With the right sound selection on your beats, u dont need much on mixing. Can the pros give tips on how to select sounds and instruments to achive clearer mixes

 

I'm not a pro but I think of it like this:

When recording instruments you would want to capture whatever you consider the ' best sound possible ', meaning great mic placement, great musicians, low noise etc.. If the recording sounds amazing on its own, the mix should be more of 'polishing' job rather than a 'repair' job.

So when making beats, you might not record anything but the same rule still applies, if you choose a combination of the best sounds (Eg: your kick compliments your bass REALLY well) without having to EQ and compress too much, you're on the right track, but if all your sounds are clashing and phasing, you'll be spending hours trying to mix/fix broken glass

Good luck.

 

I think one thing is having the patience for every element in a production to reach a certain point of physical feeling of goodness. If you apply that patience (maybe looking through presets, scanning through eq settings, transient designers, etc...) on every element (before you add the next element) you will probably end up with a good starting point for mixing in the end. If you rush the production and add elements to cover up a negative feeling of what's already there (maybe you get the feeling that something is missing, when it's actually the opposite), you'll end up with a chaos that is hard to manage. If I can take some frequencies off from an element and still get the same good feeling, I'll probably do it. Separation is really important. One thing i usually do is; I'll look into what every element's key frequencies are (the ones that make me feel good), and enhance them. If different elements of focus have very different key frequencies, it really helps for a good separation.
Years ago i only cared about getting a slick and good sound on the mix. I don't really care about that anymore. Finding those key frequencies on elements is one of the most important mixing points for me. It really enhances the musicality.

Just a random train of thought. Take it or leave it.

Edit: Weed helps...

 

Nice replies...........
Heres a tip aswell. Try seperating your sounds or instruments by sequencing them on different octave

 

It depends what type of music you're making but styles with lots of synths you have lots of big competing frequencies.

Acoustic instruments tend to have a narrower frequency range so they fit together pretty well if you choose your instruments based on low bass/ mid chords/ high melody.

Synths might have four oscillators playing at different octaves, taking up all that range from an individual note.

I think sometimes, finding a sound that sits in the pocket you want it to often isn't about he best patch or the most impressive preset. Commercial synth presets are always about sounding amazing on their own, not how they will fit together.

 

Tru dat.

 

sound selection is complex and contains many things. So difficult for me to nail it down, it's more than just selecting random samples and trying to make them work. For me at least, it's utilizing the right sounds for the vision that I'm going for in my track. But this involves more than just selecting sounds, it's about processing them in interesting and intelligent ways.

For me it's a blend of artisitc ability and technical ability combined. You can't pin it down because it involves everything.

I've learnt with mixing, there is no one answer or one thing, it is every little thing you add that makes the track what it is, because everything is pretty much ground up. You start from nothing and you make something out of it. Every technique within a mix and master adds and gives the fidelity your track needs. Complex...

It's just like how at the start all the beginners think that it's all about compression compression compression. But it's more than that, there is saturation, there is submixing, there is doubling and routing and the transient designers as well as the proper eqing it's the composition of the track and how intelligently you lay it out etc etc so much more... everything adds and makes the sound... even the selection of the sounds is important...

 

Sounds selection it's a matter of personal taste and deep knowledge of the sounds you have at your disposal, so no one can tell you what to do as it is a very subjective matter and also depends on the project you're working at. Usually is not smart to layer two instruments (synths) which take the same freq range (if you layer, make sure you EQ).

However, once you have your elements you can start producing. You can arrange the instruments in your mix in terms of position (left to right panorama) and dimension (front to back). Now, for stereo sources you can't use the pan control to position a sound, you have to use a direction mixer; for mono sources, pan will do. As for dimension, you can use the gain, eq or reverb to position a sound (0 dB gain, flat eq, little reverb is keeping the element closer; -x dB gain, or reduging the highs or incresing the reverb is going to position your element in the back). This way, you can position your virtual orchestra performers from left to right and from front to back, exactly how you see a live orchestra. When layering sounds (for instance you can use a classical piano for it's attach layered with a rhodes for a nicer sustain, make sure to treat them as a single instrument).

Anyone here can confirm that mixing is a good 50% work in a song, after composing and arranging. If you want to skip this phase, you'll either have to learn how to mix, either pay someone to do the mix for you.

 

i'll throw this in there

Experience.
confidence.

you develop your taste over time. what sounds you like an how they make you feel. how different sounds work together etc. you develop your ears over time and they pick it up "natural"

 

Developing taste over time? As a listener yes. As a producer you can gain experience and must train your confidence, but taste, taste is suppose to be the main reason one starts producing music: you have taste and you feel the need to fill a missing gap in music scene, to bring a new perspective or just to join a style bandwagon for that matter - because you feel that music. But you do all these because you already have taste. If you have no taste, no technical knowledge, no music theory knowledge then what do you have, why you're trying to produce?

(by "you" I am referring in general)

 

Good advice by the other members! What I would suggest is try to "mix" the song/beat while looking for sounds. Find the sound that works with everything else and in return that sound is going to evoke more feeling for the next sound you will choose. You will end up with much better results than quickly choosing sounds then changing them later.

 

If doing edm-like music, here is one more tip: Work really hard on the side chaining, because it really affects the groove profoundly. Don't rush finding the right release time or threshold. Those miniscule differencies can make or break the whole groove.

 

Fair enough, it could be a bad wordchoise to try to describe what i meant. i tried to keep it simple.
its all about our emotions. how they make us feel. then trying to put labels on those feelings to make them more tangible in our minds. or to communicate our idea to someone else.

"taste" is just one metaphor to try to relate to expressing that feeling. something along the lines of "that soup sure tasted hot" or "that distortion really made that guitar part hot" im rambling...

confience in your self, is what it boils down to. confience in "yes this feels freaking awesome" or "yeah this sounds amazing"
beliveing in yourself that you know you have what it takes to create and convey that emotionless conction with the listner, that you feel inside you.

aaaaaaaaaanyway :D

Keep the thread alive, lets hear more great advice and wizdom.

 

all i know is if you like a sound and you want it in your song then do it, bit of eq'ing can make it fit in the song just fine. dont think i ever payed much attention to what kind of sounds i wanted to use, i just play with the knobs and if i get something i really lke then i use it

 

Not my presets! Ha! Yes, most commercial soundbanks are more about blowing your mind with a single patch rather than how useful the bank will be in an actual production setting. I try to make sounds that work together. For every mind-blowing patch of infinite complexity, you need a couple of "bread and butter" type sounds to balance it out and keep some melody/rhythm in the track.

I think that some basic sound design lessons would go far in teaching people about how patches are utilized in tracks. Once you realize the enormous frequency range a single preset can occupy, you go about making and using presets a little differently (at least I did). Audible Genius Syntorial is a great resource for learning some basic lessons about synthesis and sound design. I would whole-heartedly recommend it to pretty much any producer that uses synths.

 

For drum sounds : when i finish a mix, either one of my productions or one of a client, i bounce one-shots of all the beat elements, after their individual processing (eq, comp, transient, tape, etc....) , but without the busses and buss fx of course. In years, i've made myself quite a good library with sounds that i know very well, and more important, that i know for sure that they sounds right and can fit in a mix. Moreover, i know that these are my sounds and that they can't be found on a dozen of different drum packs, and that makes them even more valuable. I would recommend to anyone serious about production to do it, it's only a question of a few minute's bounce after every mix, and it can go a long way.
Besides, when i decide to choose a new sound for a drum, it makes me ask myself if i would like to keep it "for the rest of my life" in my own producer library, and that is often a way to make me choose it more carefully...

 

Last edited: Feb 5, 2016

In the old days producers used to spend two days getting the kick and bass drum just how they liked it, even drum machines!

 

In the old days, people spent time learning their craft and making music.

Every week there's someone here who asks for an "auto-music" of some sort. Maybe they never heard of itunes, spotify and stuff like that because that's where you go when you want to scroll through options of pre-made music.

 

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet... but, my trick is to use what sounds good to me.

 

but then there's is that problem of, how do I make the sound or idea that I like actually sound good in the track and fit into place.

I guess it depends on how many different roles you play as a computer music type dude. When you start composing, sound designing, mixing and mastering all together alot of things start getting considered, also I guess it's just how picky someone is. I'm picky as shit unfortunately so I end up making crap harder for myself lol... maybe a disadvantage on my part but not easy when ur trying to be technical and creative at the same time :' (