I bet you’re a bit like me when it comes to producing guitars: You obsess over how they sound and want to make sure they’re the best they can be. You want a shimmering acoustic guitar and powerful rock guitars. When I was playing hard rock as a teenager, I obsessed over getting those thick,...
“To Be Home Again” is one of my favorite songs from the new Carnivaleros record. I still remember how awesome it was to rehearse this song for the first time and hit those harmonies in the verse and chorus. I actually have a lot of feelings about this song and what it means to me...
If you mix your own music, you might be worried about whether it’s dynamic enough. How do you know if your’re compressing your mixes “just enough?” Your mixes can’t be too hot, where they sound squashed an over-compressed, like Papa Bear’s porridge. And you can’t have your mixes too quiet either because they’ll just sound thin and weak,...
Hey there, Today I’m going to share one of my all-time favorite tricks for creating bigger and wider mixes. It’s incredibly simple, but sounds soooooo good. It’s something I do with all my mixes to create a sense of space, depth, and width without cluttering it up with time-based effects like reverb and delay. Here’s what...
As you may know, we’re talking about my first solo single this week. It’s called “Crazy For Me” and I produced it as an anniversary present for my wife. Yesterday we talked about how I had to mix it almost exclusively on headphones because I was trying to keep the production a secret. Today we’re...
You might have a similar problem to many other engineers: Dealing with muddy mixes. We all want nice and clear mixes, full of thick low-end that doesn’t overpower our pristine highs right? A muddy mix is when the lower mids of your mix get cluttered up and all the bottom end seems to lack definition....
Got this question from a reader: For tracks with very little pan complexity, can I mix and master with just headphones? Yes. 100% yes. It doesn’t even matter if the song is complex and has a lot of tracks. You can still mix on headphones if you want. Andrew Scheps told us at NAMM in...
You can never know enough about EQ, in my honest and correct opinion. When you’ve mastered the EQ spectrum, and you know where to go when you need to fix or enhance your mix you are ahead of the game. If you can listen to a sound and say to yourself, “Oh that needs a...
As the sound tech connected the third cable into the Sm58, I knew this show would suck. The glaring stage lights blinded us from seeing the audience in front of us, but we knew the house was full. We stood on stage for what felt like an eternity. The sound-tech would run back and forth...
Getting a rough mix going is half the battle. Once you’ve got all your tracks balanced together with levels, EQ, compression, and space, you’re already 80% there. Remember the 80/20 rule. 20% of the effort creates 80% of the results. So here’s the step by step process to get you a rough mix that will...