Fanu/FatGyver
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Mixing tips – part one (21 mixing tips)
🕑 Added 2020-09-23 09:27:46 +0000 UTC
This is all based on having worked as a mix engineer and a producer for a long time.
A lot of this is something I work on in every client mix and also discuss with my clients and producers. I dare say these basic principles should help you to mix.
Maybe some of this is something you’re already pretty familiar, but hey, in that case, may this be a refresher.
I want to keep it general in order not to go extra-hyper long (I went waaay longer than planned anyways).
You’ll also see I won’t refer to frequencies and numbers that much: I usually try to teach principles at first.
I thought of getting more specific, but thought this post would then be even longer (took me a few evenings just to write all this with all the audio work going on).
It’s very likely that I’ll expand from here, and maybe at some point in my life, I want to do a large mixing course either as a video or as a book, and this may serve as a decent base for that, as well as writing practice for myself.
This is more about starting with important fundamentals instead of some insane pro-tip ninjitsu OMFG-ness.
Heck, let’s go!
PS: If you find this useful, please do NOT copy this for a friend, but suggest my Patreon to them. This can be read by anyone that has paid for a tier, even the lowest, 2 EUR one.
1) WORK ON YOUR LEVELS AT A QUIET VOLUME
This is how I start every single mix (after the housekeeping, grouping etc).
I really, really believe in the power of this. When you work attentively at a level that’s way below your normal listening level, it makes getting the (relative) levels of sounds/tracks much easier than working at louder volumes.
I never work at loud levels, as I find that way it’s harder to discern what’s too loud. The louder you go, the harder it becomes – at least for me.
This is a super crucial step in starting a mix, and it goes far in the process. If you are lazy with levels and start limiting the song, for example, it’s often going to either sound a little off, OR you’ll be listening to the song, hearing that something isn’t right, but you can’t say what it is. I often flick the master limiters off even in the final stages of a mix+master just to check again that all the levels are fine (sometimes some sounds may play a bit loud, and it’s useful to keep checking for those).
Also, the quieter you play it in your room, the less room sound you’re going to hear (I’ve largely let go of using headphones in the past year or so as I’ve become so super familiar with the sound of the room in my studio; I’ve been in this studio for 3.5 years now).
Having said all this, there issuch thing as too quiet and too loud. But you probably know what I mean, and what’s “the perfect quiet attentive level” for you once you try it out.
TIP:This works at any stage. If you feel that something isn’t right, pull the master fader quite low, and chances are you’ll realize that some sounds are playing too loud, which can often kind of ruin the mix.
TIP 2: Also, sometimes you need to solo things track by track to find something that just sticks out too much (e.g., if you have a ride track that’s too loud, sometimes it’s hard to put a finger on it if it’s kind of non-pervasive yet still disturbing the mix, so “finding” it can be the key).
2) COHERENT TONE BEFORE MASTER TWEAKS
This is something I swear by. All the mixes I do get mastering treatment, too. And before I can get the master tone right, I have to get everything right before they hit the master.
After getting levels right, I stay at the somewhat quiet volume, and if there’s anything sticking out frequency-wise, I smooth it out.
E.g., in most mixes using crashes for added energy, cymbals often just stick out and they’re too bright (cymbals actually do contain a ton of high energy, and most of the time you want to tame it a bit).
Every producer gets tired of hearing their song, and it’s super common that some sounds just stick out level-wise or frequency-wise.
This is just another stage that’s going to make sure you’ll make the mix consistent. If you end up doing master brightening, the sounds that are too harsh or bright just end up sticking out too much. Not saying this cannot be done at a later stage, as it of course can, but make this a good practice in the beginning, as once again it’s somehow much easier at the early stage where you work on it somewhat quiet.
Why do I find this and the first point so important? Even though I’m a paid pro (and sure enough a dude working on my own songs), sometimes I still may end up in a situation where I knowthat something isn’t right and I just end up listening to it but I can’t point out immediately what it is, but I know it’s kind of sticking out and making it a bit “restless” and less than perfect (I find good leveling is the first step in a professional mix), and doing as much of the “evening out” work as early as possible has definitely been one of the most important things for me in terms of getting a mix done fast, as sometimes there’s a lot of work and you can’t spend ages on a mix.
Make these “evening out” steps an important part in your mixing.
3) WORK ON THE MIX IN MONO
(Later edit: oops, the arrow on the upper plugin, MSED, should actually point to Side Gain, not Mid Gain, to illustrate that side gain has been taken down, which makes the sound mono)
You know that clubs, public PAs etc are often in mono.
But what you may not know necessarily so well is how your song works in mono. There are so many sounds in sample packs, for example, that are made very wide just to get your attention with the high wow factor.
But these sounds are not necessarily that mono-compatible.
This means that when you play the sound/song in mono, that nice, wide, loud sound drastically drops in level.
If you only work on the mix in stereo, you may miss the entirely, and later on you may notice that if you play it mono, many of the sounds lose presence. It’s OK that they play mono in mono, d’uh, but they shouldn’t necessarily lose their level.
Tools such as free MSED by Voxengo allow you to raise the mid gain of a sound, and that’s all you need to do: play the song or sound in mono, and if it seems to lose too much level in mono, use MSED or such plugin to raise the mono gain. Don’t just raise the track or sound level, as that’ll raise stereo/side content, too. With sounds that are already wide enough, no need to raise stereo.
I always work on the bulk of the mix all mono, making it as powerful and loud as it has to go in mono, and after that, I switch it to stereo, and at this stage, I often have to make some sounds less wide. You can use MSED for that, too: just lower side gain. Or, in Ableton Live, Utility has Width control, and that can be used.
Have a mono-making plugin on the master of your DAW and map it to a key so you can quickly flick the mix to mono.
E.g., in Ableton Live, Utility can have its width set to 0%. Also aforementioned MSED with side gain all the way down works. There are many plugins for this out there.
Learn to do powerful mono mixes! You’ll find that all powerful pro mixes work very well in mono while they can be wide (great width and good mono power aren’t mutually exclusive, not in the least).
4) ORDER OF MIXING
I can’t speak for everybody, but as I often work with music with strong bass and beats (and sometimes vocals), this is the order that works super well for me:
• Drums (somehow I often tweak hihat level very last in the mix, for energy, esp. in house etc)
• Bass
• Instruments
• Vocal
Why like this? If you have strong beats, they have to work well so you can build everything else on/around them. If the beats are flimsy, nothing really sits well, and it’s hard to do a strong bass (music with thin beats and strong bass sounds funny…try it). When the beats are strong, a strong bass can its place and you’ll know where the kick sits.
(TIP! Try tuning the kick…man, it’s helped me with so many client mixes when I’ve taken the liberty to pitch the kick, often down, often by even 2 semitones...do try it, as sometimes you don’t realize it could be pitched better until you just try it).
Drums and bass should always sound hecking nice – strong! – just like that, with nothing else added. Then you know you can add instruments there.
With vocal music, I always mix the vocal in last. Every single time. This way I ensure that the song would work as an instrumental (btw in this stage I may have to take the instruments down a bit or do my sidechain technique, as explained in this post), and then I can also hear the vocal’s possible initial shortcomings best, as everything else is mostly in place.
I can highly recommend this order…I couldn’t change it!
5) DON’T HAVE YOUR KICK AND BASS CLASH
…or if you do, make sure their sub frequencies are not playing at the same time.
Yes, yes, we all know this, but I still I get mixes all the time where the bass and kick are too close to each other frequency-wise.
In any types of music, you need to make a decision about your bass and kick placement.
For good separation, one has to sit lower than the other.
In a lot of electronic music and bass music, the (sub) bass sits below the kick. In styles like boombap / oldskool hiphop, the kick canbe lower than the bass. There are also tunes where kick and bass do not play at the same time, so that avoids the problem altogether.
Today, there are great tools for seeing how close your sounds sit to each other and also doing dynamic sidechaining when needed. For example Pro-Q3 by Fabfilter, Neutron by Izotope, and MAutoDynamicEQ by Melda are great for seeing clashing frequencies and dealing with them. Do use them, as they help you to clean up the mix.
I’ve done a video of dynamic frequency ducking using ProQ3 and also using Ableton Live’s own tools.
There are no hard and fast rules, as music isn't math, exactly, but…
A good rule for kick/bass separation is at least 30 Hz. Ideal would be an octave.
E.g., in my music, I aim to have the sub at 45–60 Hz, and kick at least 30 Hz above it or higher...if you can have an octave between them, that's amazing (e.g., sub at 50 Hz, kick that x2 = 100 Hz). That’s simple math, and that’s super easy to remember.
There is no real "rule", but the bigger the separation in terms of where they peak, the better.
Have them be apart by 30 Hz *at least*...and even more is better and makes for a clear, powerful mix.
6) DOES YOUR KICK REALLY NEED THAT SUBBY TAIL?
Also, another "non-rule": the shorter the kick, the less problems with the bass it often means (UNLESS you're doing the sub of the song with the kick…e.g., in trap).
A subby kick tail – if you have a sub bass – often clutters things up and creates a messy feel.
Especially in genres like bassline house, tech house, etc., I run into this way too often with my clients. The problem isn’t that obvious to the producer, as they’re not necessarily the ones who are trying to achieve the loudness that I’m asked to achieve, and then I’m left to deal with a kick with sub tail and a heavy sub bass. When they overlap and the song is limited loud, it starts to distort way too easily. If I’m only mastering the song, there’s not much I can do, but if I’m mixing it, I either ask the producer to shorten the kick, or I may pull out a gating tool (Ableton Multiband Dynamics can work, and also tools like Shaperbox [above pic] can often help if the kick has a regular pattern).
So, keep your kick and sub nicely separated. Otherwise it'll mean trouble for the mastering engineer, and if they clash bad, I'll end up carving and doing all sorts dynamic control and we still won't get the desired result, as the clashing elements start to "fart" really easy in limiting.
7) DECIDE WHAT THE MAIN SOUNDS IN THE MIX ARE
This is something I wish I could go teach my younger self. All in all, this is fairly simple.
You need to decide what the main sounds in the mix are: not every sound can be the main sound playing at full level all the time.
An example: in a vocal mix, in 99% of the cases (unless you have some dreamy vocal in the background), vocal is the king (or the queen) and has to stay on top, and other instruments “serve” it and make room for the vocal – and they don’t have to do it ALL the time, and if you’ve seen my Pro-Q3 video, you’ve seen how I use it to make room for the vocal in instrument tracks only when the vocal plays. This way the instruments can play at full force when the vocal is not there, but when it is, they make space for it.
I also do this between instruments: e.g., a guitar will dynamically make room for the vocal [above pic], while a “complementary” synth sound occupying largely the same main frequency range with the guitar will make room for the guitar when it (the guitar) plays.
So this way you’re making sure that the sounds that are supposed to stay on top do actually stay on top. Some 3 dB of cutting in the right place can make a huge difference, and especially as you do that to several tracks, things start to fall in place.
What I love about Pro-Q3 is that you can do the cutting to mid signal only if you want, so the sound that’s being cut keeps all its frequencies in its stereo signal (e.g., a vocal is often mono, so no need to do side signal ducking, necessarily).
You don’t necessarily need a dynamic EQ to do these, and you can automate an EQ, but a dynamic one will save you serious time in the long run.
Once again, seeing frequencies is your friend here.
BTW, I feel I might point out: I’m not a Pro-Q3 salesman even though it might look like it. I’ve bought it.
8) AUTOMATE LEVELS
This kind of relates to the previous point a bit. Man, this is another thing I wish I could go and teach my younger self: do make use of level automation! Not everything has to play at the same level all the time.
This can be subtle or more drastic.
In mixing, especially in dance music where certain sections need to have certain impact, I often have breakdowns slightly quieter than drops. This means that the sections where you often don’t have bass, for example, play slightly quieter, and once the song drops, it gets 1-2 dB louder. It’s not something you necessarily “hear” but you “feel” it’s there.
I’ve also been doing this increasingly to sounds for the past few years and I just love it. So easy, so helpful. E.g., if I get a song to be mixed where there’s a guitar in the intro and it has some nice power there, but if it continues playing as loud once the main vocal comes in, I probably automate it to play a bit quieter. I may also raise its level slowly, increasingly towards a busier section that has to hit harder. Or, sometimes a sudden boost works better.
Sometimes even automating the level of a hihat in a house song can be used to inject a bit of added energy to a section where things need to get a bit more lively. Or maybe you’ll have a ride that plays quiet in more mellow sections, and it jumps up by 4 dB when it’s time for action.
TL;DR:use level automation for sounds and song sections to emphasize or decrease their power in the mix! You’ll find that a few tactical level tweaks here and there may make everything fit much better all of a sudden and things feel less congested as not everything is fighting for the same attention all the time.
9) IF YOU WANT TO GO LOUD, START LOUD!
This can be an efficient method to learn mixing even if you don’t aim to go super loud: limit your song to desired level (btw I suggest 2 master limiters or more for a clean result) early on – this will reveal how well the mix can take it. Especially bass and low mids will easily distort if they’re too fat, congested, muddy, so the unideal mix will reveal itself, and you will have to clean it up.
Learning to mix so that it can actually be limited loud – while clean! – is a very efficient method for learning how to clean mixes up.
This also makes it a bit easier for the mastering engineer. Every now and then I get mixes that are a bit on the unideal side, while the client wants it pretty loud, but even by pulling out all the tricks in my bag, I can’t make it loud. In these cases, the producer might’ve got an idea that the mix isn’t ready yet (I do offer mix reviews, by the way, when needed).
BTW I want to emphasize that even though I’m known for providing really loud mixes and/or masters when they’re asked for, I’m not an advocate of loudness per se, but it’s still part of my job to offer it if the client wants it. An analogy would be offering super hot and spicy dishes when the customer wants it. Loud stuff made me an engineer, and later on of course I started working with less loud styles like house, hip hop, etc, and loudness-wise that’s easy when you’ve learned how to do fat, loud tunes.
10) IF YOU WANT TO GO LOUD, START LOUD! Part 2
If you want your music to be loud, bold, ballsy, and aggressive, learn to achieve it in the mix. Do not expect the mastering engineer to do it for you. Period.
There’s been times when I’ve been sent a song that’s slightly on the wimpy side and I’m asked to make it aggressive and bold via mastering. Kind of cannot be done. Or, I can do what I can in mastering, but it ends up sounding kind of funny…like wimpy loud. A mastering engineer won’t make you sound like Noisia – it comes from your mix.
Saturation, clipping, EQ – whatever it takes.
I understand it'd be useful to explain all this here, but this alone is a large topic, and would call for a post of its own (note to self for the future: this is a good topic).
Learn to achieve that ballsy, bold TONE and VIBE in the mix…it’s (mostly) there.
11) BUT CAN YOU EVEN GO LOUD OR CLEAN? SHOULD YOU GO MORE MINIMAL, BRO? WHAT ABOUT THAT SPACE IN YOUR MIX?
Not all tunes can even go loud that clean. What do I mean?
Well, pull up some loud, clean tunes that you like. One thing to consider is that they’re most often fairly minimal and sparse: they’re not super busy with 4 pads, loud guitars and leads, extra fat drums, and loud vocalist all playing at the same time – they’re usuallysomewhat minimal.
So think about the space in your mix. It’s easier to make a minimal tune clean (and loud, if it’s even desired), while the more elements you have, the more cluttered it gets, and that makes everything harder: mixing, space, dedicated “space” and room of sounds in the mix, making it somewhat loud etc.
As a producer, this has always been a challenge/issue for me, but it’s been an amazing learning process, all the same: I’ve often liked to make tunes that drop kind of minimal, but I love building it gradually, making it busier…and in two minutes, a song that starts kind of sparse is super full of sounds. That can, of course, be “a thing”, and it’s often been for me – and learning how to mix it can be a pretty long process, but honestly, it’s a GREAT feeling and skill when you learn it.
There, mixing and just toning down (the busy) elements go hand in hand.
Which takes us to…
12) WHEN EVERYTHING IS LOUD, NOTHING IS LOUD
Simple as that. “A wall of noise” can be a thing, but not necessarily desired. What I mean by that: everything really loud in the mix so that it just becomes too undefined…a loud wall of noise.
Most producers don’t want that.
Even if you want to go loud, study elements in loud songs: many elements aren’t actually that loud, and there’s definitely a hierarchy in terms of what goes loud and what has to stay in the background.
If your drums are loud and your bass is loud, you can probably fit a loud synth or a vocal there, but the rest have to stay in the background...you can’t make everything loud.
Often a mix is a like a good recipe…not all spices can have the main role.
Think of a really good-quality pizza where some ingredients shine: it’s not full of everything. And even if it has many elements, there are some elements that are sparse. Good mixes are often like that.
13) ELEMENTS OF A KICK
It took me a while to learn and understand that a kick can be thought of as having three elements: lows, mid body, and highs. When I was a young producer, I often just played with the level (and saturation), and it wasn’t enough.
Lows are what give the mix and kick weight, and this is super important in most genres, of course, but especially in house, techno, and hip hop, you often want it weighty, so get the lows right, but dont have it clash with the bass. In styles like dubby techno, the kick often is fairly subby, and mids and highs aren’t necessarily even that desired (total opposite: EDM, a snappy kick with not that much sub).
Its mids are what give it that presence. This also clashes the most with the music, so do get this right. While it can help the kick stand out in terms of its body, don’t have it interfere with the music toomuch.
Highs are what can help to have the kick cut thru the mix in a nice and snappy way. This is what I ignored by far the most when I was a young producer. Ever since, there’s been many times when a simple high shelf has been all that’s needed to help an otherwise perfect kick “raise its head” in the mix just the perfect amount.
All of these have their place, so mix the kick accordingly.
TIP 1: When the tone is right, a bit of transient boost can help (or something it’s good for cutting the punch, if the kick is punchy)…tools like Spiff are indispensable at this.
TIP 2: Saturation can work wonders in rounding a kick and giving it a bit of overall presence. I’ve often used Ableton Saturator for this, and there are other nice tools for sure…market is full of them, so pick your tool and give it a shot.
14) PLUGINS AND HEAVY LIFTING
Sharing the heavy lifting makes very much sense. A good example is master limiting: when you want to go loud, you’ll often find that using only one master limiting may result in distortion and pumping a bit too easily, while sharing the limiting between 2-3 limiters always yields a result that’s way more transparent.
Same goes with EQing: most digital EQs are fairly light, so instead of doing crazy boosts with one EQ, try sharing that between a few instances and see if you hear the difference.
In mastering, I have several EQs on the master, and I find that gives me an extra smooth result.
Also in vocal compression, I usually have two vocal comps in a row (UAD LA-3a and LA2A)…even when I need to restrict the dynamic range a lot, this way I can keep it transparent.
Even in master compression, I often use a few compressors for maximum smoothness.
If you’ve been heavy-handed this far, try this, and you may find the result is smoother.
15) EQ CUTS – WHEN TO GO NARROW, WHEN BROAD?
In a nutshell, narrow boosts result in an unnatural sound, and are hardly ever needed. The only times I’ve done narrow boosts have been when I’ve created a bit of punch in the fundamental frequency range of a kick – this works sometimes when done in the right spot in low-mids.
Other than that, always boost broad, as it yields a way, way more natural result. Every now and then I get mixes where I can spot a narrow boost, and in pretty much 100% of those cases, I ask the client to go broad, and the result is better.
Cutting, however, can be quite narrow, but also broad, depending. When you want to tame the overall tone of something that doesn’t have a clear, tight resonance somewhere – for example, when taming the high-mids of a synth or a vocal – go for a somewhat broad cut. I absolutely love the isolation functionality of Pro-Q (headphone icon) that allows you to hear the frequency range of the EQ node you’re moving…it’s so super useful in finding the range you want to tame.
If there’s a resonance, it usually needs a tighter cut. I do this to almost every kick in every mix: I scan the low-mids (120-150 Hz) with a narrow boost of 18 dB and cut where it starts to “howl” (you’ll know what I mean when you hear it). I cut there. I may do several of these cuts really close to each other, and this can really help to reshape a “blobby” kick to an almost new, classier kick. Try this, and you may be amazed how much you can do to a kick this way!
Also in some hihats and synthesized sounds there may tighter resonances, often fairly high, that can often seen visually. Use a tighter cut here. Try cutting till the sound isn’t harsh anymore (dynamic EQ that only cuts when the signal exceeds the set threshold may be your friend unless the resonance happens all the time); experiment with cutting too much, and you’ll then hear why narrow cutting can sound bad…you’ll cause this “hole” in the sound. Pull back a bit from here till it’s natural again.
Do a lot of on/off action especially with more drastic cuts or boosts to hear that you’re not overdoing it or making it unnatural!
16) DO NOT HIGHPASS EVERYTHING
Now let me do some repetition to hammer it home first:
Do not highpass everything.
Do not highpass everything.
Do not highpass everything.
Once more:
Do not highpass everything.
OK, so “Why?” you ask, as you’ve seen people say online you should highpass everything. When people say if often enough (like that “Premasters/mixes must be leveled to -6 level” myth [which isn’t a bad thing, but a bit of a myth nevertheless]), it must be true, right?
I’m going to be the guy who’s going to tell you otherwise.
The thing is, almost every single time I see the “highpass everything” rule I also see that the person who gives this advice does not bother to explain this much further. I also see a bit of “cut so high that it starts to get hollow, then pull it back a little”.
Now let me tell you I rarely highpass ANYTHING. And mixes come out nice, full, fat, and warm. Just ask my clients.
OK, I often highpass the master around 10–19 Hz, and sometimes a vocal track around 60–80 Hz OR something like a hihat if there’s some clearly unnecessary extra lows or even subs. Also if you record or sample from vinyl, you’ll see some insanely low freqs (as low as 10–20 Hz), which are OK to filter out. This type of cutting is OK, and you won’t hear it.
The “highpass everything” rule in general results in thin mixes, as producers end up cutting everything a bit, and too high, and this, little by little, track by track, thins out the mix, even if you don’t necessarily realize it.
Every year, I get either tracks for a mix or premasters for mastering, and I listen it for a while and I notice it’s slightly thin, and I ask, “Any chance you’ve done highpassing on many tracks?” and the answer is usually positive, and I ask the producer to disable highpassing, and hey, the material comes back nice and fatter.
This leads us to…
17) DON’T HIGHPASS THAT VOCAL EITHER
Every now and then I get vocal tracks that sound thin, and it’s the same story here as well. Producers highpass their vocal tracks but don’t always know where it should happen and they go way too high, and it thins out the vocal, and there’s nothing I can do to put the body back into the sound when it’s been radically filtered out.
This is OK for very low mic rumble, but I wouldn’t advise going higher than, say, 60 or 70 Hz.
Dear diary, this actually happened today, too.
When you work with an engineer, it’s FINE to not highpass one single thing: leave it up to the engineer…it’s his job. We got ya.
18) SO HOW TO DEAL WITH THE LOW CLUTTER THEN?
In general, heck yes, there will be low clutter, boxiness, and congestion, but highpassing is mostly good for more radical, utilitarian cuts as mentioned above.
By far the most transparent way is to either low shelf or just bell cut things. That’s it.
For example, in vocals, most of the time you will have a bit of low-mid resonance, and that’s just normal: this is something that’s quite easy to see with an EQ, and it’s also very easy to cut out. In male vocals, for example, you’ll usually see two peaks. Just use an EQ that allows you to hear the EQ node range in isolation, find the “mumble” range, and this is a walk in the park. Only address those resonances, and the result is natural, while highpassing that range means instant thinning of the vocal, and we don’t want it.
TBH, the first step in “non-homebrewizing” a vocal is cut those low resonances found in almost every non-processed vocal.
A lot of instruments have extra weight and boxiness between 150–700 Hz: find it there and cut it out and you’ll find things may get nicely less congested.
So, go very easy on highpassing and use more natural means of cutting for a more natural result.
19) USE STRONG REFERENCE SONGS
One of the things that seriously pimped my production game was realizing I should produce and mix against good reference songs.
I forgot who said, “Mixing without a reference song is like making a smoothie without a lid on the blender”, and while it may be slightly wild, depending on one’s mixing skills, I definitely do agree to an extent.
Our ears adapt very well and very quickly – and they also do that with a mix when it’s not great.
Whipping out a reference song will tell your ears, “This is how it should sound, roughly”, and you’ll hear the shortcomings in your mix more easily: lacking brightness, often too much or too little sub, drums maybe too loud, stereo maybe a tad too wide…you get the gist.
Just make sure to match the level, as even a 2 dB difference makes it harder, because even if your ref song plays 2 dB louder, it’ll sound that much better just because of that.
So either bring your reference songs down OR limit your song as loud as the refs, or find a good middle ground (earlier in this post, I mentioned mixing loud early on, and that’s what I was doing for a while).
I still use reference songs all the time, in both mixing and mastering, as even though I know the sound of my room well, I have to appreciate the nuances that my clients prefer in my work.
You could either have reference songs in your song project on its tracks (I’ll be doing a Patreon-exclusive video on how to do a mastering project in your DAW that allows for quick, efficient referencing with songs in it) OR have “montages” of trusted reference songs. I find both extremely useful.
I have reference song montages for all genres that I work with. This can technically be done with any audio editor in the world: just have fitting songs back-to-back, set their levels somewhat equal, and that’s it. For this, I use Wavelab, as it allows for easy creating of so-called montages, and it even allows for tabbing between montages. What I can appreciate is that Wavelab doesn’t actually create a new audio file out of the tracks: it only refers to them, so they don’t take up HD space.
Montages are great as you can jump between songs super fast and have your exported song there, so you can compare yours to reference songs very easily and quickly this way.
Every time I mix/master an EP, I place its songs on a montage and jump between the songs to observe if the tone is coherent between songs and adjust the project accordingly, export again, etc.
TIP!The shorter the time between hearing the reference song and your song, the more efficient the referencing. I do a LOT of super fast CMD-tabbing on my Mac to switch real fast between the ref montage and the song I work with, and I can recommend this highly.
20) MAKE MORE SONGS
…and learn from them.
All the things and mistakes you learn from a song will help you with your next songs. Sometimes it’s not worth polishing a song for weeks if it’s just been produced in a way that doesn’t allow for full fixing…sometimes things are messy etc.Sometimes it’s best to move on instead of wasting time on a song and realize that you have probably learned something.
Making 15 songs will teach you more about your own way or producing music than honing 4 songs to absolute “perfection”.
And, somehow, at least in my case, it’s never the songs I’ve worked ages on and lost some sleep over are never the ones that people like the most. Go figure.
21) LEARN FROM OTHERS
Learning from others can be an amazing resource: seeing how other producers make and mix their music can be very useful and help you to understand where you could do better or how you could tackle some things more efficiently.
The web sure is full of videos of people producing music, mixing music, etc., and if you can collaborate with others, I can almost guarantee you will pick up things along the way and also see different ways of doing things.
There are also many paid courses and video series about mixing music, and also, nothing’s more entertaining and educational than production masterclasses, and I still enjoy watching them myself (mags like Computer Music are a superb resource, for example, in terms of all things production).
If you know of a producer whose mixes and production you like, don’t hesitate to get in touch with them and enquire if they’re willing to help even with just some general questions. While not everybody is up for this, some love to help. Do take into account that not everybody is willing to help for free and it can be rude to expect that, so at least a small donation can feel good.
Also, mixing-wise, not to wave my own flag too much, but it’s part of my job to help producers with mixing and production issues. While I do a lot of “just” mixing and mastering, I also do videos of what I’ve done to my client mixes, and they surely have helped many.
I also help with general production topics, and the higher Patreon tiers offer just that. I absolutely love discussing music, production, and mixing.
Also feel free to get in touch directly, and I’d be happy to help.
• fanusamurai@gmail.com
•https://www.facebook.com/fanubreaks/
• +358456718221
Comments
Yuurii Aina
I tend to high pass everything in side EQ to make bass mono. I think low shelf or bell cuts are not making things mono compatible? What to do?
Janne Hatula
I'd be happy to list some good reference tunes soonish...a decent topic for a post, thanks!
Tuomas Munck
I have started to use referencing as well for my mixes. If you can elaborate on your mixing/mastering references for varioud genres, that'd be great; A Tidal playlist would be even better, as most of Tidal content is FLAC 👍
Janne Hatula
Glad you like! Hola from amidst the gray, autumnal vibes in Finland!
Scott Vlahon
wonderful stuff; great info! Greetings from California
Janne Hatula
Hope it's useful! Happy mixing, man!
Janne Hatula
Eipä kestä! Toivottavasti siellä päässä tuotanto sujuu :)
Kari Kaivola
Erittäin hyvää settiä Fanu :) Kiitos
CÅARL
Big up, Janne! Just exported the multitracks of three tunes yesterday and will be mixing today, so I'll definitely be applying this knowledge asap.
