It's a mix, it's not mastered.

 

Hi Beat16 that sounds pretty clever, where you got that advice?

 

Last edited: Jun 27, 2021

Where are you getting the tracks to do the mix?

I thought all mixs are finally mastered or that both things were very related, what is the difference?
...doesn't matter I found a good answer on internet https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/what-is-the-difference-between-mixing-and-mastering/

 

I don't know the track personally, but I'm pretty certain you're missing some cymbal work throughout the entire song. Where's the ride cymbal through the Chorus'? Where are the hi-hats? Gotta make sure your Drums are complete and really grooving with the song. In my opinion, you're using the wrong Drumkit/Preset for this song. It doesn't sound right. EQ/Compression doesn't matter yet. You're using the stock/standard preset that came with Superior Drummer v2 and EZdrums v1. I'd suggest changing it. Your mix will never come together the way you really want it to when you don't have all of these things fully sorted.

 

Yes I search though them, the problem is knowing which is useful and which is not, also which explains thing the clearest so I can understand it. I have found that video tutorials where you can mix along with the instructor are useful to me.

 

Thank you love this kind of info.

 

No Avenger already said it, in fact it's in the quote you used.
cambrigde-mt.com

 

Hello GabsIT, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook 2nd edition by Bobby Owsinski (Copyright 2006)
More Books: https://bobbyowsinski.com/book-excerpts/

 

Thank you, I tried that website from VPN also and it's offline in both.

Can you provide a direct link?
Also where you find the tracks for a mix, there is some sort of available repository of tracks to mix?

In my case I have a fascination for Asian female singers and I like rater obscure / underground music, I have been using Flac or Wav HQ files and then using https://moises.ai/

"Moises app uses Google Tensorflow to extract vocals and instruments from any audio/video file. Create samples and remixes using high-fidelity audio stems powered by AI." The quality is pretty high but with experimental music the algorithms not work so well as with popular music.

BTW your mix sounds pretty good, I think overall the same as Beat16

 

Last edited: Jun 27, 2021

Thanks. It's very good advice, actually I saw similar kind of frequencies in Skype/Opus codec compressor. I was checking the channel of Bobby Owsinski pretty good stuff

 

Last edited: Jun 27, 2021

No, it's not cambrigde but cambridge-mt.com, sorry, damned typo. The exact adress is https://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/ and it's of course working with a VPN.

 

It's a recording.

 

Do you mean that they're audio files and can't be adjusted?

 

a) yes, b) no, of course they can be adjusted.

 

This is the way the original drummer played it, I think he only used one cymbal, no ride and no hi-hats. I guess I could add more but that would be getting into production and I am not even good at mixing yet, also I am not much of a drummer but always wanting to learn.

oops I just copied your mistake.

Can you do this only for drums-
Kick 60 to 80 Hz
Snare ? etc...

 

What do you want to achieve

When using equalizers, there are three primary goals:

- To make an instrument sound clearer and more defined.
- Make the instrument or mix sound larger and more oversized.
- All the elements of a mix should blend together better. This is achieved by adjusting their frequencies so that each instrument occupies its own predominant frequency range.

Range / Description / Effect

Sub-Bass: 16 to 60 Hz
Feeling of power / Too much makes the music unwatchable

Bass: 60 Hz to 250 Hz
Contains fundamental notes of rhythm section, makes the music fat or thin / Too much boost tends to make the music boomy

Lower midrange: 250 Hz to kHz
Includes fundamental notes of most instruments / Boost at 500 Hz to 1 kHz sounds horny, nasal, at 1 kHz to 2 kHt sounds tinny

Upper midrange: 2 kHz to 4 kHz
Includes features for speech recognition, such as m, b, and v / Too much causes listener fatigue

Presence: 4 kHz to 6 kHz
Responsible for clarity and definition of vocals and instruments / Boost makes music seem closer to the listener

Brilliance: 6 kHz to 16 kHz
Responsible for brilliance and clarity / Too much causes sibilance in vocals

If possible, try iimer first to cut frequencies. This is preferable because all equalizers add phase shifts to the sound when you boost a range. This results in an undesirable coloration of the sound. The more you boost frequency ranges, the more phase shifts usually creep in, and the harder it becomes to fit the instrument into the mix.Many engineers use their equalizers extremely sparingly. Nevertheless, the maxim that anything goes applies here as well! If it sounds good, it's right.

Spoiler: The relationship between bass and drums

The relationship between bass and drums

Perhaps the most difficult task of a mix engineer is balancing bass and drums (especially bass and kick). Nothing can make or break a mix faster than these instruments working together. It's not uncommon for a mixer to spend hours on this balance (both level and frequency), because if the relationship isn't correct, the song just never sounds big and punchy.

How do you get to this mysterious balance?

To get the impact and punch that most great modern mixes have, you need to make room in your mix for these two instruments so they don't fight each other and turn into a muddy mess. Simply setting your bass high and your kick low (or vice versa) may be the easiest way to do this. However, it's best to follow a more detailed strategy. Try the following to blend them together:

1. Set the kick drum between 60 and 120 Hz so it can be heard well on smaller speakers.

Add something between 1 and 4 kHz for more attack and bat click. You may also want to dip some of the boxiness between 300 and 600 Hz. EQing in the 30 to 60 Hz range will create a kick that you can feel, but it will sound thin even with smaller speakers and probably won't translate well to a wide range of speaker systems. The foundation of most 22-inch kick drums (the most common size) is somewhere around 80 Hz.

2. If the bass and kick are solo, they should occupy slightly different frequency spaces.

The kick is usually in the 60 to 80 Hz range, while the bass emphasizes higher frequencies between 80 and 250 (although the two are sometimes reversed depending on the song). Avoid unnecessary bass frequencies so it doesn't sound boomy or muddy. This means frequencies below 30 Hz on the kick and 50 Hz on the bass, although they will vary depending on the style of music and your particular tastes. The end result should be a driving, fundamental quality to the combination of these two together.

A common mistake is to emphasize the kick with either too much level or too much EQ and not enough on the bass guitar. This gives you the illusion that your mix is bottom light because you are shortening the duration of the low frequency envelope in your mix, since the mix is now centered around the kick. The kick envelope is more transient than the bass guitar, so too much kick can give the ear the idea that the low frequency content of your mix is inconsistent. For pop and rock music, it's best to have the kick create the percussive nature of the bottom, while the bass fills in the sustain and music parts.

3. Make sure the snare is strong, otherwise the song will lose its drive when everything else is added.

This usually requires at least some compression (which we will cover in detail in a future post). You may need a boost of 1k to 2k for attack, 120 to 240 Hz for fullness, and 10k for snap. You may want to dip a little 1k on the other drums to create a little more room for the snare. Also, make sure the toms are not too boomy. If so, set the frequencies below 60 Hz.

4. If you're having trouble with the mix sounding murky and muddy, turn off the kick drum and bass to see what else might be getting in the way on the low end.

You may not notice that there are some frequencies in the mix that aren't really musically necessary. With piano or guitar, you're mainly looking for the mids and top end to cut through, so the bottom end is just getting in the way of the bass and drums. So it's best to remove some of that low end with a high-pass filter. If you're playing solo, the instrument might sound too thin now, but with the rest of the mix, the bottom sounds so much better, and you won't really miss the low end of the other instruments. Now the mix sounds louder, clearer, and fuller. Be careful not to cut too much of the other instruments, though, or you may lose the warmth of the mix.

5. Pay attention to dissonance between kick drum and bass melody in dance music.

The bass line over the huge sound systems in today's clubs is very important and must work very well with the kick drum. However, if your kick is set to a frequency that peaks on an A note, and the bass line is set to A#, conflicts will occur. Match your kick samples to the bass lines (or vice versa) as needed.

Use of EQ is so subjective that it's hard to get down to a science. Don't be frustrated if you don't feel you have a handle on the process, as this is truly one of the most difficult processes to grasp when recording. It can take a long time if you stumble without guidance. However, if you follow any of the tips above, with a little practice you will find that your mixes will be fuller, more powerful and better defined. Good luck!

Bobby Owsinski

A long-time veteran of the music industry, Bobby Owsinski has produced and composed for records, motion pictures and television shows along the way. Currently a principle in the content creator 2B Media, Bobby has also penned hundreds of articles for many popular industry trade publications and has authored several books that are now staples in recording programs in colleges around the world including "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook," "The Recording Engineer's Handbook," "The Audio Mastering Handbook," "The Drum Recording Handbook," "How To Make Your Band Sound Great," and "The Studio Musician's Handbook."

Source: https://music.tutsplus.com/de/tutorials/equalization-tricks-that-everyone-should-know--audio-3211

Spoiler: The fundamental tones of Drums, Bass Guitar, Electric Guitar

The fundamental tones and overtone ranges of drums
- Bass drum shell resonance; approx. 50 to 200 Hz
- Bass drum kick: approx. 1 to 4 kHz
- Snare sustain: approx. 80 to 500 Hz
- Snare carpet: harmonics up to approx. 12 KHz
- HiHat: harmonics up to approx. 15 kHz or more
- Tom sustain: approx. 70 to 120 Hz
- Tom attack noise: up to approx. 7 kHz
- Cymbal: harmonics up to approx. 20 Hz and more

Fundamental tones and overtone ranges of the bass (four-sided)
- Fundamental tones: approx. 41 to 343 Hz
- Overtones: up to approx. 5 Hz

The fundamental and overtone ranges of electric guitar (over amp)
- Fundamental tones: approx. 82 to 1174
- Harmonics: up to approx. 7 kHz

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2021

I was just wondering If you had certain instruments and wanted to add more in a mix you could avoid adding an instrument in the same frequency range if you knew where the existing instruments were, I guess that's not the way it works?
Thanks for the other info, it is very helpful.

 

I gather you do get that this is not the only reason to familiarise yourself with panning techniques?
Generally, separation is for me more important as a focus than imaging. You naturally create a form of imagery anyway and 'liveness' by how and where instruments are placed in the stereo field if the intent is to make each one heard in the mix before you approach imagers, extra EQ or anything else.

A really great mastering engineer if you have done the separation with panners naturally and well will image it for you and probably do a better job because that is part of their job. Maybe I'm just lucky and have been blessed to work with mastering engineers who do the imaging for me.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 29, 2021

if you havent already...

 

One step before, when a band records something where two instruments have the same frequencies, there is phase cancellation, which means one instrument is gone, so it is not audible. Adding an instrument only works when you record a band live, it doesn't fit together somehow, then the bass player decides for example to play an octave higher so that the bass is different and can be audibly selected. The mixer will then use the EQ or other tricks so that both instruments can be heard.

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2021