Clean Up A Muddy Mix!

hi everybody I hope you're doing marvelously well in this episode we're going to talk about how you can clean up a muddy mix I decided I'd watch a couple of videos on the subject and see what I could find out there and I realized much like the how to get proper low-end video that we did a week or two ago there was a lot of confusing information and it was focused on one or two different areas but didn't bring the whole thing together so this video is going to be about all of the issues that we get what what exactly is muddy when somebody says to you oh your mix sounds muddy what do they mean what are they hearing or typically that's one of two distinct areas and they are different the first area is where the kick drum the bass drum it as it were lives where the bass it's selfless whether it be an organic stand-up bass electric bass sub bass synth bass whatever you want to call it that's the first area that we need to address and then the second one is the lone mids and actually a lot of the time it's the low mids that really make your mix sound muddy so let's get in and talk about those two different areas and ways that we can solve it so you can have a really crystal-clear mix with great definition and huge pumping low end so firstly great productions create great mixes I know that might sound fairly obvious but I do believe it is something that has disappeared off into the ether if we go back say two times of recording it was of course all about recalling things life wasn't it there would be anywhere from you know three four five people in a room to big band to full orchestra and right at the beginning it was capturing in Mother let alone stereo so one mic or multiple sources buster one even when it got to stereo the earliest stereo there was a limited amount of tracks so what why am i pointing that out well I'm pointing it out because if you had too much low-end too much low mids you would move that instrument back further away from the mic it was too muddy and too low mid Lee as simple as that you had a limited amount of EQ so what do I bring that up I'm not the guy that's talking about a superiority here it's not about that it's about understanding that if we record things the way we want to hear them there's less mixing involved I know it sounds obvious a really good illustration for that for me is the Beach Boys if you get a chance to listen to any of the multi tracks not that I'm saying they're available or even just listen to say Pet Sounds you'll notice the the genius of Brian Wilson was he would record instruments in frequency ranges he would say bass guitar and tambourine on one track the Beatles did it as well because there was the low end and there was the high end on one track another track would have instruments that would fit around that there was such a limited amount of things you could do with 4 or 8 tracks that everything had to work because it was being bounced together what those guys and girls did is they selected instruments and created parts that would work with each other so if there was an instrument in a specific frequency range they would commit to that and when they would bounce multiple tracks together they couldn't fix it later they couldn't say oh there's too much low-end in this piano with the left hand and there's too much low-end on the bass now it's just mud that was it it's too late it's bounced together so it just points to a really straightforward thing great production give you the ability to create great mixes so what we need to do is choose sounds that are supportive of each other find a bass sound that maybe is all just sup and then if you want to add the grit take that same maybe MIDI information that you've created to create the sub and trigger another sound or maybe take a bass guitar it's got some Drive on it these are the amps driving or you put some saturation or distortion on the bass and wipe off the low-end and put the two things together don't take that bass guitar and expect it to be super full range and that sub and those two things to work together they will fight each other there'll be excessive amounts of low-end it's all about making smart decisions as you go along rather than just recording recording and recording putting tons of parts down and then opening up your session on another day or later on and and seeing that you have a hundred and forty two tracks that all have extended low-end and trying to make it all make sense if you're making those decisions even if it's just with plugins it doesn't matter if you're committing because you can commit by opening a plug-in and shaping the EQ so here we have a sub this is a keyboard sub it's pure time I'd suggest listening on a really nice pair of headphones something that's got enough of a full range I mean your headphones should be able do it earbuds may not reproduce the low lows of this speakers something to help you hear it you won't hear it on laptop speakers so we might hear half of it so here is the part [Music] so if there's a low a there it's pretty pretty low and then we have a bass guitar here [Music] [Applause] so if we analyze the bass guitar for a second [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the base has got a lot it's really dominating at around about 80 to 100 Hertz just listen to the sub we're clear this for a second [Music] the sub is consistently hitting at about 70 okay so let's do one of two things we'll go onto our bass guitar here so I'll dive bass guitar grab an EQ we'll engage this at 70 and now the bass or it can probably go a little higher actually because you can see here it's not that steep of a high pass but now the bass is going to have most of what's going on wiped off below I'll use the Q function here to tighten it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now let's put those two things together [Music] it's great I might do this more often that sub is perfectly filling in that area and just for those of you want to know it's the Absinthe 5 it's a Native Instruments it's probably plenty of other pure subs you can use but those two things together is absolutely fantastic [Music] so we're using our ears but we're also using a frequency analyzer now we can go and bring up all the kick drums so now so load out the kick drums will clear our frequency analyzer now this is quite typical we talked about this a lot with the low-end errs that can be build up in certain frequencies and again in that 80 to 100 area where the bass is really living it's quite a lot of down on the kick drum here's our kick bus and as you can see I'm pulling out about 110 so I'm gonna bring that down a little lower to say about a hundred ish and I'm gonna widen the cue like this I'm also here going to go a little lower so it's about fifty and widen the cue as well actually give it a little bit more of a boost so now I've got a little bit more low lows going on in the kick so I'd open this up a little bit like so and I'll widen this cut again even more it's kind of a little bit of a a little bit of a game here between the two okay see how that feels nice face [Music] bringing this up [Music] that's great now there's logic going on there when logically shaping those things around each other I wouldn't say it's math but it's logic and we're using a tool with quite often let's be honest you're working in environments where you don't have a sub or you don't accurately know how the low end is going to work now one of the things that's obviously really important is that we have two different things at play here we have a base sub which is completely consistent but look if you just listen to this on its own listen to this base up I mean there's a slight initial attack I've like a DB left but it's just like flatlining this is the thing we'll have to remember number two virtual instruments do not give you the same results as organic ones when we so load that sub base and we so load that electric bass there's an enormous difference dynamically this sub base has a very slight attack on each one of those downbeats but ultimately it's just a consistent volume the whole time let's go to our live bass [Music] [Applause] I mean it's uneven in frequencies it's you know we did quite a lot of fun things to it but ultimately it needs maybe a little bit of an MV to on it this is a favorite plug-in of mine because it controls them though level stuff and high level stuff and pulls it together so there's a more consistent volume here we are we've got the sub which is just consistent I didn't do any additional compression or EQ it's a virtual instrument it's just delivers the same way every time even a virtual piano is going to be recorded with a microphone in exactly the right place and every hit is going to be absolutely perfectly performed you think of things like acoustic guitars or stand-up basses performers move so what they play note be like boom they can hit it too hard to soft move slightly every time they're moving an inch or two you know a few centimeters here and there the microphone picks up a completely different frequency response maybe not dramatically different but a lot more different and a sub that's coming from a synth so we have lots of different things to think of and the env2 is a very perfect plug-in for me to get rid of a lot of those issues so I'm going to take the output down bring up the low level so now we have the frequency analyzer up and we're going to take the low level information and a booster [Music] on that second note that D it disappears the low end gets inconsistent have a listen again [Music] [Applause] so let's take the low level information here and bring it up [Music] [Applause] then take the hi bring the outlook down [Music] [Music] so there's a little bit missing in that kind of 110 area so why don't we go to old favorite the our base bringing out about a hundred [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hasn't 100% alleviated every issue that's it's got infinitely better [Music] [Applause] [Music] definitely far more consistent no in near as consistent as the sub base as the programmed virtual base it's always going to be a completely different thing so when you're watching you know a lot of those tutorials and I watched many of them before preparing this I realized that talking about virtual instruments virtual drums all that stuff is one thing and very very important and you can get in there and get a little mathematical about how you separate all of your low-end apart but when it comes to either using entirely organic instruments or using organic instruments with program instruments you have to play a bit more of a tougher game you have to get in there and even some of that stuff out if you want that bottom end to be really consistent in your mix that's what we do [Music] three so muddiness comes from two areas in particular the low end that we're discussing here and now that we clarified and cleaned up the relationship between the kick drum the bass drum a live bass and a sub bass and we've created some nice consistent low-end in there we've got to think about well what could be getting in the way now I have a lot of guitars here these heavy ones here are pretty massive [Music] but what we did here as you can see there's a high pass such at about 80 now what I like to do is I like to find the fundamental something that sounds really thick at the bottom of those guitars and boost it and then cut in the same area meaning I can actually get more low fatness out of my guitars if I take more low end off but increase it where it feels and sounds the best so let's see if we can find where the low end really feels good on these guitars [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I narrow the queue we're about a hundred and thirty one hundred and thirty five Hertz that boost is pretty dramatic and probably does need to be that much but the SEM elicit again [Music] [Applause] [Music] now what I'm going to do is then take my high-pass move it closer to the boost [Music] [Applause] [Music] so now I'm high passing much closer to that I'm high passing at a hundred Hertz [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's bypass that's all the EQ off now and it's like oh wait there shouldn't it sound like there's more low-end warren because you just cut all that low-end now it doesn't sound like there's more low-end it sounds fatter like there's more low-end because I found the fundamental of what makes that guitar sound really really thick and boosted it and then cut everything below which is unwanted and will get in the way of the bass and the kick destroying the clarity and adding yes you guessed it marinus [Music] [Applause] so less low-end equals more a low-end if you boost the low end that actually matters okay so I'm gonna take that and actually look at that so now my slope is really drastic [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] take a bit of that boost down it's not quite so drastic [Music] I loved it so but we've clear cleaned it up like in a hundred Hertz everything is gone and now we're at like 140 so let's say that feels like if we just drop in the sub bass guitar [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] everything's together [Music] smart high passing is really gonna help the low end be bigger because you're getting rid of stuff is unwanted and creating mud and you're finding fundamentals and your guitar sounds and boosting them all your synth or whatever it might be and just getting it so it feels like it's all gluing together and just sounds like yeah I've got definition down there so you can see there it's a judicious use of high passing and boosting low end we did it with the sub we did it with the bass guitar and then we do it with the guitar and that is creating so much more bottom end and we also went into the kick drum and boosted more the fundamental of the kick and cut their area where the bass needed some room and it gives us a bit of everything we need so the fourth thing we need to talk about the second area build-up that causes muddiness is of course the low mids now I find the first thing I do always is go to my drum kit and start looking there now we go to my overheads here you'll see I cut everything not dramatically but everything about 160 and below I've also got a low Phi on this on distorting it similar [Music] in that of bypass you can see its high passing quite a lot but I could get in there at about 350 here and pull that out as well see there without the EQ in [Music] stodgy put the EQ in it's actually nice there's more snap on the snare and the overheads and the cymbals don't sound affected at all they're just breathing the hi-hat everything's great aren't you gonna cut even more low mid [Music] now it's typical with things like low mids etc and low end to be removed from overheads doesn't have to be massively removed but definitely eq'd away and also reverbs so if I go to my Tom's for instance listen now there's an EQ on the toms sub itself actually it could do it more there's like a little bit of a cut here but I can make that a little higher at about 350 and I could dip that quite dramatically so this is a blend of a live ones with the sample [Music] but you know I could add a bit of low boost on that we could go to the our base for instance and we could go up to about a hundred bypass it [Music] great now I'm going to take the Tom's sub itself and send it to the reverb and what we're going to do is we're going to put an EQ before that reverb it's kind of high and low-pass so this will get rid of that excessive low muddiness it's another thing to do with your reverb is to high pass them above the low mids especially the low-end low-end on a kick drum I can go back and check it I do not want that going into my reverb I'm just gonna have all these ambience delays and reverbs with too much excessive low-end will just create a ton of mud so I'm going to go up to about let's say 300 ish don't mind the high end so much it's not there's not much there don't I don't even know if I have to see it's about 8k is gone so we could do that maybe so we go to the eighth cache [Music] but see here we are about 300 all gone Tom still sound great going through that reverb but there's not going to be any of that low mid and low build up [Music] throwing the whole drum kit great super aggressive snare we can do the same thing on our snare verb we've got a little bit of compression going on to it but we can go in and grab another EQ [Music] fantastic let's go to our kick bus which we already worked on and then have a look at our kick verb that's already let's go a little higher so what goats there you go okay whole thing together [Music] [Applause] craziness so now we've created a lot of clarity in our low mids and our low-end we've gone in there we've taken out areas that we don't need it in which is in the drums in particular on the ambience we've taken out the low mid so we don't want to that boost of just berm rumbling low mid and low end those are really all of the areas that we address to remove muddiness in a mix and I think the important things that remember are virtual instruments and live instruments give you different sets of problems virtual instruments by virtue of the way that they're recorded or created synthetically are a lot more consistent and that is a wonderful thing that will make EQ and compressing very easily you may not have to do as much compression and if you're working in MIDI and there is uneven performances you can go in there and even them up on your MIDI information and still keep that same response on every single hit now with organically recorded stuff with microphones with players moving with all kinds of issues that can come from that you're going to have to get more creative but that's the challenge of those two elements coming together and it's it's a great one but there is no one-size-fits-all approach I believe strongly that you should make decisions based on what you hear and then use the tools in front of you to achieve that and for me listening to the song I was thinking what my kick to be massive I want my sub to be enormous but I don't want it to just turn into like exploding out of nowhere it has to be controlled just enough and that it I believe is what we achieved here on this course [Music] great so if you have any comments or questions please leave them below I love being able to talk about this stuff I know that the money nests and the low-end issues are something that consistently comes up in conversation so please if you have any tips you have any ideas that you want to share with people any of your experiences please do below have a marvelous time recording and mixing and I really really appreciate everything that you do please go to produce sector procom you can sign up for the email list get a whole bunch of free information and thank you for being a truly marvelous [Music] [Applause] you [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 228,065

Rating: 4.9532299 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, Mixing Tips, Muddy Mix

Id: EaQJBj63nSk

Length: 30min 39sec (1839 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2020