Mixing Advice

[jb]

I am on an email list by a guy named Graham Cochrane. His website is TheRecordingRevolution.com

Here is the last thing he sent, which is a pretty great little nugget of mixing wisdom: http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=26d ... 88155101e8

JB

[foobar93]

Great article, thanks for sharing. And count me one more email signup, too.

I'm curious how much time folks here spend listening to individual tracks solo vs the entire mix? I find myself almost never using the solo button and this article makes me wonder if I'm missing out.

[jb]

Great article, thanks for sharing. And count me one more email signup, too.

I'm curious how much time folks here spend listening to individual tracks solo vs the entire mix? I find myself almost never using the solo button and this article makes me wonder if I'm missing out.

You're missing out. Make the track sound good on its own before you try making it sound good with everything else.

"Garbage in, Garbage out" is a saying that definitely applies to mixing. Getting good at getting a great sound from your equipment is the first step. (We're all lazy about this at times.)

J

[ken]

You should have made that track sound as good as possible when you recorded it.

[jast]

Make the track sound good on its own before you try making it sound good with everything else.

I'd take that with a grain of salt. Of course, for a dense mix, you'll cut away stuff from individual tracks that you wouldn't cut if they were used solo... so the goal isn't to make it sound "good on its own", it's to get rid of stuff that doesn't belong at all (which is indeed much easier when you've solo'd the track). You can't really add anything to a track that's missing something (that's the part you're supposed to take care of while recording), so that's really all you can (and should) do while listening to solo'd tracks.

[roymond]

There's a lot of "YMMV" flying around here. One the one hand, when you solo a track and make it "sound" good on its own you may be making it sterile by taking the vital nutrients away. On the other hand, things can get muddy and it helps to place each (or maybe only one particular) track in its own sonic space (especially with EQ)...or leave that space open to be occupied by a track that also bleeds over into others' space. On the third hand (hey, I live near NJ) any of this can be applied only sparingly in select spots to address specific issues. I bet four people here could use an entirely different approach and produce equally great results, each with its own "sound". That's what makes one producer/engineer different from another.

[jb]

I kind of think that you both just agreed with me that you should solo a track and work on it by itself in addition to working on it in concert with the rest of your tracks.

And you should do this in groups as well-- like all the tracks that make up your drums. (Note that I imply here that you CAN, if you WANT, have a separate track for each piece of your drum set). EQ them as a group, and then mix that group of tracks into the rest of your mix.

In my opinion you SHOULD mix all your vocals individually and then as a group to make them gel together-- and after that mix them into the instruments.

The most frequent mistakes in Song Fight productions:
1. Poor songwriting in the first place
2. Poor vocal performance - unless you're a pro, you're not going to get the best take the first time
3. Poor vocal recording - it REALLY sucks to hear a track that you put together in FL Studio with samples that sound great, only to hear a muffled vocal track on top

[Billy's Little Trip]

Yes, I really like Grahm's recording Revolution 5 minute to a better mix vids! Probably because 5 minutes is about as long as my attention span will allow.
But seriously, even though I've learned a lot through the years, watching his vids show me more streamline ways to add to my process as well as some cool new trick I've thought about, but have never implemented yet. Like using a sine wave set to a complimentary pitch and triggering it off a kick or drum hit to fix a badly mic'd drum, bad recording or weak hit and it can't be re-recorded. So cool! I've tried it for fun, not in a song yet. It works wonders!

[Billy's Little Trip]

I also like watching Grahm's mixing mind set videos. It's mostly things that I use now or think about, but he ties it up in a nice bow. I agree with a lot of his views on work flow. But his opinion on keeping 24 tracks as a limit, I have my own view on that. I don't feel I should limit myself to 24 tracks. I do 24 tracks or less sometimes, but wouldn't limit myself if I need more.
I often have a track with nothing more than a syllable with a delay echoing at a certain speed that fades off to one side of the stereo field. Is it needed? Maybe not. it doesn't change the song. But it's part of my artistic vision. It's the coolwhip dollop on the strawberry. Strawberry are great, but that little dollop of coolwhip makes them extra great and makes me smile. :0

Those little things add up tracks.

anyway, here is his latest vid about streamlining your workflow. [youtube]/ZH7JAFz-94Y[/youtube]

[Billy's Little Trip]

I'm putting this here because it doesn't need it's own thread, but pertains to this thread.

This is my new direction I am setting my DAW goals. As long as I don't need that giant touch screen in this video. But I'm all over this virtual mix rack.

[g_rock]

Cool stuff from Graham thanks

[rick.mealey]

You should have made that track sound as good as possible when you recorded it.

FTW. Attempts to fix it in the mix generally leads to more problems than just capturing it as well as you're able to begin with.

[Hoblit]

I kind of think that you both just agreed with me that you should solo a track and work on it by itself in addition to working on it in concert with the rest of your tracks...

The most frequent mistakes in Song Fight productions:
1. Poor songwriting in the first place
2. Poor vocal performance - unless you're a pro, you're not going to get the best take the first time
3. Poor vocal recording - it REALLY sucks to hear a track that you put together in FL Studio with samples that sound great, only to hear a muffled vocal track on top

I agree with your other post, garbage in, garbage out.

All three of those things you listed were all things I've had to consciously overcome, starting from my earliest songfight recordings. (And the first two still plague me sometimes!)

I think the best advice I can give from my experience is to optimize your studio, write settings down, and keep it this way as best you can. This allows you to concentrate on the performance and post production a LOT more in a weekly time crunch format.

Unfortunately, if you use your studio for a lot a various things, it becomes much harder to keep that tweak. My latest entry for Art Bomb suffers a bit from having to re-adjust settings for song recording purposes. I found a few artifacts that got recorded because I didn't get back to my original settings after a couple of other unrelated projects.

Garbage in, garbage out.

[AJOwens]

For some interesting comparative mixing, see The Great 'Blood to Bone' Mixoff (http://www.cambridge-mt.com/YoungGriffoCompetition.htm). Seventy-two different mixes of the same song, submitted to a contest at http://www.mixoff.org, are reviewed and analyzed in technical detail by Mike Senior, who does the Mix Rescue column at SoundonSound (see for example http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct12/a ... e-1012.htm). You can listen to each mix to see what he's talking about.

[ken]

I think it has been mentioned before, but Mike Senior's book on Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio is a great book if you haven't read a book about mixing before: http://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Secrets-Sm ... ike+senior

[AJOwens]

I think it has been mentioned before, but Mike Senior's book on Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio is a great book if you haven't read a book about mixing before: http://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Secrets-Sm ... ike+senior

Christmas is an excellent time to mention it again!