Well, at least I've got the low frequency reflections covered.

 

touché bitch...

 

mixing is one of the hardest things you'll ever learn; people just don't rely on their ears like we do our eyes, so it takes a ton of serious training and focus.

Things that help:

• get the acoustics in your room right, get a subwoofer, get quality monitors, and/or quality headphones. If you can't hear it right, it's never gonna work
• Practice regularly with tools like TrainYourEars, or spend some money to join some mixing program with a coach who can give feedback
• Watch lots of tutorials
• Learn that what things are genre-specific (the 808s-and-drums thing) and have certain techniques that are commonly used, like sidechaining the kick and bass, sometimes the snare too

goooood luuuuck!~

 

Shit, seems I can't mix at all because:

I didn't know that.

I have none.

Mh, mine are medium quality, I'd say.

I've never done this...

...and neither this.

I think I'm close to watch my fourth mixing tutorial.

I never needed to.

Never heard that before.

 

Last edited: Nov 12, 2019

I'll coin a new phrase for your type...audiodidact.

 

Reaper is only for masochists, like a BDSM virtuoso like me

 

You outdid yourself... I'm bookmarking this...

 

I think I'm going to download Ozone and try it out I heard its best for mixing

 

I think I'm going to download Ozone and try it out. I heard its great and easier to get a great mix

 

I recently learned that if you set the output level of the master bus limiter to -1db you get to push the volume up a bit more with the loudness meter not showing as much change, was setting it to -0.1 to -0.3 in the past, mind you this was done using Fabfilter L2 so I'm not sure if other limiters of this type or other types will have the same behavior. Bottom line is I got more than 2 dB of additional loudness without losing the same amount dynamics I usually would've lost pushing the volume higher, I also tested setting it lower and abit higher than -1 dB but it seems -1 is the best level to set it ( for me ). Also a must for every single sound you have is to cut as much low end as you can ( although it's perhaps better to lower in shelf mode because cutting will likely lead to more phasing issues and weird harmonics in the upper frequencies ) until you start losing the audible elements you really want to keep. Same goes for the high end of the spectrum but its usually a case of slight lowering and control ( like band passing resonant frequencies ) if needed rather than complete cutting unless it's for sound design purposes, otherwise you risk having a muffled mix.

 

No, just no.

 

First off it's clear from looking at the waveform that your kicks have too much peak level, listening to it only confirmed this. You need to add a subtle amount of distortion/saturation and compress the kick drum after that with a soft knee compressor setting @ about 2.5:1 to 4:1 ratio off the top of my head. Then you can start boosting the prominent elements in your track with a good loudness maximizer like Loudmax ( it's free on KVR ). Also an important step is to use a waveshaper to clip unnecessary peaks from transients like hihats ( try GClip by Gvst, also free ), just a little is enough to have an impact later on. Try to clip the transients until you hear the sound audibly getting quieter, then you have clipped it too much and you need to take it back a notch. If you have a group of sounds performing the same or tangentially the same task like pad layers for example or percussions etc. group their mixer busses under a submix bus and apply additional compression on that to glue them tighter, a transient shaper is sometimes even better with a lot of transient containing material like percussions. Also mixing is not really all that difficult, you just need to understand how to separate your workflow into different main tasks, if you ever had courses in project management then you might have an idea about this.
What I do is start with an idea, a sound or drumloop etc. that gets me in the groove and write all the melodies, basslines, drums and other elements of a full song on a 16 bar long track and just start mixing and mastering right away, then I do the actual sequencing/arrangement of the track, add FX and other possible melodic elements and mix them simultaneously.

 

I have been messing around with mixing for some years now, I'm not really great at it because it was never a big concern, as I only used as a tool to get the stuff that I make to sound better/acceptable/awesome... It really is an art out of itself, there's many approaches to it, and it takes years to truly "master".

That said, mixing is not supposed to be that ridiculously hard. You have a bunch of individual tracks and you gonna blend then into a single one, which is the final master track. What you have to keep in mind is that the way your track sounds mostly comes from the frequency spectrum (distribution of the frequencies in it, ratio of bass to mid and high), the dynamics (aka the peaks and the "bulk/body" of your track, how compressed it is) and the stereo imaging(how wide it sounds, what are the wide elements, the movement on the stereo field, etc).
The most important thing is having individual tracks that sound good by themselves and work well together (don't clash in frequency or play at the same time, like each thing has it's place). To make individual tracks that sound nice, is important that you know to record and have good equipment to do so, if you're recording your music, or that you know how to make synthesized stuff that sounds good. EQ and compression are your main tools for making it sound good.

EQ is meant, as the name sugests, to make stuff more even and nice sounding. Most of the sounds (specially sinthesized ones) have frequencies that resonate way more strongly than others, and that can be reduced a bit to make it sound better. Having a frequency that sticks out too much is a bad thing because not only it causes a bad feeling of ringing, but the headroom or space you have in your mix gets way smaller for other stuff. A visual analogy would be an image that has way too much of a certain color or tone and not a whole lot of contrast. It would look pretty bland and bad, right? The same thing can be said for sounds that have too much of a certain frequency or two. Reducing those frequencies (and making it as loud as it was before) will make the other frequencies more noticeable and make the sound overall more balanced and interesting. You can find these frequencies by sweeping with a small bell filter boosting and hearing when it becomes really loud. Many more modern EQs have functionality to automatically detect resonant frequencies and reduce them. I personaly love using SlickEQ GE for this as it's a really good EQ and after detecting the loudest frequencies I can switch to an EQ model with "bigger" bells (with higher Q) and balance the tone the way I prefer (by reducing one frequency more than other, according to how I think the track should sound).
It's also important to know which elements are supposed to ocuppy what frequencies or ranges. Like, if you have a bass, your lead shouldn't really have much bass, because it will clash with the bass frequencies, and make both sound more muddy and weird. Highpass is a great tool for this, so you can remove the bass that you don't need from certain higher sounds, so there's more room for your low stuff. Sometimes is also useful to remove high frequencies, like your your subbass plays some faster notes or it has a strong transient it might have some weird uneeded high frequencies that will disrupt the higher stuff. This is a bit like building Lego blocks, you gonna have everything square and nice and have them one over another correcly so your sounds build of each other to sounds stronger, not clash and take away power from another.

On compression, there's two main types of compression, the more "smooth" type that just reduces a bit the dynamic range to make the track sound more even and hearable, and the "splat" type, that makes the transients really pop up on more percursive stuff. To get the smooth, you set the attack of the compressor quick, so it compressed pretty much everything right away, and set the release slow, so it smoothes the track nicely. The splat one works out of letting the transient part go untouched, and then squashing the rest of the sound, so the attack really pops up, and to get it you do the opposite, you let the attack slower, so the transient goes throught, and the release quick, so it is really to compress on the next hit, since percussive sounds tend to play kinda fast. This one is really useful on drums and more percussive melodic stuff, like certain guitars, plucks or slap bass, for example. Some times is nice to have a limiter after the compressor, because with the gain compensation the peaks can go really high when using splat.
Generally you aim at like 3dB of compression on each track. Most of the sounds we hearing have at least a bit of compression on them, because it just sounds nice to our ears. Again, you have to use a bit of your judgement on how much compression you use, in general t should sound "natural" and not overcompressed, but it need to have a decent effect (otherwise what is the point really, though sometimes sounds don't even need to be compressed, like distorted guitar for example, that already don't have a whole lot of dynamic range naturaly). To get the compressor timing right, you can crank up the ratio and the threshhold down so it becomes a really over the top limiter, and then you go changing the attack or release. After that you can roll the threshold back until it sounds more normal, and then use the ratio knob more like a dry/wet knob of sorts so you get as much compression as you aim for. Some people prefer using a fixed ratio like 2 (for lighter compression), 3 or 4 (harder stuff) and then dialing the threshold, that can be good too.

Spacial effects are important to giving a sense of space (obviously) to your stuff, so it doesn't sound so dry and artificial, but also can add more tail to your sounds and stereo width. Reverb is the most cliche one, and is used very often in almost everything that doesn't have too much bass (reverb only fucks up with the phase and generates bad things on bass frequencies, in general, though it can sound cool in higher "lead" basses). It is an integral part of snares and leads, many times, and having a nice reverb sound can be pretty important. On more EDMy stuff reverbs often have a lot of high end, but cutting the high end make the reverb sound more natural, as high frequencies doesn't reverb much in nature. I like the sound of reverb without much high end (also it gives more room for my synths and high hats). It's also good to avoid having many types of reverb in many sizes, as each reverb feels like a different space, and your tracks can start to sound disconnected. I often use the same room size for everything, and change the decay time according to the sound. Some people like using sends for reverb, for consistency and saving CPU, but I like using as an insert so I can compress it hard with the sound afterwards, making it the tail, which creates a really cool effect.
Other important spacial effects are delay, chorus and other modulation effects like phaser and flanger. They are very useful for creating a sense of space, making your sounds more interesting and giving them stereo width. Delay can be seen as almost a compositional tool, as the echos sound like extra notes, and is often used in vocals for a "filling" effect (you can also use slapback delay instead of reverb in your leads and vocals to create space, old recordings like Elvis used it a lot). I also like using it on hihats for rhythmical effect and width. Choruses can sound pretty metallic with feedback and add some nice tone to your tracks (specially basses that have more mid) if used wisely. Phaser and flanger add width and can make tracks sound more interesting over time, and sometimes even generate some really creative sounds when pushed to their limits. There's also more width related effects like the Hass effect, that plays with the physics of our hearing to make stuff sound really wide without changing it "too much" (it can really mess with the phase of the sound in mono, so I'm not gonna encourage using it, but sometimes it can be useful, if you know what you are doing).

With all those stereo effects, is important to hear how they sound in mono, and make sure that you like both the side and the mono version of your track. In fact, when mixing, I would encourage you to hear everything in mono, as it makes everything simpler and easier to hear, and makes sure that your song sounds good not only in headphones, but in most of the soundsystems out there. If the center of your song sounds good, you can be pretty sure that the stereo version will sound as well, as the EQing and compression will obviously be applied to both, and in general, it doesn't really matter how your sides sound, as long as there's width enough your song tends to sound great in stereo.

To the mixing itself, when the individual tracks already sound good on their own, I would start with all the track down, then bring the track that should be the loudest to a decent volume, and go bringing up the other tracks in order of loudness or importance until they sound balanced with the rest that is already there. I generally start with the kick, having it loud so I can hear it well, then bring the snare and the rest of the drums, then after that I would start the melodic stuff from top to bottom in frequency, making sure everything sounds good together and "fits" (the whole Lego block thing). Talking of loudness, it's ideal to mix on quiet volumes, like the same level as someone having a normal (chill) conversation with you. When music gets louder, our perpeption of the frequencies changes, and mixing a song with it loud can make it sound pretty bad when quieter (in general it doesn't matter how it sounds loud, because to out ears loud is always good). So try to mixing in mono and in a chill volume so your song sound as good as it can.
About bass (stuff below 100Hz), it should sound pretty consistent, and you gotta have a special care about the phase of the tracks that have low end. If your bass and your kick are out of phase, they will cancel each other and your bass will sound weird or even disappear completely. To know if they are in phase, you can check the waveforms of both and see if the direction of the peaks in both match, or they are moving away (and into) each other. If they don't match, you should invert the phase of one of them (probably the bass?). This is also happens on higher frequencies, but it's not as common and tends to be a much smaller problem, but with bass, there's generally only one or two harmonic there, so if they are out of phase, your bass gets destroyed. This is also why is a good idea to keep the bass mono, since delays, reverb and other effects mess with the phase and will make your bass weaker. It's a good idea to bounce only the tracks with lowend (kick and bass?) and see if the kick "mends" well with the bass, like the bass feels like a continuation of the tail of the kick, instead of having a void in between them (in which case the phase is probably the issue). Another thing that helps mixing both is sidechaining the bass to the kick, so it gets ducked when the kick hits, and they don't clash (and the kick is more noticeable). This is super common in EDM, and in some styles you might even sidechain everything to your main drums (kick and snare) for a creative and mixing effect.

It's often useful to reference tracks that sound good, that sound like you want your tracks to sound. See how loud they get in the main parts (in RMS or some loudness measure system), how loud the sides are, what elements are wide, how loud each element is compared to another, this types of things. You can also use a matching EQ to match the frequency response of your track to your favorite tracks, I often do that with Slick EQ GE. I collected five of my favorite tracks that are in the style that I wanna make, but sound different enough from another and are in different keys (important so the EQing don't get to biased), cut the main part and put them all in sequence in a track, and them used them as a reference for my EQing. So everytime the main part of my song is finished, I can try to match the EQing to these tracks, and see what happens. Many times it will have some exagerated bells, which indicate resonanances in my track. If it's boosting a lot of bass, maybe my kick needs to be louder, or maybe I need to add a subbass. If it's removing a lot of 2k, maybe my lead needs to be quieter, or I need to change the EQing so there's less mid in it. I will be happy when the EQing is subtle, since master engineers often EQ a bit, like 1 dB or 2, if it's a really wide bell. Then I will get it loud enough, both in the main mono meat and in the sides, and I'm done. Often it will sound really good and similar to my favorite tracks, so now I think I have a pretty solid process for mixing/mastering.

About Ozone, I used it a lot when I was more a beginner and I gotta say it's pretty good, but it also uses a lot of CPU and can be pretty overwhelming, specially for a beginner. When I started to get better, I often would only use the stereo imaging for making the bass mono, and maybe boosting a bit of the sides, then use a bit of saturation and multiband compression, for some flavor, and the limiter in the end, to make it loud. Nowadays I use a mastering chain that does that with only two simple plugins and a build it Ableton effect. I have Ableton 10's Utility to make everything below like 200Hz mono and maybe so some global volume automation, then some light OTT to get that EDM sound and overall a more harmonically even track, then Sausage Fattener to get that saturation and limiting, though in general I will keep both knobs at zero and only push the gain to get loudness. I could easily replace Sausage Fattener for some tape saturation and really good limiter, like Invisible Limiter, but I'm currently happy with how my music sounds and don't really see (hear) the need for that. Overall I don't think that Ozone will do much for you if your mixes aren't every good, some presets there can do a lot of crazy processing and make you think your track sounds good, but then you go listen to it somewhere else or some time after and realizes it was only masking problems from your mix. Still it can be a good tool for mastering, but so are a bunch of other plugins.

I hope this long post was useful, and I wish good luck for all those trying to improve their sound and make awesome music. Cya!

 

Yep, here i am at the studio trying hard the training course:

Hmmm.. I got a subwoofer and very good headphones, i use 'em both but , i must suck at it bcoz my mix ain't improving...

I got a coach but i ,the feedback is kinda cancerous:

Yes sir. Excellent advice i must say, after watching this i have improved a lot.

My genre is neo-classical ethnic death trap ballads. Or is it deadly trap ballads. Or trapping death billiards. Hmmm...I'll have to get back on you on this... I guess such a minor detail shouldn't put me down...
Anyway, I have nailed down my genre specifics to timpani & cello, distorted shakuhachi and mumbling vocals after a couple of blunts. Sidechaining them though is tough. Especially the blunt sounds vs the timpani. Sadly, my grandma refuses to reveal her doom d'n'b sidechain technique. I'm at a loss here.

 

Last edited: Nov 14, 2019

made my day, especially the last two paragraphs.

 

In all seriousness though I remember the first ever time my ears just all of a sudden opened up and I was able to hear transparencies between elements in music, compression, frequencies, fidelity etc...

I remember it all happened from listening to one song which the mix was soooo good to me, that my ears just opened up, and from then on I felt like I was becoming a true mix engineer etc... its like i popped my cherry or some shit...

 

Wow!!! Thanks so much. This is like super helpful. I've actually been watching tutorials on saturation. Never used it in the past. Its so subtle but makes a huge difference. Its sooooooo much to learn with mixing. My head is going to explode lol. Thanks sooooooo much man this really helped.

 

Hey I'm just going by what many seemingly professional mixers on youtube say. They say Ozone is the best idk

 

Thanks sooooo much. I read every word. What i said was true. Mixing is like rocket science lol. Its like programming. I guess I'll just keep trying until I can perfect my mixes.

 

Or maybe just focus on making music and let mixing engineers... mix. I've never understood the obsession with mixing/mastering, unless you want to be one?
Be like me wanting to make my own guitar strings or tune a piano. I couldn't give a shit, there's an expert does that for me. But hey, you'll keep tutorial sites in business!