Top 10 MIXING TIPS I do on every mix!

hello everybody hope you're doing Martha Slee well in this episode I'm gonna talk about the top 10 mixing tips that I do in every single song that I mix I hope you're all doing really well I hope you're staying safe and healthy and happy this one is interesting for me because it I've probably talked about most of these one or two of them I've mentioned once or twice over the now 1000 videos that we've done five and a half years ago we started this channel and in five and a half years well yeah five and a half years we've managed to do a thousand videos it's nearly 200 videos a year so you can see it's grown into quite a dedicated large quantity of information hopefully you love it and of course if you have any ideas for future videos please leave them below if you haven't been to produce like a procom please do you can sign up for the email list there and get a whole bunch of free goodies you can also try out currently a 30 day that's 3 0 30 day free trial of the Academy and there are tons of multi-tracks in there lots of wonderful people to work with it's a great place to come and hang out and learn from others okay let's get stuck in these ten are the most common things that I deal with in every single time I mix a song so the first thing I do when I open up a drum kit is phase align multiple mics so in this instance what we're going to look at is three kick drum mics and getting them all to be in phase of each other now the inside kick is the top one here then there is a kick out which is the other side of the kick right up against the other head and then there is a resonator which is actually believe it or not another kick drum in front of it so we list those three elements here here's a kick in got the love attack kick out and the resonator head which is another kick drum in front of that kick drum miked up [Music] so we have all of those three elements so here you see this first one here this kick in if we put it down to the latest kick which is here it's quite a long way out so we're going to measure the distance between these waveforms here hopefully that makes some sense to you so I measure here to here it is 122 samples here I've got averaged off at 107 let's make it 122 so it's listen to these two microphones with and without the time adjuster so here's without the time adjuster the time gesture on [Music] take it off back on so what it's doing is it's adding a little bit more low-end because now both the elements are in phase with each other so I can do the same now with the kick-out so I pulled that down so it's a little bit more visible so we can just time align that it's actually fairly accurate because even though it's a little early there you're never going to get all three mics to be perfect because they're hearing different parts of the kick but if you bring all three in now it's just a little deeper a little bit more low-end first thing I always do is time align the kick drums next up number two is phase aligning the snare drum to the overheads the thing about the overheads that I love at least the way I record them is I record them to be an accurate representation of the drum kit either a spaced pair facing towards the snare or an XY above the drums either works and they give you a really really nice view of the drums however they're going to be later so you're going to hear them just that little tiny bit later so if I take the snare drum and bring it down to the overheads so here's my overhead stereo mics here so if you see the snare top here I've made the waveforms bigger so it's easier to see you'll see if I measure them off here it needs to be delayed with time adjuster or whatever you can use in your DOW some people move these files in phase or they use a plugin to do it personally I just move them ever so slightly back so it gets the body that I want to hear so it's averaging about a hundred and nine samples it's going a bit quicker going a bit narrower say a little bit more it's put about 115 I estimated 118 before so we go change the 115 so this isn't too it with without the time adjuster on here's without I mean it's a massive difference maybe you could argue with the kick drums there's a subtle difference it's a little bit more it's a little bit more focused but with the snare and the overheads the difference is enormous many people heavily EQ overheads and remove low-end and low mids I do that as well but not so much on the low mids necessarily I'll tug out about the 350 area which makes the Tom sound boxy but I'll leave a little bit of naturalness to the overheads and that makes a huge difference with the snare one more time I'll play it again here it is with it off put it on huge the snare just all that body comes back so you can see what a a massive difference like phase aligning snare drums can be so here we have the tom trick now the tom trick is something i do a lot of there are new plugins now that can do it as well so let me show you how i do it manually and i'll show you the new plugin that we really like so here's the tom tracks there's a lot of bleed but there's also a lot of harmlessness at the Tom's ringing which is pretty standard and once you start compressing the overall kit that will be really greatly exaggerated so typically what we try to do is remove it or at least reduce it so that by the time it's compressed if it comes back up its not over the top so the normal trick really is either to use clip gain or just regular game so we can just go in here grab a gain control if you don't have clip gain in your da W and reduce it quite dramatically but 18 DB - 18 DB is quite nice so I bring that down and now what I can do is go up to the front of these Tom's like such and put fades it it will take you about ten or fifteen minutes to go through a drum kit to do this take this area after the Tom's just for illustration I can cut to here doesn't remove it entirely but it reduces it and then I can put the fade in here like so and off you go [Music] massive difference and really useful if I want to apply a lot of compression to that afterwards some of their background will come up but it won't come up so dramatically those completely useless so that's the tom trick now and I've been doing that for years I learned that from mark n dirt early 2000s now there are a couple of fun plugins let's go to the rack for a second this is a quick reminder because we did review this the other day and there will be a link down here to get it it's on sale at the moment it's freaking awesome it's a multiband gate it's just remarkable how well it works and how quick it is to use bring the threshold here [Music] you [Music] I mean I'm done anything just move the threshold up see how remarkable is I can bring down the ugly mid-range bring up the low-end [Music] some brightness [Music] you [Music] you [Music] it's remarkable move the crossover point back you you you remarkable easy-to-use sounds great straightaway you can adjust the lobe and attack and release the mid the high you can do all kinds of stuff but frankly see how quick that was just to make it sound good there it is really remarkably good plugin number for reducing snare bleed in the overheads I love this you phase the line did you put some body back in it but let's just say you want to make it a little bit more snappy so we grabbed a compressor here just a good old-fashioned renaissance compressor the our comp as it's commonly known let's take a section here okay we're gonna send from the snare itself so we'll grab an ax plus five for instance and we're gonna keep that here on five so what have we done we have now got the snare controlling the compression on the overheads so we can set our threshold so every time the snare plays it just dips a little bit out of the overheads have a listen to this [Music] so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to put this in preface so I can mute the snare and you can hear it with them without the compression there it is see now it's got that love it it just adds a little bit of spank to the snare really nice listen with them without these are subtle things but they can make such a huge difference it's almost like using a transient designer your phase the line just snare top to your overheads so the transients are all nicely in line but now it's letting a little bit of that attack go through and it's just a it's fantastic absolutely love those two things together it's really really nice effect very subtle but all of these things you add them together these subtle moves end up making a drum kit very easy to mix and means you're not using gates which can be a real pain in the butt to use except for that multiband gate which is just pure genius but you're not using these traditional gates to try and control you know removing bleed from stuff this is really a nice trick you can also do the same thing with the kick drum you can have the sticker on sidechain to the snare drum if there's too much kick bleed in there for you and just use a compressor and it's really tasty because it'll make the kick just go pop have the attack of the kick really lightly in your snare track as opposed to like tons of bleed it doesn't work if you've got a four-on-the-floor groove obviously off there's a whole section where you know it kick and snare are playing together but you can always turn it off there and just automate it off so let's move on to reverbs number 5 EQ excessive low and high-end out of reverb commonly known as the Abbey Road trick so here I have a reverb at 3/4 of a second which is a pretty standard time for me on drums it really depends I don't want a super long decay on a fast groove like this but I don't want a short decay like this or shorter decay like this on something that's really really spacious so use common sense typically you can measure out between beat to beat and find out how many milliseconds it is inside of your da W but just remember the audible end of the decay will probably disappear far sooner than it says it will because it might be 3/4 of a second between beats between kick beats you know might be one two three but if you measure that exactly that length you'll probably find that it's audible about two thirds of the way through and then just disappears so it's not a science you've got to change the reverb length to be the sound that you want it to be the length that you want it to be 1/4 three quarters of milliseconds here we've got the kick in we're going to send to it so coming in 15 16 here it is without the EQ engaged yet bypass it so the fear is is you get this buildup of low-end to get us going on it happens a lot so what we do is we grab our EQ and we put it in a high-pass mode here and we just come up and come it's like 400 some like that but also we don't need the excessive high ends so it's going to grab this one hello pass it now with excessive low end in a reverb it just ends total mush so I always wipe out that low lows on that kick there so now we're getting rid of that so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put that into pre fade and we're gonna have a listen so this is just a river from the kick before you hear that mmm it sounds nice on its own but in the track it's just a big load of ohm reverberating around together so it just keeps the low-end super super tight I also do the same things on Tom's I'm adding additional reverb to Tom's I would do the same trick you could also use it on vocals you can use it on guitars anything you're concerned about a buildup of low end or high end high end is also a big deal you want a low pass remove the highs because then some things like acoustic guitars it's nice to have a beautiful reverb but if it's super high-end II and it just ends up creating all these extra kind of like fizz over the top it can also make the high end a total mess as well so focusing your reverbs top and bottom is a really really good thing vocals on acoustic guitars or electric guitars kick drums Tom's you name it shaped your reverb now many many reverbs have eq's built into them I personally like putting an EQ into it there is a new reverb coming out that we just tried out that has the EQ built into it that seems to sound really really good to me you'll see about that one very soon this is the trick I've talked about a lot if you only have one source on your bass guitar number six creating a separate low and high control from just one source now if I could only choose one element from the bass guitar it would be the DI the DI typically not always but 99% of the time is the cleanest signal path you're going to get so if you listen to the bass here [Music] you can tell flat-wound strings Annie's plane was fingers there's hardly any bite there whatsoever but it's a good source to use it's already choice here okay so it's what I'm gonna do we're going to duplicate it you've seen me do this a hundred times but I'm going to show you one more time I'm going to get an R EQ 2 a 2 band EQ and I am going to go down to about 150-200 area and just listen to that on its own [Music] now we just have a DI that's living somewhere about thirty Hertz to about 150-200 it's just a blob of consistent low-end [Music] and it is fairly consistent now if we go to our other one duplicate we can grab an EQ and do the opposite so let us take this up to about 150-200 around about here and have a listen to this you can hear because he's using flatworms there's hardly any high end at all [Music] not a lot going on there now we're going to do is I'm going to grab some saturation go nice so what I've done is I've created like a crushed distorted crazy amp sound now I'm going to blend it with our clean D I've just a low-end [Music] pretty awesome bring the bass down a little bit in the mix [Music] there you go so that's all just from a DI this is what we started with on the DI and this is what we ended up with [Music] so seven guitars panning the guitars opposite each other and putting a reverb opposite each one I love this effect so I'll put a guitar over here and then put its reverb on the other side you've heard me talk about it before I'm gonna show you one more time [Music] okay so the guitarist panda wave left some totally trashy guitar sound and I'm going to take the reverb you see here is pan to the right so now we're going to do is we're gonna grab a mono reverb and this is just a good old fashioned comes free with your da W reverb we've got about a second we'll go room one second medium three-quarters of a second here we go now that is going to be panned to the right so now we have the left hand guitar on the left and the reverb on the right [Music] if I copy that reverb down we go to a right hand guitar and send it to a reverb down here which is panned to the left we'll get the opposite effects and now we have this right hand guitar with its reverb on the left [Music] it creates space it's not a washer verb one of the things I don't like about stereo reverb is it just sort of muddies the area so I've got one guitar here it's reverb opposite the other guitar here it's reverb over here I do it all the time you see me talk about it I've hear a lot of people now are using air and telling me they do it as well it's a really really smart simple way of creating space and not creating clutter in your mix so number eight using dynamic delays and dynamic reverbs so I take the lead vocal here so you wanna be your own do you think it's easy being on your own so there you go straightforward untreated vocal so here's the fun thing I'm gonna send to the H delay here so it's coming from twenty one twenty two to the H delay and there's a compressor afterwards so we don't need a compressor on a moment's have a listen to the vocal sounds cool a little bit more so you wanna be your own instead so you wanna be I like to delay afterwards but I'm a little concerned that I'm gonna end up with too many delays going on inside of the phrase that is really nice very beat Lee that stung at the end okay so what do I do I take the our compressor the renaissance compressor and i create a send from the vocal itself you're like what so I'm sending from twenty one which is one of the sends that being sent to the delay also to the compressor which comes after the delay so this is what we're gonna get so you wanna be your own instead so you wanna be a rolling stone very dynamic delay simple as that I am compressing the delay while the vocal is singing and as soon as the vocal stop singing or it reduces it turns up the delay it's a really simple trick but it's fantastic just for the effect of the delay without it muddying things up too much [Music] great simple trick so now we can use the same input so we just used on the delay so I'm gonna grab a reverb not you got a copy you guessed it the compressor down so I'm using the same settings I'm gonna shorten the reverb maybe we'll go to a medium room again so you wanna be your rolling stone so we wanna be your rolling stone nice so we wanna be your rolling stone together so we wanna be your rolling stone Sooey [Music] great tricks really simple allows the vocal to feel really clean and clear and to sit beautifully in there but then create some interesting effect after the phrases finish it's really double whammy it makes the vocal more interesting and adds extra effects an ear candy when you're listening on headphones or just really deep into a song number nine using distortion and saturation now you might have noticed something using a lot of distortion and saturation plugins recently there's a massive massive move towards using them I think so many people using virtual instruments with fight trying to find ways of making them more interesting and the fact that everybody's virtual instruments are identical now like oh I've all got the greatest piano sound ever the problem is is we've all got the greatest piano sound oh I've got the greatest string sounds the greatest brows that's the problem it's all perfectly recorded in the incredible studios by amazing musicians and all sounds the bleeding same so that's where saturation distortion starts to come in however there's other reasons to use it so here we have some Far room mics which we've sculpted a bit have a listen to these [Music] sound good what's the problem the bell of the ride sounds like the loudest thing I've ever heard in my entire life so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna grab some saturation so here we have good old-fashioned blow fight the reason why I'm picking this is because it comes free with my da W so I'm sure you have a free saturation distortion plugin so let's have a listen and then start bringing it in huge difference so I just turn the saturation up there it's only one point to listen how the bell now which was sticking its ugly head out is just folding into the room mics here it is bypassed and you'll hear it coming [Music] so much better now that right symbol because it's like super piercing super sticking out above everything else bring in saturation all those transients start folding in I mean saturation is a pretty darn good tool in many many situations room mics in particular for overzealous symbols I use it all the time another great place for saturation would be on a vocal [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I can feel the rhythm I feel the rhythm of the road and it takes a polite rocking vocal and takes it into a rocking rocking vocal here's an bypass [Music] [Music] [Applause] saturations your friend maybe soloed sometimes it sounds a little bit much but just hear how it sounds in the track but you say it just gave the singer more attitude got to love saturation and distortion lust but no means least ten use multiple reverbs and delays you're like what what do you mean simple as this when you've got a lead vocal and you've got a stripped down verse just typically what happens you might go to one guitar bass and drums you can use a shorter well like a maybe like a bathroom reverb or something like that it doesn't need to be washed out unless you particularly want that sound but when the band comes in really full blast in those courses you can go to bigger Longer reverb so don't be afraid to use different reverbs I often use three or four different reverbs in a song I'll have a short one in the first verse second verse I might have something in the middle because get a little fuller and in the chorus I might put a big play on it like a one two or even three second decay time just because all of the instruments will soak it up so I'll put that on the vocal so there's three reverbs short in the first first big reverb in the choruses and second verse somewhere in between so there's already three events and I won't turn them all off I'll just rebalance them so you can have your verse about here comes down chorus reverb comes in then the verse comes in and this one comes down the chorus one comes down it's like of a game I like hearing all three at once but at different volumes so it keeps of one sound keeps a unique sound of these three but you just blend them and it works really well because it's almost like a singers leaning in a stadium and screaming and it's louder through the PA so there's more verb and in the first verse he's just pulling back he's playing back and just like kind of creating this much tighter sound so don't be afraid to do that same thing with delays I'll have an eighth note a quarter note delay but I also have a slapback delay as well on the vocal I'll take the longer delays and push them in the choruses and then bring them down in the verses and the verses maybe our favor the slap like a dirty slap of the bit of distortion on it again three delays for me is very typical so you're gonna have three delays and three reverbs it's already six honestly I have even more than that sometimes it's all about a game of balancing them where you want them to be so don't be afraid to use multiple reverbs and delays and the same goes for guitar parts as well but vocals in particularly thank you ever so much for listening to the ten mixing tips that I do every single mix I really really appreciate it please leave any questions and comments below let us know what are the mixing tricks that you always do I would love to know we would all love to know thank you ever so much for being an incredible community please hit the like button and share subscribe if you haven't already subscribed have a marvelous time recording and mixing stay safe stay happy and stay healthy I'll see you all again very soon [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 148,142

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

Id: w2y8kobexS4

Length: 34min 44sec (2084 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020