F*** THESE FREQ's (mix tutorial)

so after 18 years of making records and mixing records i've put together a list or created some data if you will of my least favorite and my favorite frequencies based on the instrument or track or vocal the things i'm going to go over in this video are frequency points that i'm very carefully paying attention to on every single song for thousands of songs now so when i say these frequencies i really mean it get yourself your laptop or a pen and paper and get ready to take some notes let's do this [Music] okay hopefully we can get through this because this mix is a little intense and the computer is dragging a little bit trying to scream capture while playing this mix so this is a song by brenna bone that i produced and mixed for her it's called want it like that this is not the complete mix because i've pulled some of the mix back apart for the sake of this video so this is a almost finished mix but we're going to go through some stuff so here's what the song sounds like give you just a little taste of the chorus [Music] okay so that's the chorus and what we're gonna start with let's start with snare drum how about because snare seems to be the most elusive thing it always was for me getting a killer snare sound from real drums was one of the hardest things of my entire career okay so generally i dislike three to four hundred hertz in the snare drum so let's take a look at that frequency range in the snare drum and see what it sounds like if there's too much i'm gonna boost it and then i'm gonna cut it and let you listen to the difference here [Music] it just has a lot more ring to it and like overall i like it way way less when this frequency range is getting boosted so what we're going to do in this particular case is i'm going to find exactly where i'd like to cut and how much i want to cut and we're going to go just a little bit of time just a couple db here you can almost see that resonance uh not that you should mix with your eyes but you can kind of see the resonance as after the snare hit what's left over right where i'm cutting here at 465 hertz now all of this stuff is to taste you may completely disagree with that and that's fine what i'm trying to do is show you the frequency ranges that that i really pay attention to you can handle them however you like okay so that uh is one of the things that i dislike on snare drum one of my favorite frequencies on snare drum is like 100 to 200 hertz this is the thud of a snare drum so let's look at that okay and then i also really enjoy a high shelf usually on a snare drum uh let's just play around see what we come up with here okay that's sounding pretty good to me i'm gonna bypass this and i'm not level matching and that people give me grief for this but that's not how i mix so here is a bypassed cool that's a good starting point and that is a good example of what i'm talking about about frequencies that i like and dislike let's move on to kick drum okay on kick drum i generally dislike like three to four hundred hertz kind of same range makes it sound kind of boxy uh let's take a listen this kick drum this kick drum sounds pretty good in that range we're gonna pull down a little bit of like 250 in this in this case like two to 400 is usually what i pay attention to cutting in a kick drum that sounds fine to me now normally i would do all these eq moves in context i would do this while listening to all the rest of the music however i'm trying real hard here to avoid a copyright strike on this song even though this song is not out yet as soon as it gets released i'm going to get a copyright strike so i'm trying to avoid that by only playing single elements but when you're doing this do this in context not with just drums or just a vocal on their own so that's the frequency that i dislike a lot in kick drum um i really love like 60 to 80 hertz maybe even up to 100 hertz depending on the song and the kick drum so let's take a listen to the low end in this song that kick drum's thick cool that sounds pretty good i also like like around 6k uh for kick drum and so let's see what that sounds like that kick drum sounding pretty good let's bypass it cool sounds great so this same sort of approach is going to apply to like all the things that we're going to talk about you analyze it see if you should cut or boost and then if you should it doesn't mean just crank on it just to taste and and what's appropriate for the actual track so on toms live toms real toms or even if they're programmed real simulated toms i'm usually cutting around 800 hertz and i'm usually boosting with a low shelf somewhere in the like 120 range and i'm usually boosting with a high shelf somewhere in the like 6k range so that's how i would handle toms i'm just gonna rip through a bunch of these okay now with like synthesizers any sort of think thick synthesizers a dirty synth or a pad or anything like that um it's real common for there to be a lot of build up in the like 200 hertz range so here's this dirty synth that's happening during the course of this song [Music] now that's a pretty thick synth and sometimes this can get muddy in context and so paying attention to the like 100 to 200 hertz range usually closer to 200 sometimes in context again i will pull some of that down to keep the overall song from getting muddy because if you have bass guitar and synthesizer and a pad and even your your regular guitars come down that low and you know there's a lot of elements the bottom end of a snare drum the top of the the top of the bottom end of a kick drum can sometimes reach up into this range there's a lot of things happening in this like 100 to 250 hertz range and so in my opinion i find that a lot of times i will have synthesizers or pads that make the song sound muddy and so i'm always careful with this frequency range but here's what i'm talking about just that much so here how when it's boosted it just doesn't sound good but when it's cut sounds a lot better in my opinion so yeah so that's what i would do on synth everything else on a synthesizer or pads is to taste but i'm careful to pay attention to that frequency uh on all my pads and synthesizers alright let's take a look at some guitars in the chorus of this song some dirty guitars rhythm guitar stuff and let's talk about that now even when i'm not tracking guitars i play these guitars on this song but even when i'm not the one playing the guitar i find that it's extremely common for guitars to be a little scratchy and ice picky and a little bit harsh in the like 2.5 to 3k range and you can usually see this not that you should mix with your ears but you can [Music] yeah somewhere in that range let's do the other guitar on the other side it just takes away the harshness and the scratchiness and then so that's the frequency that i dislike on guitars that i'm always very careful to pay attention to and then i will usually bring some of that clarity back next by paying attention to the low mids so let's look at the low mids in these guitars [Music] so if we pull some like 270 out of it somewhere in that range it should give us the clarity back that we lost by cutting the harshness and so now we're left with a guitar that is uh not harsh and also not muddy in this particular case a lot of times with guitars i'll like a high shelf somewhere between like 6k maybe somewhere around 6k so let's do [Music] that cool and that feels good in the guitars again in context to do this in context but i'm just trying to show the principles here i like high shelves on guitars and i'm always paying attention to cutting that like 2.5 to 3k range and i'm always paying attention to cutting somewhere between like two and 400 hertz for mud because when you cut some of that mud out it brings clarity back instead of boosting in that upper mid range that would enhance the harshness let's talk about 808s and program percussion for a second uh on 808 kick drums on 808 kicks leave them alone so the point that i would like to get across here is that when you're going to eq program percussion snaps claps uh 808s you know 808 snares 808 kicks make sure that you're doing it for taste for vibe to change the tonal characteristics of it there is almost nothing wrong with these samples and they sound sonically great just the way they sit so don't think that you have to adjust them just because you can put an eq and a compressor on it make sure you're doing it with purpose that's super important so strings and orchestral instruments uh kind of the same thing as guitars mixed with synthesizers i don't have any on this song so i'm just going to explain this real quick i will very commonly pay attention to that like 200 ish hertz range 100 to 300 on strings because there can be some build up there some muddiness there and then also with violins in the upper register of cellos and whatnot you can get some harshness in the same region as the guitars and that like 2.5 to 3k range you can get some harshness there and so i will very commonly in strings and orchestral stuff pay attention to those frequency points and then everything else is to taste and then i should also mention that generally across the board with all instruments i'm paying attention to what's fighting the vocal and because the vocal is the most important thing in most songs and most genres across the board so if there's a track guitars snare drum synthesizers strings whatever it is if there's a track that is fighting the vocal i'm very careful to make sure that i identify that and then i will just slowly start pulling some like 1.5 k out of that track like one db at a time until it's no longer fighting the vocal let's take a look at this synthesizer with these vocals and maybe i can show you an example there okay so here's just the synthesizer and the lead vocal we're going to take a look at this rock and roll over red roses okay now that's not too bad and again i would do this in context but for the sake of this example and trying not to get a copyright strike here i'm gonna start pulling down some like 1.5 to 2k while both are playing and just listen to how the vocal starts being given its own space as i do this just a couple db here we go rock and roll over red roses make us 46 to get us going you know i love it when your wild touch your wind you and me in the backseat okay i'm gonna bypass this and put it back in and and take a listen rock and roll over red roses make us 46 to get us going you know i love it when your wife's out showing you me in the background i don't know how well this is gonna come across over youtube and this is a subtle thing but this is something that i pay attention to to all tracks and i'll identify there's usually two or three or four elements in a mix in almost every song in almost every genre that will conflict with the vocal a little bit somewhere between like 1k and like 2.5 is where like the presence of a vocal the punch of a vocal sits and i will pay very close attention to what other instruments might be fighting the vocal in the same frequency spectrum especially instruments that are panned right up the center or that are stereo panned left and right effectively up the center again i want to reiterate all this stuff should be to taste you should not automatically do any of these things you should make your own decisions for how much or how little of this you'd like to do okay so let's take a look at vocals here now one of the very first things that i do on vocals almost without listening is i will high pass the vocal if it hasn't been high passed before so i guess i would listen to see if it's been high passed but if it hasn't a high pass almost immediately somewhere around 100 hertz i'll adjust this to taste as i listen to the track and we work our way through it now the very next thing that i almost always do to almost all vocals is i really like high shelf so i will go ahead and put a high shelf in here we go rock and roll over red roses make us 46 to get us going you know i love it when your wild touch your wind you and me in the backseat we're wrapped out i something about there that's like 16 db at 15k sounds awesome to me now one of my least favorite frequencies on vocals is in the like three to five hundred hertz range now i won't automatically cut this range or look at it until after i've finished eq'ing the vocal because oftentimes how i eq vocals most of the time solves this anyway but so the very next thing that i would do is i usually boost some like 1k and again i can't stress this enough in context while listening to the rest of the music i wish i could without getting a copyright strike this video may get a copyright strike anyway but so i would boost like somewhere between 1 and 1.5 k on a lot of vocals uh to taste of course so let's do that rock and roll over red roses make us 46 to get us going there we go that feels really good to me kind of helps punch the vocal gives it a little bit more clarity now uh i like to make sure the vocals have the proper amount of weight this is certainly the taste because your taste in music and your taste in mixing may completely disagree with this and that's okay these principles still apply so i will pay attention to boosting somewhere between 1 and 200 hertz on this vocal to thicken it up how thick and and how much weight can i give the vocal without it making it sound muddy or woofy or boxy and lack clarity so let's do that rock and roll over red roses make us 46 to get us going you know i love it when your wild start showing you me in the backseat we're wrapped up i want it like you always know how to take control okay i like that at least listening real quickly but the principle here is what we're paying attention to now effectively when i said earlier that that 300 400 hersh range that i 300 to 500 hertz that i don't really care for in a vocal because i've boosted these frequency ranges solving other problems on almost every vocal i've sorted this range out because here's there's 300 right there all the way over to 500 i've already kind of sorted this out on almost every vocal however it is a frequency range that i pay attention to on every vocal so once i've gotten the eq like this i will pay attention to do i need to cut some of that still and a lot of times the answer is no sometimes the answer is yes still a very important frequency for me that i pay attention to on every single song okay let's talk about harmonies real quick because this is something i don't see a lot of people discussing and the same would generally be for doubling and tripling vocals but we're going to go with harmonies for this particular instance now in the same way that i talked about other instruments fighting the vocal that's the most important thing to me when it comes to harmonies i will pay very close attention to if the harmony is fighting the lead vocal i want them to sit alongside each other and complement each other and never be fighting each other and so for me what that usually means is i'm always looking at somewhere between 1 and 1k and 2.5 k to see if i need to pull some of that range out of the harmony so it doesn't fight the lead vocal so let's take a listen here rock and roll over red this is a pretty good example so i'm gonna pull some of this range out like somewhere between three and six db while it's playing and listen how it just gives the lead vocal more space rock and roll over red roses make us 46 to get us going so now the lead vocal has much more space and the harmony is still clearly audible same thing with the other vocals i'm going to high pass this somewhere around 100 and then on this particular one since it's a high harmony i'm going to give it a high shelf as well come on computer my computer does not like screen recording while a finished mix is playing so let's push some high shelf up and see where we get to rock and roll over red roses make us 4 to 6 to get us going so about 6 db at like 11.5 k and so to me this sounds way better the harmony is not fighting the vocal it's fighting the vocal much much less while still being perfectly legible and there's obviously a harmony still happening there that's a win-win in my book don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon next to subscribe tab for more content like this and it means the world to me if you guys would subscribe i know a lot of you guys watch the videos over and over and you're not subscribed so go ahead and hit that little tab it means a lot to me there are obviously a whole lot more tracks that we could discuss uh for this video however these are the tracks that i will do kind of the same thing on every song to taste of course and as long as the track as long as it's necessary for the track so i didn't want to discuss things that i don't always look at particular frequency spectrums for but i hope this helped you uh these are some things that really helped my mixes come to life and i hope it does the same to you thank you guys for watching don't forget to check links in the description for all the gear that i use and plugins that i used in this video and i'll see you guys in the next one [Music] peace

Channel: Colt Capperrune

Views: 37,589

Rating: 4.9512882 out of 5

Keywords: colt capperrune, mix, mixing, tutorial, home studio, how to, music

Id: b434FQdwbdk

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021