The 5 Rules Of Mixing

hi everybody hope you're doing marvelously well in today's episode we're going to talk about the five rules of mixing so i was looking back i've been doing youtube now and online education now for six years i was very lucky about a year or two ago when we won the tech award for audio education it's really been a very important and passionate part of my life i feel like i've been blessed to be able to work on some incredible records with some amazing people and learn so much from working with other producers engineers mixers as well as songwriters and musicians and this is a blessing to be able to do this and give back but one of the things i've noticed more than anything else of doing this over the last six years is i've grown more from your questions i've grown more from your interactions and things that i didn't realize were issues or problems come up because i get asked questions all the time things that maybe i've taken for granted over years of doing this so this five rules of mixing is based on my experiences as an online educator as well as a mixer so the first one for me is the all about the point of mixing and that is creating balance so number one create balance it is a big part of what mixing is about if it is only the only thing we talked about it is the most important part of mixing and of course balance is three very distinct things it is volume it is panning and then it is eq adjustment and the reason why i don't say volume compression eq adjustment and panning is because of course compression is there to control dynamic range now that might seem obvious to even a beginner that that's what it's about but it's more than that for instance when you're mixing on say this lovely ssl over here we do this thing called a static mix and what that is is it's getting everything through the ssl through the console and then finding an average area that everything works like a volume that makes everything fit together and we pan it around and we create some space in our mix we put guitars away from the center maybe so the vocal sits beautifully in the center we put the kick down the center the bass drum we put the snare drum down the center the bass guitar and then we start you know populating around it and creating this beautiful imagery and that is the quote-unquote static mix that's before you do anything else and the reality is is that's always a great place to start and it is also more importantly a great place to finish having everything make sense now if you can get a static mix up on your console up inside of your daw pretty quickly it will tell you so much about what you need to do so now the rest of the rules as it were that are going to follow are really dependent on this first part of the process the static mix the balance of a mix is super super important it will tell you everything you need to know and the reason why i'm over emphasizing this first point because the next points are probably going to go a lot quicker but i'm over emphasizing this first point is because knowing the song and what you want from it and what needs to be got from it how it needs to end up sounding is going to guide you in all of your decision making now i've said many many times in videos and i will say it again there is no one size fits all a song with brushes an acoustic guitar and bass stand up bass double bass contrabass whatever you want to call it it's going to have a completely different set of criteria for mixing than a massive slamming edm or huge pop track or metal they're not going to be mixed and thought about in the same way at all however start with the static mix get those things balanced and panned around get the volumes balance the panning around get it into something that feels like you know there's problems there but generally speaking it feels like a balanced track then these next things we're going to talk about will become very very apparent so to reiterate number one balance your mix get your panning get your volume set so you can sit back and listen to the song now if you've got a rough mix great you can match the rough mix whatever it might be but the reality is the reason why you're doing this the reason why you're balancing the tracks you're panning them you're getting volumes to a place where it feels relatively even is so you can get into the song you can get in it you can have a little bit of an understanding that 20 minutes of just balancing it and panning it is going to be really really important so that leads us to number two using plug-ins too early now seems like an obvious one i've heard a couple of people talk about this and i've probably talked about it in five other videos in fact i like probably at least five other videos it relates to the genre now i'll put up a video and i'll do it'll be a video on uh recording or mixing acoustic instruments and i'll get somebody tell me they don't think it sounds upfront and powerful enough and loud and crunchy and then i'll mix something that's got really big slamming tracks and i'll push it to the limit and maybe i'll maybe i'll leaving you some limiting and some saturation and distortion and then somebody else will comment that's not how the beatles would have done it back in 1963 because of course it was fully organic and it was going down live you can see where i'm going there's no one way to do it the reason why we talk about records which have fully acoustic instruments and then records that have virtual instruments with synths and they're slamming and maybe they even use dare i say drum samples you have to if you want this to be your career learn how to work with all of these different styles of music maybe you'll get lucky and work only in metal maybe your only work in folk artists with violin acoustic guitar and a vocal maybe so you can adopt one method of working however the skill is when you bring the plugins in when do you start after you balance your mix when you start bringing them in you start thinking about it from the perspective of okay i've balanced my mix i've panned things around i've got the volumes to where i like where they're at but even though the vocal sounds like it's loud enough it's just not it's not coming through you know even if i push it up a little bit louder it still feels like it's fighting that's where you start going well maybe i do need eq in there and eq of course at its best and i'm not going to argue with this can be subtractive but the best kind of subtractive eq is high and low passing particularly of course high passing meaning removing excessive low end so you don't want to bring in your eq early but if you do bring in your eq use it to clean up the low end and use it to clean up low mids so there's some more clarity down there so don't bring it in too early to do massive things because if you bring it in too early to do massive things like really really super brightening the vocal okay that's great suddenly the vocal is sitting on top of the mix woohoo great but then you're listening to it like after you've done that and you're like i don't know that snare doesn't sound bright enough now so you brighten the snare and then you're like wow my electric guitars they just don't sound bright enough you brighten that and then you're like oh all i'm hearing is vocal snare and electric guitars i better put some more top end on that kick so it puts more top end on the kick like wow now it's like really clicky kick and snare and ah i don't like that let's put some more brightness on the bass and before you know it you're like chasing your tail making everything brighter and i've seen the reverse you know the reality is is like try subtractive first i am not the guy that's going to tell you only subtractive eq and that is absolute baloney i boost all over the place to make things cut through and sound fantastic and be exciting absolutely but in a stage of mixing try not to use any eq plugins at first as you're getting into the song but the eq you do use maybe try using some high passing some low cut as it were the reason why i say that's because people beginners will get confused but low cut high passing so don't use plugins too early but make sure when you use them you use them for a purpose not just for the point of trying to make everything sound brighter and louder okay number three and you're gonna have a laugh now number three don't use plugins too late what the reason why i say this is now you've got to decide what your objective is if you're mixing a vocal acoustic guitar violin track with brushes like we were talking about earlier you'll be using minimal amounts of eq except for maybe low passing maybe some compression but probably more like volume automation and probably panning to kind of move things around and create some space however if you're doing a big loud slamming track working this way it's not going to be smart because if you and keep watching till the end because it will all make even more sense if you choose not to get in there on a big loud slamming track early and start shaping things you're going to fall into a massive trap and you'll be trying to fix things at the end and this is such a massive common problem this is like i could do a video that lasts an hour on this discussion how there are so many videos talking about putting stuff on your master bus and as much as i love some of the incredibly clever plugins that have come out and there's some really great ones too many people are putting them on the master bus to solve a global problem like oh it's too boomy yeah why is it booming is it a buildup of low end over multiple channels so thirdly i know it's confusing don't be afraid to use plug-ins in the genre earlier meaning loud and slamming so now maybe it's like you get in there and at the earliest possible stage you shape the kick a little bit more the bass drum you shape the snare drum a little bit more then you maybe cut some low mids and some low end out of the room mic so it doesn't get too muddy and now you bust all those drums to a stereo fader maybe that stereo fader is duplicated and there is some parallel compression for some energy now the bass maybe you even out the low end it's a little bit lumpy and you're you go through everything judiciously you have to get crazy but you're going through everything and just bringing it up so it's even because this is a rock track this is not an acoustic guitar and a violin this is something that needs to hit a little harder so you need to do these things from the get-go and build something beautiful build something powerful this is the differentiator this is the reason why right the beginning i was talking about there is no one size fits all you have to know what you're mixing you don't want to be that mixer who's really famous for doing emo metal screamo whatever it might be and then get given an acoustic guitar violin track and then you apply all your compression and eq techniques to that and it comes out saying like a freaking violin hitting you in the face and the vocals like ah you know that's the thing and you don't want to be the opposite you don't want to be the person that's like only believes in three mics on the drums and uh and you shouldn't eq and compress and then somebody gives you a slamming big rock track and you can't figure out how to get the kick and snare to cut through because you're like i don't want to use a kick and a snare and i read that john bonham didn't it well you know i know john bonham didn't do it but have you ever heard the raw tracks of like in through the outdoor can you hear how much compression and he cures on those drums and how like spiky and powerful they are yeah because the music was starting to get more dense it was getting more modern and if you want that sound that's what you do the point is you have to differentiate when you're going to do that sound when are you going to do that sound is it right for this song is it right for that artist i've said this many many times but there is no right way to work you have to learn all the different things so first of all we said creating a balance we're going to create the balance secondly not using plug-ins too early being judicious about how we use plug-ins maybe only using them for high-passing but then thirdly not waiting too long to use them if you're working with a slamming big rock track edm track metal track whatever it might be you don't want to like paint yourself into a corner because you read on some forum that you should only subtractively eq well you know what try that on a freaking metal track go and talk to any of the metal mixers i've talked to and tell them that they cannot boost eq to make things come forward tell them that they can't use compression because you read it on somewhere it's just not true but it is true on other genres it's true on other songs it's knowing when to do it that is a secret so let's move on to number four do not use your mix bus your master bus to do your mixing for you ah i think you've heard me talk about this in any of the mixed videos i've done i do love the fancy plugins that you can put on stereo tracks and even out the low end and sort out the high mid detail and make sure that the top end isn't too brittle i love all those fancy plugins but you do not want to be just using them at the end to solve all of the problems that should be dealt with inside of the mix if there is a huge low end build up between the bass drum and the bass guitar and the low end of the synths and the guitars and everything that needs to be dealt with at that point you can deal with it with the fancy plug-in you can put the amazing new 300 multi-band compressor i've tried them all and some of them are absolutely fantastic but the problem is you'll just get an even low end okay you're probably thinking what do you mean warren i want even low end yeah but even with no definition you remember about four years ago i went on a little bit of a mission in my discussions to talk about all of this dis misinformation about high passing because every mastering engineer i interviewed said to me i'm getting these dreadful mixes i can't find the the bass drum the kick drum i can't find the bass guitar it's all just mud down there and there was this absolutely tons of these misinformation videos saying don't high pass and the problem is is when you're on a small pair of speakers and you can't hear great low end and somebody says don't high pass you can't tell anyway you've got a pair of earbuds in you're like i can't hear any 40 hertz that's fine i won't high pass it out the problem is with all of that super super low end information when somebody comes to master it they're like i what am i going to do i'm going to try and pull up the thump on the kick which should be between 40 and 60. they gave you a db at 40 and 60 and like all this low end from everything that hasn't been high pastors in there it was pretty ridiculous it was a discussion amongst every mastering engineer i spoke to they're like i don't know what's going on all these people at home are sending mixes in the low end is like dreadful so i did talk about it a lot then but i'm gonna still reemphasize it to use it as a point good clean low end good clean low end is actually louder when you focus on certain instruments we talked about this a lot but i'll reiterate if you've got like big fat waveforms like this and one comes from the bass drum one comes from the bass about here one comes from a guitar about there it doesn't matter if they are different sources if they are all sitting on top of each other slightly out of time your speakers don't differentiate the speaker doesn't go oh this is a kick drum i am going to think differently from the bass no that it's all the same information it's all the same information so if it said all of these instruments all in the same frequency range all fighting each other there isn't like a bigger better kick a bigger better bass there's just a bigger muddier mess of low end it's all slightly out of phase of each other it's all sort of cancelling each other out it doesn't sound big and defined it sounds cluttered and ugly and muddy and stodgy and all of the other words that we use to describe a big mess of low end so don't wait for the master bus to stick on your fancy plugin to make your low end feel good because if you're not supplying good clean low end from that bass kick drum from that bass guitar or that bass synth if you're not supplying something that's defined all is going to happen is you're going to get a nice even low end with no definition so get in there and clean up those areas high passing is super important but if you do have an instrument that has issues that need to be addressed how about taking your master ban multiband compressor and switching that over to the two bus of that instrument maybe you've got some guitars or a little like you know you've got some super low driven heavy ones drop a tuning plus you've got like two or three sitting on top a high line some big cords in the middle maybe you bust those together and stick your multi-band on the bus or you just stick the multi-band on the big sludgy thick drop a guitars whatever you do that is a much smarter way of working than just trying to save your mix on the master bus i know everybody on the planet myself excluded not included excluded has done a video on top-down mixing i don't know any proper professionals that would know what the heck you were talking about if i said to them you know go and load your master bus with all of these fancy plugins and then mix into it they look at me like huh because if you're pushing into multi-band compression all you're doing is like you're nothing's going to get turned up if you're deciding oh i need more bass drum kick drum you turn that up you push more 40 and 60 hertz heavily into it and what does the master bus compressor do she like what happens so like the bass guitar that maybe has a little bit of bleed and 60 in there that sounds rich now just goes down so you get a even low end but you don't get a defined low end it is not smart to mix into that stuff and plus probably most importantly if this is the only thing you remember from this video if you're mixing into master bus compression like that multi-band master bus compression you're not going to learn anything it's a great catch-all it's really good for an online educator to tell you to stick tons of stuff on your master bus because it's pretty hard not to get something that sounds okay because all of the peaks and transients and low end and everything mid-range is all going to be sort of controlled so out of the back you'll get an okay sounding mix not a good mix not a great mix but an okay sounding it will translate because you'll go into different rooms and you'll be like oh wow the low end isn't blowing up i can't hear any definition between the the the drums and the bass and the keys but it's not blowing up my speakers anymore the low end isn't out of control that is not the way to think you know a mastering engineer's job is to enhance what you did not to just kind of search around to try and find out how to end some low end definition and it's not going to be possible if you just got a big blob of low end down there don't try and fix your mix with master bus mix bus whatever you want to call it solutions number five always be thinking globally always be listening to the mix as a whole this is such an important one if you're sitting there in solo and i've got nothing against soloing even though bob claire mountain says he never solos and i trust him i've seen every other mixer hit solo hundreds of times and i trust him that he doesn't he's probably the one that ruined it for all the rest of them because i believe him he's an amazing mixer but the reality is is you should always be thinking globally how is everything sounding if you're sitting there soloing and thinking about one particular instrument all the time you'll come out of solo whatever it might be and suddenly your whole mix is just built around that instrument and the worst thing is is that you might not notice i had a student the other day wonderful student i'm an associate professor at university and i teach at university i do one-on-one calls and the students sent me some tracks and they were really good but the vocal was like so so soft so safe it was a good vocal but it was like there was not a single thing about it that said edgy it was like the smoothest most perfect sounding vocal i'd ever heard in my entire life and guess what so was every other instrument i mean it was supposed to be like a 19 20 year old artist self-produced young edgy track something like kick down some doors instead it was like easy listening it made the carpenters feel like death metal and you know i'm talking to a 19 20 year old and i'm thinking myself and i said to them you've got to you've got to allow your music to be a little wrong i know there's all these incredible tools to use and i recommend them soothe 2 is one of the best plugins on the market for getting a great vocal sound you've seen every other mix engineer and mix producer engineer whatever i work with and talk to has said that they love it i don't get any affiliate i am not endorsed but the reality is it is true it's a great plug-in but if you use it excessively on the vocal and pretty much every other instrument you're going to end up with the softest nicest sounding sweetest mix these tools are there for us to solve problems or to create enhancement to make things even more exciting and more interesting not to just be applied on everything so you don't have to think always think globally how's it sounding as a whole if i'm overly brightening something then i have to make everything else brighter if i'm doing the opposite if i'm making it sound so sweet and insipid i'm gonna have to make everything else sound sweet and insipid think globally so as you're soloing something and you start tweaking and you're like five minutes in and you're four plugins deep and you're still tweaking like crazy take it out solo just even if you're not sure just take it out solo have a listen and go huh is that really improving things you know what maybe take a break leave the room or the other one the other trick that many many mixers have been talking about for years is play the track but leave the room go you know go into the other room and just hear it coming down the stairs coming through the hallway or from the other whatever it might be go and make yourself a cup of coffee with a track playing and get a little bit of perspective the reality is that you always need to be thinking globally so i to me that's super super important because if i do any detail work on anything and i get stuck like i go there to solve a problem but then i start enhancing and then another problem occurs because i enhance but so i have to solve that problem before you know it i've like i've solved a problem created a new one solved the problem created another new one and before you know it out comes the most boring sounding thing i've ever heard or the opposite or i get so carried away with this oh my god this is so edgy and exciting and crazy that i go absolutely nuts on it put it back into the track and everything else sounds boring it's like how do you find that balance well you find that balance by always thinking globally well that was a lot of fun there's going to be a cheat sheet for it so please download the cheat sheet if you've got any experience with us and you want to share it i would love to hear it again the most important thing for me is to remember that there is no one genre there's too much time spent on the right way to mix well the reality is is the right way to mix is to be open to new ideas try new experiments to make things better still and you know like i always say cut yourself some slack because everything i'm talking about here we'll do it all of us do it all of us make these mistakes so if you're making them it's fine but you know like anything being aware of it and being able to correct it and take a break and hear it for what it is is very very important and you will continue to make mistakes and that's okay that is okay each time you do it your bar is going to get higher and higher and higher and higher and higher you'll get to that point where that mistake is so small and so irrelevant that you'll sleep on it get on the next morning and not even know you did anything wrong because it's going to sound so good i feel very blessed to be able to do this and i've learned this stuff from doing it myself but like i say listening to everybody out there so please feel free to give us your comments and questions give us your experiences i would love to know thank you ever so much for watching have a marvelous time recording mixing see you all again very soon so long farewell video au revoir adios adio choose [Music] goodbye [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 73,284

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

Id: NE1Ov-ObLv0

Length: 28min 3sec (1683 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021