complex break it'll muddy the mix b/c of the amount of frequencies overlapping.

the key really is to work out right at the start which elements of your track you want to be dominant. see whether its feisible to have them both with a high presence. it is for example not feisible to have to have a huuuge sub bass REECE playing through a bassy kick drum. it'll cause no end of problems. you'll find that you'll have to notch something off that will just kill the vibe. big problem areas for me are around 60hz and 100 to 150hz. most of my basslines and kicks end up doubling up massively around these regions. notching off one or the other seriously kills the vibe. and the worst thing you can do is to actually lower the volume of one of them or even worse still, lower the level of the entire track to stop the clipping problems. that just eats headroom. you can however have a huge bassy reece and a kick that is more punchy in the lower mids. similarly, you cant have all your hats in the sibilant range over 6000hz. particularly in breaks i like a set of clangy rides going. i get the clang by cutting away the frequencies over 5000 hz typically and below 150 hz so its all upper and lower mid range. on its own it'll sound like its played through a telephone. but layered against some sibilant hats with the levels and stereo position adjusted to the right timbre you can get away with it and you'll have more headroom. the more headroom the better really cuz it means you can be a bit more reckless with the other instruments you choose to add to your track.

ill see if i can upload a breakbeat or a drum pattern ive made since i normally create the drums in a separate project to everything else (owing to the number of FX channels and the number of EQs, filters and spec analysers on each one. it tends to eat CPU for breakfast. ill bounce down the basic drums then extra layers and fills separately. i hope this helps.

also, unless your ears are really well trained, dont attempt anything without the spectrum analyser! this + dB meters + EQs are my best friends in fruity loops. shame the dB meters arent very accurate though.

[AlexHall74]

Hey,

Here is a great article on mixing, mastering, and post production.

http://www.tweakheadz.com/perfect_mix.html

I am somewhat new to recording and found this very helpful earlier this year.

For experienced folks this information may be obvious, but for the newly inducted it is a great, compressed information resource.

Let me know what you think...

-AlexHall74

[Juho L]

I'll check out that link tomorrow, Alex.

Good post, WK. EQ'ing is still pretty unfamiliar to me. I tend to use EQ only for bass so the treble and mids tend to stay untouched by EQ. I think the next way to improve my mixes is to learn the art of sensible EQ'ing. I'll try out some of those tricks you mentioned when I get back home.

I think I tend to overprocess stuff so my mixes end up sounding thick and dynamid-poor. Maybe good for radio, but it's not very musical style. Same goes for EQ'ing. I always seem to boost or cut too much. Any comprehensive tutorials on EQ'ing in general?

Edit: By the way WK, know any good spectrum analyser VST plugins?

[grs]

Best vst analyzer - Izotope Ozone, then Voxengo Curve EQ. (forget Voxengo Span)

Drums. Try to find the best realtime drum synth, so your drums are at 32bit and generated at the pitch you want not just tuned samples from the web. I like Utonic Sonic Charge. I use a few samples only for clasic cymbals or open hats (909 etc)

EQ. Try to use your synth programing abillity to define the eq of parts. In the case of drums, see point above. Each drum can have a noise Q (pointyness of filter freqency) and an additional post eq so you can double define a spot in a hat, or really control how the kik sits.

[Hollowcell]

I'll give my methods for drums...

Don't over compress. Sometimes compressing the kick with the bass can sound nice.
Layer snares.
EQ for good seperation. Also gating here can emphasize the seperation.
Never have the kick on the same channel as the snares (or anything else for that matter).
Play them live as much as you can, then don't quantize.

[Wandering Kid]

agreed on the kick compression. although a tell tale sign that you have overcompressed it is that it will start to hiss audibly.

effects should be the last thing to go on your drums. if you are EQing drums with effects on it'll only confuse things. especially if you are the type of producer that likes to chop and change drum hits or add/remove effects part way through a track. it really throws off your EQ. ill get a house beat going on my soundclick page later today after i finish uni. if you think its ok i can break it down and show you how its done. theres not many effects on it (hardly any except for alot of parametric EQs, alot of filters, alot of speccy analysers and a compressor on the kick).

theres also an article on dnbscene.com about EQ and compression called 'thinking inside the box.' it doesnt just apply to drum and bass. it applies to all types of music although if you read it you will understand better how they get those MASSIVE basslines in dnb or how they often get complex drum parts to sound clean and separated in breakbeat. its all to do with EQ and frequency overlapping. this article i swear is responsible for the single biggest leap in my production quality and the more i read it, the more i find stuff about it i didnt notice before. im still improving because of it and i recommend everyone here saves that document, reads it several times and memorises it. to the WORD!

[AlexHall74]

Hi all!

Here is the link to the article WK mentioned above.

It is definitely spicy!

http://www.dnbscene.com/articles.php?arttype=2

Also, I have included other links that have some great resources available as well. These were posted by another user (Chaz) at the Tweakheadzlab forum. He dropped a gold mine of information with this one. The forum can be accessed at www.tweakheadz.com; the folks are very helpful.

For EQ:

The Equalization Primer
http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0900/primer.htm

Dipping Sauce
http://www.alexandermagazine.com/rec...04tip01-3a.asp

Equalization By The Octave (Note: Take this one with a grain of salt because not everyone agrees to these frequency ranges. I have included it for reference only.)
http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0400/OctaveEQ.htm

Adding Bass Clarity
http://www.alexandermagazine.com/rec...q0104/bass.htm

Usng Complimentary Equalization
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/rwti...ive/rw14r.html

Using EQ to Compensate for the Fletcher-Munson Effect
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/rwti...ES%20AT%20HOME

For Compression:

Using Compression in Mixing & Mastering
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/rwti...ive/rw34r.html

The Exciting Compressor
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/rwtip/archive/rw68.html

General topics:

The Project Studio Handbook
http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

Happy Mixing,

-AlexHall74

Misc. Topics
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/rwtip/archive/

[ledge]

Hey Juho, don't forget to add these to the music links thread that is stickied, I want to be able to find them easily again

[Juho L]

Originally Posted by ledge

Hey Juho, don't forget to add these to the music links thread that is stickied, I want to be able to find them easily again :)

Sure thing. Isn't that thread open for all?