Mixing tips and tricks

November 22, 2010 6:50 PM

Mixing tips and tricks: after beating my head against a brick wall trying to mix something on a new set of monitors, I'm in the mood for some input.

So I landed a pair of HS50m monitors which Chococat recommended. They are supposed to be the replacement for the famed NS10s which were the standard reference monitor in studios for years, despite (or actually on account of) sounding like shit. They are certainly revealing, and BY FAR the hardest set of speakers I've ever tried to mix on. Holy crap, everything sounds like shit, and they hurt my ears.

Anyway I could really use some fresh ideas for mixing, since it's been one of those days. Anything really.
posted by unSane (23 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite

I'll kick it off with a few of my own:

-- Mix at LOW volume and check it loud.
-- Have several pairs of shitty speakers around. My current favourites are a $0.96 pair of Spongebob Squarepants speakers from Radio Shack. They make getting instrument balance right ludicrously easy. Listening to a pair of headphones when they are not on your head is a decent substitute, as are laptop speakers
-- If something is disappearing in the mix, try double tracking it and panning hard l/r. This really works beautifully with 12-string guitar (thanks to whoever on MeFiMu who suggested this).
-- Get the bass right on small speakers then check it on closed phones and rolll off the bottom end if it's too much.
-- check the balance from outside the room
-- if you are mixing on phones, center-panned sounds (eg lead vocals) will be too loud
-- if you are mixing on phones, you will miss intonation mistakes in vocals and guitars
-- reverb increases the perceived distance between you and the sound
-- roll everything under 100 Hz off everything but bass and kick
-- put a compressor with a fast attack and 'auto' release on the outputs, set the ratio to 3:1 and set it for about 3db gain reduction, to bring up quiet passages without killing the dynamics
-- ride the levels on everything
posted by unSane at 7:00 PM on November 22, 2010 [10 favorites]


Checking the mix in mono can reveal level imbalances, and after working for a while in mono, going back to stereo makes everything seem alive and wonderful again.
posted by Paid In Full at 8:36 AM on November 23, 2010


I don't have much to add here, except to say thanks for all of your great tips and tricks!

My two additions would be
1. burn to a disc and listen in the car or on a boombox if you've got 'em.
2. I find that I get 'saturated' when I mix for too long and stop noticing things. Like an incense stick that is still burning 20 minutes after my olfactory sense has been decided to ignore it. Always good to take a walk and soak in some silence/city sounds to clear the ear canals.
posted by palacewalls at 2:10 PM on November 23, 2010


Yup, I'd agree with many of these, unSane. Thanks for the post.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:22 AM on November 24, 2010


You know, I think I just realized my biggest problem is that I'm mixing on headphones most of the time. This is a fantastic idea...
posted by SamuraiCarChase at 8:17 PM on November 24, 2010


You shouldn't mix tips and tricks, because you'll get trips and ticks, and that's bad, m'kay?
posted by Grangousier at 10:31 AM on November 25, 2010


my biggest problem is that I'm mixing on headphones most of the time

Surely that can't be your biggest problem.
And don't call me Shirley.
posted by chococat at 2:19 PM on November 25, 2010


Mixing on phones is really seductive but I've learned the hard way (from posting stuff here that wasn't up to snuff) that you have to check everything on monitors. The two big problems are the ones I posted above -- center-panned sounds will appear too low in phones, so you mix them louder than they should be (sometimes a LOT louder). Second, for some reason the ear just can't pick up intonation problems in phones, so it's often impossible to tell if (f'r instance) your vocal is flat.

There are other problems too. Good phones have terrific bass response extended right down to the 20-50 Hz area, so you can be fooled into thinking you have a whole chunk of bass when in fact you're never going to hear it on most systems, and need to dial in some much higher frequencies to have it heard in the mix. Finally, you can hear so much detail in good phones that it's super-hard to get the balance right -- you can still hear everything in the phones but when you play it on monitors, it turns out one element is sitting on the face of everything else.

That said, I use them all the time (I have AGK K240s which you can wear all day) but I have to check *everything* on speakers. Whenever I forget, it bites me in the ass.
posted by unSane at 3:19 PM on November 25, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm gonna add a few things to my original list, mostly things I've noticed when in studios with real producers/engineers.

-- EQ is really key. Each piece of the mix needs its own little frequency range to itself. If your voice, guitars, organ and drums are all competing for a slot at (say) 2KHz it's going to sound confused. So you use EQ to zone in on the key frequency of each instrument you want to hear, and roll off everything else to make space for the other instruments.

-- Don't be afraid to punch the levels on an instrument when it enters. Once you have the listener's attention you can pull the levels back and let it settle into the mix.

-- To find the right level for an effect, unless you're deliberately trying to feature it, dial it back until you can't hear it, but you miss it once you mute it.

-- Your ear can take in three things at once. The rhythm section (drum/bass) counts as one. The lead vocal counts as one. That leaves one other thing you can feature at any moment. Everything else should be backing. Ride the levels to bring things in and out of the foreground.

-- If it sounds wrong, it is wrong. Intonation errors can screw up a mix horriblly. You'll try to make the track disappear in the mix, when it's not the balance that is wrong, but the track itself.
posted by unSane at 7:21 PM on November 25, 2010 [5 favorites]


unSane and others have put together a pretty comprehensive list of "do's" and "don'ts" that I'd fully concur with - very good (and accurate) stuff.

I think the only thing I'd add to the mix (heh) is - when you think it's done, leave it alone for a month or longer if you can before you go and "release" it. You ideally need to get to the point where you've almost forgotten the track and then when you re-listen with totally fresh ears you can really have that objective standpoint that is so critical (in my view). It's very, very hard to resist unleashing what you may think at the time is a #1 smasheroonie, but, believe me, it probably ain't and you need to put some distance between you and it before you come to any conclusions about it. THe other problem is that because you can "release stuff on sites like this, doesn;t mean you should! In some ways it's too easy to upload every piece of stuff you complete - good, bad and indifferent. ANd you not only bore people to death, but you actually create a wrong impression of yourself as an artist. I mean - you don't hear every turkey or stiff that the likes of David Bowie's ever written. Food for serious thought?

Anyhow, this technique - or self-discipline - of restraint is not confined to music or recording. I know several writers who do this too - the saint-like (in my view) William Trevor being a prime example. Mr Trevor will finish a short-story and leave it in a drawer for at least six months before coming back to it afresh.

I can't stress enough how important this kind of discipline is. One that I am now seriously trying to adopt - hence there'll be nothing on here from me for a quite a while (to the relief of several I imagine!). Having said that I have absolutely no self-control. So all that sanctimonious preaching will doubtlessly be proved to the usual Dundee bollocks....
posted by MajorDundee at 1:39 AM on November 26, 2010


I think people have different processes, Major. For better or worse, I don't view the music.metafilter crowd as a final audience so much as sort of virtual band-members who I can play demo tapes to. I've always posted work-in-progress in whatever medium -- photograhy, music, video. I did a big photo project in 2000 where I posted workprints week after week after week and listened to the feedback I got from my online photo critics. This eventually become Human Traffic. This was quite a celebrated bit of street photography in its time, but the responses to the workprints were often 'this is meaningless, boring shit'. Finding what people responded to in the pictures I was taking was very important to the final version of the project.

I take your point about boring people, and I'm sure I'm guilty of doing that, but the 'wrong impression' thing doesn't groove with me at all. Usually when I post something it's hot off the presses and I have absolutely no idea if it's any good or not. But for better or worse it's me and I am honestly not worried that folks here will think less of me because I posted something that was a bit crap. I'm not here to impress but to learn.

I don't think of songs as destinations -- ends in themselves -- but points on a curve that's leading somewhere. I'm much less interested in the individual points than where the curve is pointing. In the same way, looking at individual photos of photographers is always much less interesting than seeing a project come together in real time, seeing a vision develop. So, personally, I'm VERY interested in hearing people's mistakes. Because often what we think are mistakes are anything but.

I *am* a professional writer and I never deliver anything to a studio that isn't the best that I can make it. But deadlines mean you can't just leave something in a drawer. There isn't that luxury. You just have to work at it until your forehead bleeds and then send it out the door.

With spec scripts that are not on a deadline, I write several drafts, but the revision process never changes the first draft that substantially, and very often the script starts going backwards as soon as you start screwing with what you originally blurted out.

So I guess that transfers over to my musical process -- I tend to obsess massively over something, and then it's done and I need to share it, whether it's good or not, because I have to free up that mental space for something else.

I'd argue that in some circumstances it's good to do the exact opposite of what you suggest -- to put something out there which you know is flawed. Because it may well be flawed, but not in the ways you think it is. Or it may have qualities which you are not aware of which fixing the flaws would destroy. For example, a raw but ragged guitar solo may ultimately be much more effective than a pristine one which doesn't have the same soul. The mistakes in the first may bother you much more than they bother anyone else.

I guess you know I'm not trying to get in an argument here. I just think we all come from different places and it's OK to have different processes.
posted by unSane at 6:06 AM on November 26, 2010


I have to agree with unSane on this.

MefiMu has always been, "Dress: Casual" rather than "Tux required".

A prime example is my last song upload.

I happened to have uploaded the wrong version (3 versions old). I discovered this a day later, when I listened via the web for the first time.

Did I panic? No.

So a handful of people heard my first experimentation into recording automated panning, a lousy guitar sound et al: not a big deal. (I am rather surprised that no-one pointed that out in a comment, though :-) )

People post what they post for many different reasons, and that is, simply, that.
posted by Zenabi at 10:54 AM on November 26, 2010


P.S. In other words, It's not a race.
posted by Zenabi at 11:02 AM on November 26, 2010


Why that "I" is capitalised,
Is a fault that I can not disguise.
posted by Zenabi at 11:07 AM on November 26, 2010


Oh deary me. I don't think I was implying that MeFi is a race (what??) or hallowed ground or that my proposed method of sorting out my wheat from my chaff is something I'd proselytise about or advocate for all to adopt. I was simply adding a thought to the thread in what I felt might be a relevant and helpful way. Hey ho.
posted by MajorDundee at 12:49 PM on November 26, 2010


Yes, yes. We know that. Now be a good dear and put on the kettle.

:-)
posted by Zenabi at 1:59 PM on November 26, 2010


IANAE, but here's what I have learned over the years:

Don't do any mixing or listening on headphones. Even though the eventual destination for your wonderful work will no doubt be a cheap pair of ear buds, it won't sound good there if doesn't sound good in the air.

While it is great to hear your mix on a variety of speakers in real world settings, in the end you still need to mix on a single pair of reference monitors. EQ them using your favorite piece of music that you know by heart, that you have heard every different way, preferably a piece with diverse sonics and dynamics. When it sounds perfect on your ref monitors, your monitors are EQ'd.

Start from the bottom up. Get the kick sounding good solo, then mix the bass so it fits right in, so they work together but are distinct. Add the rest of the kit in, then the rhythm instruments. Group tracks together so you can adjust the levels of various groupings at once.

When you have everything in, you will find the kick getting lost in the busy parts. Ride the kick, boost it up so it doesn't get lost. (Live soundmen seem way more aware of this than studio engineers, and tend to overcompensate. Sound dudes, leave the kick where it is!)

Use common sense with the stereo image. It should all kind of fit in front of you, a drum kit should not fill the whole spectrum. Spread the rhythm instruments just off the nose on either side, never up the middle. Lead vox and solos should be centered.

Compression is your friend. Forget the loudness wars and think of the rock and roll classics, they were very compressed. Aural exciters or imagers or whatever you want to call them are not a bad tool to use.
posted by bonefish at 3:17 PM on November 27, 2010


My tips above are from a rockist perspective, or at least live-band-with-traditional-instruments perspective. For hiphop beats, dance music, electronica or anything primarily digital, I suspect you can be more adventurous in the stereo image. You will still need to have a good dynamic range though. The only time the mix should feel like it is missing something is when you intentionally want it to.
posted by bonefish at 3:56 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


An alternative to panning center is double track and pan hard left/right, which gives a feeling of a big stereo field while still leaving the instrument basically in the middle. Works best with things you can get very precisely double tracked. Obviously you can 'pan' the virtual instrument by adjusting balance between l/r.

Another trick that sometimes works is to double track something (often vocals) and compress the shit out of one of them, then mix it much lower than the main track. The result is that you get more 'body' during quiet passages without it really sounding double tracked. You can do the same thing with drums by sending them to two different busses and compressing one of them.
posted by unSane at 7:29 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


Musical sorbet/gazpacho:
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 6 minutes


1) Take 20 songs that you love the production of
2) grab 20 seconds of each of them
3) make a wav file that plays those short clips sequentially, crossfading the first and last couple of seconds of each
4) play this on a track in your DAW on your reference monitors before you begin each session, or, if your ears are tired, after a little break
5) *BONUS OPTION* make a new one of these every few months, or make one that is full of the particular genre you're currently mixing
6) *DOUBLE BONUS OPTION* stick 20 seconds of your current draft mix in there somewhere too, and stick it on your ipod when out and about.

The 20 second length means you don't get used to the sonic characteristics of any given song, so the mixing is really foregrounded. It also works as a good aide memoire that there is no single platonic ideal of how a mix should sound. The Bjork song you put in there and that New Order track next to it song both sound amazing, even though the production is radically dissimilar.
posted by Cantdosleepy at 2:49 AM on November 30, 2010 [7 favorites]


I would favorite that about ten times if I could, sleepy. In fact I think I'm gonna make another post asking for suggestions for the mix.
posted by unSane at 7:05 AM on November 30, 2010


The idea for that tip actually comes from a book called 'Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools'. A really great resource.
posted by Cantdosleepy at 6:48 AM on December 13, 2010


Thanks -- I just ordered that. Looks terrific.
posted by unSane at 8:56 AM on December 13, 2010


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