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A question about mixing
Happy Thanksgiving to everybody! I'm a noob when it comes to mastering. I'm on the desktop using VST inside of Ableton. I've got a track using DOPE VST's Beat Maker 1 (boom clap sounds) with Audio Thing's Vynil Strip to dirty things up. Also for effects I've added some analog EQ (Waves Abby Road 526 EW to increase bass on the drop and adding the color of a classic EQ. not using making a Trip Hop song and want the low fi drums. I want a analog bass sound so I'm messing around Arturia SEM, Mini, and Jupitor plugins.
My problem is that I can't find a point where the drums have separate places in the mix. The Beatmaker has pan controls for each drum sound (bass, kick, snare, etc). If anyone out can recommend some pan placement in the stereo field, types of reverb, etc. Also if you have done this with better plugins let me know. I'm collecting plugins for several months during sales so I might have them or I can buy some new plugins. Sorry for the long post.
Comments
You may just have too many things occupying the bottom end of the spectrum. If you have four drums all being struck at once, it gets muddy fast. Reverb will make it even worse. If that's the case, you may want to rethink your parts. Other things you can do is pick a narrower band for each, and drop off the top and bottom, or try to compress the top and bottom at different points in each drum.
A lot of it is just the sounds you use too, it's not a question of which plug ins you're using, epecially for things like EQ IMO.
First rule of mixing: 'crap in, crap out'. This is usually where I fail.
I also don't have nearfield monitors / a proper room so I haven't made a decent mix in over ten years, sigh. damned local housing prices!
Check out the recording revolution website, sounds like it addresses exactly what you want to know. He talks constantly about how to do the best with what you have.
One thing is for sure with mixing though- if you're really struggling with a mix, it's almost always the arrangement, which includes not only the sounds themselves but the parts.
Check out the multi track files of various well known songs online (you'll have to find them, but they're around). Check out especially ain't no mountain high enough, that is a huge sounding arrangement because of how they voice chords together, etc, and no matter what you do with the faders you can't get it to sound bad. That being said, I continually struggle with "less is more." I have tons of respect for those that arrange well.
Thanks for answering my post. Do you guys have any general suggestions on:
1) specific EQ frequencies drums, bass, and synths should be. I know it can be different with each case I was just wondering some general rules.
2) general rules on panning and where you put each part on the stereo field. I think kicks are in the middle, snares quarter right, etc. Thanks.
There's no answer to that, based on taste and your sources. If you look alone on the bet it's not too hard to find frequency chats with hints about instrument ranges, but they're only a guide. I can highly recommend you do much more cutting with eq than boosting though.
As for panning, again, no "correct" way, but I generally use lcr (left center right), so only 3 spots to pan. Very occasional use of other spots but mostly lcr. But that's not "right, " just personal taste.
I highly recommend Mike seniors book "mixing for the small studio," that was a huge help to me. Still, nothing better than constantly mixing to get better.
One of the hardest and most valuable lessons for me was doing a lot more cutting with EQ than was instinctive for me. Particularly useful is to find the sweet spot of, say, the kick, we'll say 80 Hz for argument's sake. What I'll often do is go to each of the other drums, particularly the toms, and do a narrow Q cut at the kick's sweet spot frequency. Yes, it'll make the floor tom sound less awesome on its own, but when played together, each drum will sound better in the mix. And don't be afraid to throw a HPF onto the snare beginning at say 250 Hz. Again, by itself it'll miss the bottom, but in the mix it gives room to the kick and lower toms. Speaking of 250 Hz, I find there's rarely much good happening in that range, so I do find myself cutting somewhere around there more often than not.
Another technique is to focus on the attack frequency of the low end drums. For the kick, this could be between 1.5 kHz and 3 kHz as an example. Again, it might feel counterintuitive, but that will often bring out the clarity of your low end drums and create the aural illusion that you actually raised the low end. Compressing for the attack to shine through can accomplish the same thing, as well.
And, yeah reverb on low end accentuates the smear and reduces the definition of each instrument, so if you're feeling like you need more clarity, get yourself happy without reverb and then you can still apply some to taste thereafter.
Good luck, and take all this with a healthy grain of salt compared to what you're hearing and feeling.
Great post.
One great piece of advice I was given was to put a HPF on anything that should NOT be living in that bottom end. Guitars, vocal, keyboards, percussion, cymbals. They all generate a bit of rumble that adds up. Can clean up a lot of mud easily.
Just make sure there's actually something there that needs to be removed because it's muddying up the mix is one thing I would caution about this bit of common advice. I get a lot of tracks from other musicians to mix or master, and often times the mixes sound TOO thin because then did this as a habit, and not because it was really needed. A really useful technique, but like anything it can backfire if you're not listening while you do it.
Thanks for the advice!
To find the "sweet spot" @mulletsaison was talking about, I generally solo the track, set an EQ channel to a super narrow Q and boost it way up. Then I sweep the frequency back and forth until I find the spot where it it really rings.
One other thing to consider is messing with the octaves below and above the frequency you find. Say 700hz howls, that means 350hz, 175hz and 87.5hz are the three descending octaves and 1400, 2800... are the ascending octaves. Try cutting other tracks there as well. Generally these are tiny cuts, like 2-4 db. If it feels like you need more, it's probably, as mentioned above, the sounds or the arrangement that needs to be fixed.
I got your boffin sandwich right here...
I am used to working with the 'primary' frequencies but hadn't considered the doubles and halves, Cheers dude, some good info here
If you play almost any tone into a frequency analyzer you'll see the resulting overtones. There are many more than just the octaves but they tend to be the strongest.