This last week I’ve been working on a few different mixes. One was a hard-hitting stoner-punk song like QOTSA meets Rancid. The second was a spacious country ballad like old-school country meets Norah Jones. You wouldn’t believe how differently I processed these mixes, especially when it came to the drums. For the stoner-punk song: Drum...
Exciting news today! If you might be itching to go but don’t quite have the means to make it happen. Well, you’re in luck because we’re offering a scholarship opportunity for you to join us in Nashville and experience a whole weekend of producing, recording, and mixing a Toy Box Studio. The scholarship is open...
Got this question from a reader about mastering. Since Ian Shepherd just opened up his Home Mastering Masterclass I thought it was a great question to answer this week. As per my knowledge, Mixing means to adjust volume levels, EQ, compress, etc to make the overall track sound good. Mastering means to polish or give...
I had the awesome opportunity to record Andrew Bird yesterday. We recorded him at the local community radio station I do occasional broadcast engineering for. We don’t usually use the radio studio in the typical recording studio fashion. Everything is live, straight to radio, so there’s no chance for the band to listen back, edit takes together...
While reading and replying to your comments on Facebook yesterday a particular problem kept popping up. Harshness. Harshness is a common mixing problem when you add too much high-mids to your mix. Usually, adding a high-mid frequency boost makes your track sound more present and clear. However, it’s a slippery slope if you’re not careful. If that’s...
If you want to learn more about mixing drums, I’ve got a treat for you today. Scott Hawksworth of the Audio Skills Podcast interviewed me recently while I was promoting the Drum Mix Toolkit. In this episode, we discuss a bunch of tips and tricks on how to mix drums in the home studio. Here are a...
Do you want to witness the entire production process of a record from start to finish, while learning how to apply the techniques you learned for your own home studio productions? Then join me and Lij Shaw of Recording Studio Rockstars for the Recording Studio Rockstars Weekend Experience in Nashville, Tennessee where we’ll record a song from...
Multi-band compression is a great tool to understand. It can really help shape the sound of your mixes and it comes in handy when the full-band compressor sounds too heavy-handed on a track. What follows is an excerpt from my Drum Mix Toolkit that teaches you how to use the multiband compressor on drums. How...
Being an efficient mixing engineer is incredibly important. If you charge a flat rate per song and you can mix more songs in less time you’ll make more money. Simple as that. Assuming you can keep the quality of your mixes consistent, you’re in a very good place for your professional productivity. However, becoming fast...
Low-end clarity is a common problem for home studio musicians, so when I stumble upon a trick that works I feel like it’s my duty to share it with you. I’ve been working on a song with a band that found my site and definitely up my alley so I got excited about helping them...