WHY does this Mix SUCK?!

why is it that some of your mixes sound awesome and some of them really don't let's talk about it hey everyone I'm Co caperon thank you for stopping by for another video this is something that we all struggle with I still struggle with this from time to time where like you know sometimes a song is just really hard to get to the finish line and make it awesome sometimes there's nothing you can do about it sometimes it's down to the song itself it's down to the arrangement it's down to the instrumentation and how things were laid out it's down to the The Source material that you're being given but what I want to talk about today is a couple techniques that will hopefully help you have way way more consistent mixes now many many years ago on a show called pensado's place jack Joseph Pig was on there and I believe it was episode 22 and if I can find that episode I'll link it down below and I strong ly encourage everyone to go watch it cuz it is it changed my life honestly it really did but he was talking about how he got a song to mix from whatever band Counting Crows or something it didn't really matter and he was the third mixer that it had been given to and for whatever reason the other mixers just couldn't make it work and they couldn't figure out what what was happening and what was wrong and so he got the the mixup on the desk and pushed all the faders up and it just felt super weird weird to him but as he kept trying to figure out what was wrong eventually he figured out that there was a synthesizer he was like he was like feeling with all he was like using his sense of touch not just sense of hearing to figure out the problems with this and this is the principle that like kind of rocked my world he said that as he put the faders up and he was trying to figure out what was wrong he noticed like the feeling on the desk itself was different why was it different long story short what ended up happening is apparently there were a whole bunch of analog synthesizers in this mix that had a bunch of like five and 10 Hertz I think he said and it was just whenever that hit the mix bus whenever that those synthesizers were up in the mix the whole thing just fell apart and folded over on itself and it it just didn't work but he attributed finding this to his sense of touch that we don't just mix with our ears and we don't just mix with our eyes but we need to incorporate every single sense that we have into this and so I I begin experimenting with this and it has become a real fundamental part of how I judge a mix and how I judge character in a mix so I want to give you some examples of that and hopefully some of these examples will hold up for you and if not at least hopefully this mindset will hopefully help you find some of these techniques uh that work for you in your room now one of the first things is the person personality of your room and of your monitors for instance when I was mixing on ns10s uh I always knew how much top end to put on a vocal because there was a way that at least with my ns10s there was a way that as I boosted the top end on a vocal the Tweeter on the ns10 started getting sizzly it it crossed over from just sounding brighter to actually getting sizzly and there was like this crossover moment when that happened and I knew that as was boosting top end on a vocal as soon as I crossed that threshold as it was subtle you got to really pay attention to this stuff but as soon as I crossed that threshold on the ns10s I would turn the top end up and up and up and as soon as I felt that Sizzle start that's the right amount of top end for every vocal that's that was my metric on my vocal Trio 11s that are in the big room over there when they're in Focus mode and I'm judging the uh lowend thump of the snare drum I put those in Focus mode and I boost the lowend like somewhere between 150 and 200 Hertz depending on the drum and I boost that low end until it starts there's like a moment when it begins to get kind of woy sounding it's like it's like a moment and again it's very subtle but I know that when I'm boosting that low end on that snare drum if I just if I close my eyes and I boost and I boost it I can hear the moment and when that moment happens that's the right amount of low end on the snare drum in this room right here when I'm working on the low end of a mix there's a a moment when I have the low end right when the desk itself and the floor kind of over like I'm sitting here the desk itself and the floor over here they begin resonating they I can feel them moving and if the if I can't feel that yet then I don't have enough lowend or my low end isn't good enough in the mix yet when I'm judging the low end between a Kick Drum and a and a bass guitar or a Kick Drum and a synthesizer depending on what kind of music I'm working on I will often touch the woer now I'm not going to advise you guys to do this because I don't want anyone to screw their speakers up and blame me so if you're worried about it don't do this but here's what I do and I've been doing this for 12 years now at this point I don't play it very loud but I will just very very gently lay a couple fingers on the surround of the speaker and then I can feel with my two fingers the low-end relationship between the kick drum and the bass guitar or the kick drum and the synthesizers and this allows me to make sure that I can make that they're not fighting each other that that kick drum is always going to punch through no matter what is happening with the other low end of the other instruments now there there's probably a ton of examples of this but what I wanted to do is just explain this because what I would encourage you to do is pay attention to these little things find these little nuggets these little these little things that happen in other areas of our senses not just in our ears and pay attention to those and those can be markers for you it's part of learning a room it's part of learning a set of monitors and honestly I I think it's just it's part of growing I think a lot of top tier mixers probably do this subconsciously without really thinking about it they just know that in their room when the loow gets to a certain point when it hits just this certain way that it's right but it's more than them just hearing we're using our our sense of touch and our sense of feel to uh to to identify when this stuff is right now there are links down below to every piece of gear that I use uh and anytime you guys need any piece of musical gear you can jump on any one of my videos and click on any one of the links in the description and once you've clicked on any one of those links you can purchase anything you were going to buy anyway and uh doing so cost you nothing extra but it goes a long ways to help support this Channel and help me keep making videos like this so thank you those links go to Sweetwater so thank you Sweetwater for sponsoring this video and thanks to you guys for using those links anytime you need to purchase anything I very much appreciate it if you have any things like this that you do please drop them in the comments below I would love to hear any of your little quirks or any of your little things your isms that you do in your mixes that lets you know when when something is right let's all help each other out here and in the comments if you see someone ask a question in the comments and you have the answer to it chime in let's all try to help each other let's let's all try to help each other be better Engineers cuz that's how we all make better music thank you guys for watching I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: Colt Capperrune

Views: 9,793

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Id: TX3SSk_ug40

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024