Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
How did you learn about mixing?
A good book that you recommend? An article? Video series?
Each day I read a post on a forum or see something that makes me realize how little I know about mixing/recording. I can do it but at a very basic level.
Comments
Andi Vax Mixing Secrets - check it on youtube
https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Mixing-Recording-Engineering-Production/dp/1931140456
I read this book when I started in music production like 6 years ago and didn't understand anything. Then I read it again a couple years ago and everything was a lot more clear. I also buy a lot of the computer music magazines on my iPad and read about all the different topics they have. I also took a couple classes at a music store close to my house.
I would also check out youtube videos of artists doing one hour sessions about their workflow.
Find a basic course. I read lots of FM (due lack of good books in my language AthatM), done radio and lots of live gigs but a course with grouping, subgrouping, lead vocal, compression and equing concepts will make you grow faster.
Maybe there is a book about all of this, of course...
This one is really good:
Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio by Mike Senior
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/mixing-secrets-small-studio
If you like to get your learn on in thread form this one is amazing...
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=29283
I read a lot of books in the past, but these days I would recommend taking advantage of video tutorials. It helps tremendously when you are able to hear and maybe even see exactly what the person is attempting to demonstrate or teach. Books don't convey this, so you would have to have additional hands-on experience to really learn this stuff the "old" way. Also keep in mind that experience is the thing that matters most, so keep spending most of your time doing stuff as opposed to studying stuff. Learning a bunch of things without putting them into practice is kind of a waste (for me anyway) because you tend to forget things if you don't ever use them. Try to spend just enough time learning something new and then try to integrate your new knowledge immediately in practice.
Honestly, I read a lot of articles and stuff, but nothing gave me a more intuitive understanding of how sound can be shaped and sonic illusions created than getting absolutely blazed and just doing mix experiments for hours at a time. I was able to carry that understanding into sober mix sessions.
My mixing advice would be: listen to the mix as a whole. If you tweak one thing, it will change the entire mix, it's different, period. And in that spirit I would say to almost never tweak things too much in isolation, unless the problem is so blatantly obvious that it's a quick fix deal or you are designing synth presets or something. It's called a mix for a reason, it is a mixture of sounds. Remember that. You don't try to make a soup where the ingredients are completely separate from each other. That's not a soup that's a table full of ingredients.
Seconds on this. Also what db909 said - got to get in and play.
A sound strategy.
I went to school for it - I have a degree in Sound Recording.
There are lots of ways to learn - I'm always happy to answer questions if you have them. I found that I learned more from people I admired/friends in the business and hands-on experience. Also understanding the history of recorded music made a big impact on me:
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Beatles-Recording-Sessions/dp/1454910054
This book was extremely helpful to me. The Beatles existed at a time when recorded music changed dramatically both around them and because of them. Not only is it a fascinating read from a fan perspective, but the amount of techniques people still use today that were developed/invented/pioneered by the Beatles is astounding.
Not comprehensive by any stretch, but interesting.
I also encourage you to deliberately limit yourself at first to help learn the various ways of doing things. Start with four tracks and force yourself to use ONLY four tracks for a full album. You'll find that you have to be creative in really unexpected ways to get where you want to go. It's so easy, with iPad especially, to have too many options and not know where to start. If you instill some mandatory restrictions on your workflow, it may help you think out of the box a bit more and get a fuller understanding of the recording/mixing process.
books, magazines, and failures.
If compression were cooking, I would have burned all the songs to a crisp when I first started mixing.
If you could kill someone with too much bass, everyone within earshot would be dead.
I think it’s good to learn exactly what all the tools are supposed to do, and then learn what it is your ears want to hear, and then learn what other ears actually hear. I know I wanted them to really hear the bass. I didn’t realize how much I actually needed, level-wise, for them to hear it. I finally learned that they don’t need the bass all the way up and the compression at 11 to hear what I want them to hear. I finally started asking: what does this kick have to sound like with this bass in order to make them dance? Then I started mixing.
The New Stereo Soundbook
I think the best way is by sitting next to a pro engineer in person. Hire someone to come and mix (or track) and then observe and ask questions and take notes. Then you will get real life experience with your music, your monitors, your room, your gear, your workflow. You can’t get that kind of experience any other way.
Just doing my own songs over and over while always trying to improve all the issues I heard later on.
Practical: recording myself and friends. Then weaseling my way into a jr engineering gig in a studio by virtue of being a nerd (and so could debug drivers and Sadie and Pro Tools...).
Technical: Lot and lots (and lots) of TapeOp and the Yamaha Sound Reenforcement Handbook.
Both: experimenting and comparing results.
I wish I had received all of this great advice 30 years ago.
What if we’re all actually still terrible mixers.
Hehe yah, cough up the mixes folks!
I'm a great mixer, believe me, but a lot of my mixes aren't that great. Because a good mix for me can take some time. And a lot of the time I just get tired of a song and say fuck it, this ones done. But if I wasn't so lazy, all of my mixes would the best mixes ever, that I can tell you.
I agree with most of what's been said already - books, online courses/YouTube videos, articles, PDFs, practicing/experimenting...you name it.
Here's another book I often see referenced:
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-4th-ebook/dp/B01N6SFVMS
Trial and error
And error.
And error.
And error...
Rain-swollen magazines I found in the woods as a kid.
I would recommend fabfilter and wickiemedia channels on youtube. There is all you need to know there.
Read everything too. I'd read every mixing engineer interview I could find, even if it was for a totally different genre than what I was into. I also found that I learned more by reading the older articles when I was learning and everyone was mainly using hardware still. Mix engineers seemed to get a lot more creative when the number of say EQs and compressors was limited to choose from. Bit different from the plug in days. Not saying one is less valid, just that I learned more from hearing the thought processes that went into fixing difficult mix issues.
my suggestion would be to look up andrew scheps and steve albini on youtube. seriously.
So true. I feel like a combo of fiddling yourself on tracks, learning basics and applying and then watching someone who's a pro after you have a little knowledge really goes a long way
Lots of good suggestions. Someone mentioned Bobby Owsinski's book, so I started watching his series on Lynda.com. Learned a lot in just a few hours. I also started reading the cockos.com thread mentioned - really good so far. Definitely will check out the other suggestions too.
What is it, mixing?