4 Rules of #Mixing

hey this is joe from home studio corner and today i want to talk to you about my four rules for mixing now i've been doing these rules videos for a little bit now and they seem to be really connecting with people and i think the reason is that there's just a lot of information out there and even though mixing is not the most complicated thing in the world it can get a little squirrely especially with all the information out there now i've been doing this since 2009 which is helping people get better mixes help people learn how to make good music in a home studio environment and that puts me in a unique position both as a musician and producer myself but also as the guy who's helped out thousands of people over the last decade i've seen a lot of things i've seen a lot of things and i've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when it comes to making music in a home studio especially if you're just starting out so i've got my boxes created because all rules like to be boxed in don't they right let's jump in and figure out rule number one all right rule number one this is going to be the most important one i would say always always aim for ready you ready you ready what's the word balance that word is so important i'm gonna highlight it balance is the name of the game this is everything this is what we're doing as engineers in the studio as musicians whether you're in a band playing with other musicians whether it's just you and a guitar and you need to balance the volume of your voice with the volume of the guitar in a room full of people at a house show balance is so incredibly important uh back in the old days they used to call audio engineers balance engineers because of how important like that's what they did they balanced things so what are we talking about here well there's three types of balance i want to go over with you the first is the first part of the cheat code from contra if you remember that up up down down left right left right ba select start or select select start if you're playing two players people will argue with me on that but i'm right um so here are the three types of balance what are they well these shapes probably don't make much sense up and down that's volume balance that's faders gain staging that is getting the levels of your tracks in your mix balanced together so you get them all to where you can hear everything and you're not clipping your main bus it sounds simple but it's super important more on that in a second the second one is left and right balance stereo balance the balance of panning if i have a really great killer sounding guitar track that's a guitar and i love it and i pan it over to the left well now i've got to think okay what if i leave it there then i've got this stereo mix that's left heavy with that guitar what am i going to put over here on the right side to balance that out that's what i'm thinking about when i'm recording guitar it's also obviously what i'm thinking about a lot when i'm mixing what what do i do to achieve a left and right balance you could put everything up the middle that's technically balanced but we'd much rather take advantage of the stereo spectrum so if something goes left something else has to go right third type of balance is frequency balance this is the one people will jump to they'll want to pull up their big eq plugin and want to make the eq curves look all cool and yeah look at that eq curve but while it is important i would say the first two are more important and then use the third to achieve frequency balance what i mean by that if you've seen my rules of eq video video there are different bands of frequencies and we want them all to be roughly the same volume we don't want there to be way more in the low mids and way more in the highs than everything else so we use eq to balance those things out okay balance engineers right that's rule number one all right let's dive into rule number two which is similar or builds upon rule number one i feel so fancy when i say the word upon and that is this no plugins too early what a lot of people like to do we love plugins we love toys we want to pull out our plugins slap them on all our tracks and just have fun i'm all for fun i love fun but you will not have fun if you start grabbing for your plugins before you've done what i consider one of the most important parts most important parts of the mix process and that is the static mix what's the static mix you ask the static mix is this right here getting your up down and left right in order meaning you're going to work on getting your levels and your panning sounding great now the static mix it can take upwards of an hour or more i've had songs i had a song i remember where it had 60 or 70 tracks i spent like an hour and a half just on the static mix zero plug-ins involved just to get everything where it needed to go okay what is this what does it sound like where does it happen in the song do i want to pan it middle left or right how loud does it need to be and then do that over and over again to get everything where i can hear everything in the mix i've got a good balance up down left right that's our static mix once we've done that then we can move on and start working on things like frequency balance and then using compression to further smooth out the up and down volume balance but static mix for me is so incredibly crucial and i and i really enjoy it it's one of my favorite parts of the process because you get things like a bunch of faders lined up right and they each have pan knobs on top of them and you get to just move things around it's the part like the reason that little that fader broke that doesn't look like a fader anyway it's the reason that we get into mixing a lot of times we see somebody moving faders either on a physical control service or mixer or in a studio like that's what we think about we think about mixing is moving faders and then moving panners left and right that's the game here with the static mix don't blow past this don't go so fast and be so eager to reach for your favorite plugin that you don't get the balance right what ends up happening here's the reason why what ends up happening is you start using plug-ins on a mix that is no that is not balanced and you end up with just more imbalance right i've had this happen so many times kind of a common example where i'll have a bass guitar and it just won't sound right and i'll pull out you know things like eq and compression and maybe even distortion and i will spend upwards of 20 30 minutes on that bass track to make it sound good then i'll take all the plugins off and say oh it's just too quiet and i'll take the fader and turn it up problem solved and then maybe use just a little bit of eq and a little bit of compression that is a very common scenario in mixing we tend to think that we need to put all these plugins on every single track when in reality if we set them at the right volume we might not need those plugins or if we do we can wait and use them until later so we don't jack things up that takes me very nicely into our next rule which happens to be rule number three for those math nerds among us and that is to be a this is going to fit minimal list look at that fits perfectly now what do i mean by that do you remember that old game show i don't think i ever watched it but i heard about it it was called name that tune and the idea was they would tell you something about the song and then you would say i bet i can name that tune in four notes or in two notes or in three notes and then they would play the notes and you would say that's you know fly me to the moon and then you'd win points or something when i approach mixing i think of it a lot like this just as as i'm saying this this sounds super weird but i think of it a lot like uh approaching something like name that tune like these let's assume these are my channels in my mix i've already done my static mix i've got things sounding good and then my goal is to get these sounding as good as possible with as few plugins as possible so instead of just loading up this thing with just plugin after plugin after plugin what i'll do a lot of times this will come as no surprise if you've seen some of my mixing videos is i'll do something like this i'll take all of these tracks and i will send them over to some sort of a bus okay something like this and then instead of putting plugins on each of the individual tracks like that that i'll actually just put a few plugins like one or two on the bus itself and i will see and i'll say to myself all right joe can you make a good mix out of all these tracks with just one or two plug-ins on the mixbus and i'll tell you more often than not i can or if nothing else i can get it 80 to 90 of the way there with just two plug-ins and then i can come in and i can put an extra plug-in on that snare drum an extra plug-in on that kick drum so i'll do this for the big groups of things in my sessions drums guitars vocals acoustic guitars an electric guitar separately keyboards strings background vocals they'll each go to a bus so instead of mixing you know 24 or 48 songs i'm really just mixing eight faders and then yes i'll go back and i'll do things on the individual tracks if needed but i have shocked myself so many times with how i've been able to make this sound amazing and there will be zero to three plugins on my entire drum mix because i was able to get the job done here now none of that can happen if you go for plug-ins too early or if you don't get a good balance to begin with but if you do rule one and you do rule two well then when you get to rule three you're able to do this it's pretty powerful and you either believe me or you don't and you either get it or you don't and the only way you can get it is by trying it and i've had people say joe i've heard you say this for years and i finally tried it the other day and holy crap it worked and i'm over here saying yes it does rule number four pay attention this one's a little weird i've not talked about this a ton pay attention to your body okay here's what i mean let's say you are working on a mix okay and you got your speakers set up over here and they're just blasting some groovy tunes right and you're sitting here in the middle you're bald-headed like me and you got this really cool chair okay and you're sitting here and you got your hand on the mouse and you're working maybe you're working for a couple hours maybe two three four hours maybe it's just been 30 minutes these are supposed to be legs on the chair and you may be at a big mixing desk like that and it's got tons of channels and knobs and faders anyway here's what happens at some point something's going to happen to your body as relates to this music okay you're going to perhaps you're gonna be listening to a really beautiful ballad okay and you're gonna start tearing up and there'll be tears in your eyes dripping down your face take note of that or maybe there's it's a faster tune and it makes you want to stand up and dance that's you dancing by the way um or at least nothing else it just you just it makes you want to bob your head to the beat like yeah you close your eyes and you bite your lip and you're like um yeah this is good these things when these things happen any of these when i have any sort of physical response to the music i either want to dance i want to cry i get you know goosebumps which i don't know how to draw goosebumps when any of those things happen i make a note of it it's a big big deal to me because what that means is all this work that i've done has created an emotional connection with my brain it has caused me to feel something either feel the happiness and the desire to dance or made me feel sad or emotional reminded me of something really great or it makes me bop my head because i'm really grooving to the music that means i'm almost there that is a big red flag that says hey you are real close to calling this sucker done so i will plant a flag in my brain and i will say okay let's start trying to land this plane as soon as possible because any any more work that i do is potentially going to break what i've done here and i'll no longer connect with the music anymore and it will i'll have gone too far i will have overmixed the song which is something a lot of beginners do remember be a mentalist keep it simple go for balance use plug-ins sparsely none at first and then slowly add them in use a minimalist approach mix that song in as few plugins as possible as few moves as possible and then when you start bouncing to the music then start to try to land the plane and see how quickly you can finish and be done because that means you're there or you're close and you can start finishing things up so you don't over mix and lose that mojo that you have right there okay thanks so much for watching this video if you want to learn my five-step mix process which coincides with this super well you can get that for free at fivestepmix.com and by the way i've got a new mixing course brand new mixing course coming out very soon and the only way to find out about it or at least to be the first to find out about it is to be on my email list and that's what happens here you sign up to my email list i send you a free five-step mixing guide and then when that course is available i'll send you an email and you can decide if it's right for you no pressure as always you can sign up and unsubscribe whenever you want and we can still be friends but head over to ye5stepmix.com and i'll be letting you know about that course soon thanks so much for watching this video share it with a friend be sure to subscribe see you in the next one

Channel: Joe Gilder • Home Studio Corner

Views: 52,254

Keywords: mixing, gear, home recording, equipment, joe gilder, presonus, studio one, home studio, mix, eq, compression, volume, faders, panning, balance, body, dance, cry, move, minimalism, minimalist, static

Id: WJMQOgpwTSY

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020