Top 5 Mixing Mistakes No One Talks About

hello everybody hope you're doing well obviously well in this episode we're going to talk about the top five mixing mistakes that no one talks about so who's going to produce like procom and you can sign up for a whole bunch of free goodies there's links all underneath there so I was thinking this week about things that aren't talked about enough when it comes to mixing things that I feel are either ignored or only talked about ever so slightly so these are the five things that I really feel are massively important we should be talking about when it comes to mixing number one and this one is huge for me EQ with your ears not with your eyes I know there's some things that you learn and I completely understand and that you will do and repeat and that's okay it's things like high passing where we immediately know or instinctively where we want a high pass a signal and to be honest some of that is understandable especially if you're going to manipulate the low end and maybe boost it and they want to control it in a certain area and then come along and high-pass it however that's not something we should always do without listening in context if you're going to EQ something dramatically or not try to remember listen to it in solo as much as I understand there is a tendency to listen to solo is not going to help you in the mix so you really want to be thinking about how the instrument you're working with the VOC you're working with fits inside of the whole song so don't just do things by looking and going oh I need to roll up front a hundred listen what's going on do you are you taking off a hundred are you losing some of the fundamental of the signal you know make sure you use your ears but to me it's even bigger than that I've talked about this a bunch of different times but this is a big thing for me one of the issues of having plugins that have frequency analyzers in them is the tendency to think just because a signal is peaking like this that that needs to be EQ down no you have to use your ears first if you're hearing something and you're hearing a spike that you don't like that's painful or or not musical or is is crossing over into another instruments path then great go to your spectrum analyzer that's built into your EQ and see if you can identify by listening some of them have a solo and you can find that frequency that is bothering you that ah what is that are around great but don't do it just using your eyes I see so many here so many people who take this EQ with the frequency analyzer in it with all these boosts and start just dipping them it's just like looking at a city seen as all these peaks and troughs peaks and troughs peaks and troughs like skyscrapers and small buildings and stuff and and it is absolutely crazy just because something looks like it's peaking on the spectrum analyzer in your plugin doesn't mean it's something you want to take out let's be honest a lot of instruments their fundamental might be really really aggressive in a mid-range frequency but that might be why that instrument works might be why the person who tracked it recorded it if they're doing like a wah tilted guitar mid-range kind of 1.5 K rip your head off you don't want to remove that maybe you want to soften it maybe you don't but it's quite likely they did that because that cuts through in the mix and has a purpose a lot of singers have really powerful mid ranges maybe you want to tuck a little bit of it down but to go and look at it and go oh there's this big mid-range I need to soften it and suddenly there's voice becomes soft and meaning oh please please please you need to trust your ears don't use the spectrum analyzer to make decisions on what something sounds like the only way to know what something sounds like is to listen to it use your ears not your eyes it's a big one and I get a lot of stuff to mix that's had these Peaks removed so that everything on the mix sounds flat and boring and dull and nothing is aggressive and nothing is jumping out everything starts to sound super super safe remember so many instruments so many vocals so many things that we love about music are fundamentally wrong they're like screaming mid-range or you know aggressive snare let's just say you've got this amazing snare ring let's like Gong and on your spectrum analyzers it's doing this do you pull it out because it looks like it's peeking yeah if you don't want a ringing snare but if you did want a ring snare that's like aggressive and fit in this heavy track why would you do that use your ears anyway I'm hammering home the point but you get it user is not your eyes when you're EQ it don't compress everything this is quite quite a silly one because it seems really obvious but you'd be surprised I get a lot of mixes where compression is just applied for the sake of applying compression there's certain things that are so obvious they don't need compression huge massive heavy guitars which is just a brick of just distortion and massiveness putting compression on them most often makes them sound smaller so the last thing you need to do when you've got this massively heavily distorted guitar sound it's compress it you might want to dip some EQ you might want to boost some EQ who knows but the last thing you need to do is compress it first let it breathe let that sound be great secondly virtual instruments some of them are recorded so evenly and so well they're not like organic instruments we talked about this last week organic instruments like kick drums velocity on samples can be literally that just loud and quiet so it's the same kick drum sample for instance turned down that is not the same as playing it softly when you play a kick drum softly you might get some of the low-end out of it as the resonance of the kick drum happens but when you hit it harder the low-end might still be there to a certain extent but the attack increases so that's why on an organic instrument you might want to compress it more because you might want to bring up the and the low-end and make them meet a little bit together so it's more even now on a lot of programs stuff that I get that is not an issue it's literally like programs stuff is quite often just a kick drum that's laid in that may be up and down in volume the velocity changing isn't actually as big a deal as the relationship between the attack and the drive of the boom of the kick so that's why I would use a compressor more readily on a live kick and on a programmed kick I don't use it as often or if I do use it I use significantly less on the programmed kick than I would on the live kick next thing synths big fat virtual since they're just like a block of square waves of sawtooth synthesizer last thing you need to do is put compression on it the compression thing is probably just a another way to make it sound smaller in those instances if things want to be louder or quieter just use volume automation and the reality is it's like I'm compressing very organic very dynamic signals that I'm trying to control I'm not compressing Undine amick signals so just literally opening up a compressor and putting it on everything is a waste of your time and energy be very selective about what you compress vocals love compression especially if they weren't recorded with any and somebody is incredibly dynamic but even then you might want to use minor amounts of serial compression and then ultimate volume control all of the peaks and troughs inside of the vocal automation can do a lot more than compression when used wisely don't use the compressor as a lazy way of controlling the dynamics and ruining how the song might breathe get in there and use it strategically and use it to enhance not to destroy three not everything has to be in stereo I love stereo it's great I love 5:1 all that loss I love surround all of it it's all fantastic but this idea when we're working in stereo that everything is like LCR is great I actually like LCR when you talk about rock and big powerful get and stuff that's not really my issue about taking one guitar I'm pretty in one speaker taking its double and putting it in another that is not the issue the issue is when you get signals that are stereo like overheads a piano mic they don't have to be Wow hard right or left panning well for you it'd be hard right and left panic be judicious about how you do that if you start panning everything super left and right reverbs all the ambience overheads pianos strings if everything starts to be like this nothing sounds like this it all just turns into a bunch of clutter get strategic about how you're gonna do it yes mono heavy guitar on one side mono heavy guitar on the other side a double of it not the same performance but a brand new performance will make them sit specifically in the speaker's overheads though I like 70 or 80% a lot these days just bring them in a little bit get that drum kit to sit here rather than like kick snare TomTom overheads like this runs same thing pan them in a little bit make it start to feel like it's sitting in this middle here with some width but then when you want to go hard left hard right on those guitars or left hard right when you want to get those guitars super wide they will feel wide they'll feel like they're in that space having those overheads in a little bit grand pianos it's great if it's a single vocal and a piano to have it be a massive and expansive but when it comes to a dense track and you've got a grand piano in there why would you want it to be super left and right you start doing that again you're covering anything that you're trying to get wide out there and so suddenly all becomes really cluttered on the subject of pianos for instance funk on upright I can definitely stereo mic it but quite often in fact all the time quite frankly I use a a ei ribbon mic on a piano and we keep it mono and that works great I can take that piano and I can leave it down the center or I can pan it to one side slightly if I want a bit of ambience to just make it feel a little bit stereo maybe I'll do that but essentially I like recording it in mono it gives me a lot more opportunity to create space in my mix if that piano is then wide and stereo with a wide stereo reverb around it all of the mix has just turned into a bunch of mush I've got this stereo piano with stereo reverb overheads room mics guitars ambience ambience ambience all going around everything and suddenly it's just really really complex if you listen to the great mixes and when I mean great mixes like a bob clear mountain mix or a Marc endo mix or or a Spike's Ted mix like the true artists out there you listen to some of this stuff Chad Blake I mean come on that's absolutely fantastic mixers when you listen to what they're doing they're really creating space and depth you know yes there's some LCR going on but there's a lot clever of stuff going on you know there Bob clear mountain for instance has like sounds where he puts an effect and a delay underneath it in its place quite often and it just feels completely in its place mono reverb mono delays putting them underneath the source or opposite is a really really smart way to go so take your guitar sound that you're putting in like 50% in the verse and then if it's got a slight delay or reverb put it directly underneath sit it underneath maybe pulled down a little bit and it will firmly place it in that place if you do want it to feel a little bigger maybe take that reverb that's up 50% on that side and put it on 50% on the other side and now you've got a stereo image but it's like a reverb in mono in one place it's the original guitar sounding mono in one place and it starts to create a nice story for your ears how about that for a quote story for your ears rather than taking that one guitar and then putting a big stereo reverb around it and just having this wash of get everything going all over the place not everything has to be stereo you don't need always stereo ambience on everything you don't need every piano to be super left and right wide and every just think about this think about how much space you can really create if you can start getting real selective about where you place things and also these tricks on having like reverbs underneath mono signals like mono verbs on a vocal you want a classic fifties sixties soul Stax Motown sound try a mono reverb try a mono plate a mono chamber directly under the vocal that will make it sound more classic than trying to have a stereo one around it start thinking about that start thinking not everything has to be stereo number four now I have talked about this before and it's something that a few people touch upon so I can't say this is one that's completely not spoken about but I will say is ignored quite greatly don't start doing anything don't do any processing and he accuse any compression until you're inside the track meaning get your panning a level set first open up a song if you've got a rough mix god bless it at least you'll have a guide of where you want to go but open it up and start panning around and getting the levels to be something like a rough mix that you would be happy with take the drum kit for instance and pan the hi-hat where it's supposed to go pan the Tom's where they're supposed to go get those overheads maybe not too wide get the room mics maybe not too wide put your bass down the center put your lead vocal down the center then maybe you've got heavy guitars in the chorus a pair hard left and hard right see how that feels there maybe there's some background vocals maybe background vocals don't need to be left to right maybe they can be just around the vocal another great trip just tuck it around the vocal start thinking that way get that panning right get the levels right frankly if you get into doing that every time it might be just a couple of passes and you've got a good rough mix only listen to the song a couple of times without applying any compression EQ that will do two things most importantly it will teach you the song you'll be forced to listen to the song and hear all the parts you won't be starting straight off trying to get the world's greatest drum sound and and then put on the world's greatest bass sound and way to get the greatest guitar sound and keyboard sounds and all this stuff you will literally here it as a whole that's the first thing and the second thing is you will know what to do by doing simple as that if you get the panning and the levels right you'll know where to apply the EQ you're know where to compress because you'll be thinking to yourself well I got the base down the middle I've got this heavy guitars left and right but when the chorus comes in it just turns into total mud so you know aha I need to high-pass those heavy guitars there's too much low-end in the heavy guitars so you put an EQ on take some of out you might also go oh all the overheads and the ambience on the drums disappeared when the chorus guitars came in so maybe you have to low-pass the guitars will wipe off a little bit maybe 7k is the top you want on those heavy guitars and suddenly oh there's some ambience come back in the overheads the vocal now has some air on the on the top of the vocal meaning you don't have to apply so much high-end EQ to the overheads so much high-end EQ to the vocal see how this works you start listening to it as a whole and not listening to it in individual parts get the panning and the levels right and it will tell you the decisions that you need to make it will pinpoint the areas that need to be improved their best way to mix the number one way to mix is to listen to the song as a whole listen to the song as a whole so how do you do that get in there set the levels give the panning right and you will learn a lot about the track and what you need to work on number five do less if you follow the step in number four you'll realize you'll be able to hear the song as a whole and be able to make better decisions what happens as a result of that you do less you do less because you're making smarter choices you're going back and listen to it as a whole you've got the panning and the levels right to start off with and you start to figure out what you need to do to make the whole song better so do less start with the mentality of I don't want to put a plug in on everything unless I have to you may end up putting one or two plugins minimum on everything you may have a few things you don't need to put any anything on because it already is recorded maybe with the virtual instrument perfectly maybe there are parts only in the verse and then parts only in the chorus so you turn the parts up in the chorus needs to come up and you turn the parts down in the verse needs to come down the point is is like sometimes things work like that many many great producers and engineers record things the way they want them to be therefore you really just have to level match it and pan them so that's one way to help you do less but ultimately always think like this do less the less you do the more characteristics of the original signal you'll keep now don't get me wrong if somebody gives you a DI and says make me a heavy guitar sang now out of this you can't just use the DI you've got to find a plug-in that will work you're gonna find an impulse response to go on that amp that's going to make it sound real you might have to add some ambience to make it sound like it's in a room and not completely dry I get it and you may have to apply some EQ all of these things may have to happen but I get given stuff all the time and every single professional mixer says the same thing that 90% of the time they open up a session to be mixed and they find themselves turning off plugins I remember we talked to Howard willing a couple of years ago he said he would just mixed a record and the first time he sent to the band they were like wow it sounds so big what did you do and he said I turned off most of your plugins he spent so much time ich Ewing and sculpting everything to fit together like this crazy jigsaw puzzle that they had taken all of the life out of every instrument now you know I believe in hi passing and creating space but there's bad hi passing and bad hi passing is thinking that everything has to be this puzzle this set of Lego blocks it doesn't things can cross over even when I do suggest high passing I always say use a really gentle slope if you're trying to get a bass out of the way of a kick just give it a gentle slip it doesn't need to be this it's just pulling out some of the excessive amounts of low-end it's not removing the low-end that's another thing that's another bit of misinformation about not high passing no high passing is good but use it gently so once again do less the less you do then of the original integrity of the recording will be kept now obviously with virtual instruments and D eyes and stuff like that the integrity is just whatever they given you and you do have to sculpt things quite dramatically if you've only got a DI if you've got a big fat synth and it's an acoustic guitar you're going to have to take some of that big fat synth down to sit with the acoustic I get it in 99.9% of the situation's most of the sessions that we get to open up have far too much work done to them and they've tied themselves in knots so bear that in mind try to think and come from the position of doing less try doing less and you will find if you get that panning and the levels right you'll make much better decisions and you'll be able to do less because all the decisions you make will sound so much better and I'm telling you when you sit in a room with a really amazing world-class mixer and see how little they do sometimes it's pretty remarkable now don't get me wrong sometimes they're doing really incredible things but they're doing really subtle very smart things using pieces of outboard equipment or plugins in a very subtle way to sculpt that sound really beautifully it's very rare I open up something from a great mixer and see five EQ plugins five compressors a multiband and goodness knows what else yeah I see plugins on there but I can tell you many many many times I've opened up stuff multiple EQs and compressors going on they're not doing really drastic things all the time ones maybe cut too much so it's added a bit back afterwards and just kept adding and adding and adding and adding and don't get me wrong we all do what we have to do to make it great of course and sometimes the chain doesn't make a lot of sense because you have slowly added things I get it but if you come from the mentality of doing less you'll be more focused on what you need to do because you'll be listening more and once again you have the panning and level set at the beginning will really really help you out wonderful and I think as a bonus one we said five but as a bonus number six trust your ears and to do a whole episode on it trust your ears you really need to trust your ears so many times people send me something and go what do you think and I listen to it and then I will say to them well what do you think and there immediately say to me oh I don't like the bass sound it sounds too boo me I can't get the low-end - you know - glue with the guitars in the choruses and they'll say well what do you think I'm like exactly what you think and they're like oh really I thought you'd I'm like no trust your ears I just may have five different ways of solving a problem but frankly no matter who you are doesn't matter what famous mixing mastering engineer you are we all hear things we just interpret them and we have skills and ways of improvement so trust your ears you probably already whatever level you're at will know when something doesn't sound good the reality is is you don't necessarily have the technical expertise to solve it or the understanding why it's wrong all of those things I totally relate to but if you do trust yourself more often you can move with confidence and make better decisions so do trust your ears and if something sounds booming it may be your room so check in other environments if something isn't quite right but it sounds different in different systems and check it in different systems use earbuds use headphones use a car test do all of those things to tell yourself what really is going on because rooms can really really affect how we hear things thank you ever so much for tuning into this video have a marvelous time recording and mixing and mastering and all that great wonderful stuff please leave a bunch of comments and questions below I'd love to know what other tips you have these to me are like five that keep coming up over and over again and aren't as maybe as exciting to talk about as some of the other ones but these are really important tips for me to speak to you all again very soon please go to produce like a pro comm son of the email list don't forget to subscribe and of course please hit the like button [Music] [Applause] you [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 102,927

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

Id: PNO6TqrlxZY

Length: 24min 40sec (1480 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/atopix]

Here is the summary:

1. EQ with your ears, not your eyes. In fact, you should always use your ears to make all of your decision.
2. You don't need to compress everything. Sometimes not EQing or compressing a track is a very VALID choice.
3. Not everything has to be STEREO. If everything is stereo and super wide, then nothing is. In mixing, contrast is king. If you want a thing to be super wide, make everything else either mono or not wide at all. There is a wide range of stereo image , not everything has to be hard panned and super spread.
4. Don't start processing until you've got your basic levels and panning. Think of faders and pan knobs as your main tools. You should be able to get a decent basic mix going using nothing but those.
5. Do less. Less is more. Professionals who use tons of plugins are usually doing tiny things with each. Don't throw plugins around until something sticks, trust your ears, react to what you listen.

[u/nicbobeak]

It’s funny seeing this, I used to work for Warren. I still do some stuff for him on occasion.

[u/mrspherodite]

I really like him, he shows no ego in his videos, only explanatory stuff.