The most annoying comment I see in the online audio forums is a variation of this nonsense: “You should only use subtractive EQ and never boost more than 3 dBs” This is…for a lack of a better term…absolute bullshit. And I’m willing to fight anybody who follows this advice as gospel. It’s just plain wrong...
If you’re anything like my other students, you love to geek out about EQ. You may find it equally fascinating and frustrating. Frustrating when you can’t seem to find that muddy sound that’s throwing a blanket over your mix. Fascinating when you turn a knob or boost a frequency and your mix just jumps out...
Have you ever wondered why your mixes never sound as tight as the references you use? You’re doing all the EQ, compression, and saturation, then sweeten the mix with reverb and delay buy yet… Something is missing. A couple of years ago, I discovered a very simple technique that instantly produced tighter mixes. Since then,...
Groovy drums are crucial to pretty much any song that has drums in it. While authentic groovy drumming only can be achieved by a real groovy drummer, there are certain things you can do in the mixing process to help shake things up a bit. Especially for programmed drums and samples, these techniques can be...
I told you this week I would share some of my favorite mixing techniques to move the needle of your music and today we’re gonna talk about delay and depth. This simple technique is something that I love doing to create a three-dimensional image from the start And it starts by “breaking” the rules and...
Compression is one of the hardest parts of mixing to understand. You know you’re supposed to use it but you can’t really tell what it’s doing. And to be fair, you can use compression in a hundred different ways. But if you don’t know how to hear what it’s doing you may misuse it because you...
Most producers and mixing engineers are familiar with mix translation concepts such as “the car test”, checking your mix in mono, mixing at low volumes, and so on. But what’s the deal with these concepts and why are they so important? There are many reasons why they’re important, but the key takeaway is they give...
What to do and when to do what can often be confusing when mixing. Equalizing, compression, reverb, automation, leveling, panning, editing, quantizing, and so on. The possibilities are endless. Categorizing different things and making some sort of system can be a great way to make mixing less confusing, more effective, and in many ways more...
You can have the best, most top-of-the-line, highest-rated tool in the world. But if it’s the wrong tool for the job, it’s about as worthless as a pebble you kick down the street. When you’re cooking and your dish needs a bit of something to make it pop, many beginners reach for the salt. If...
Jay is an Insider who has shown considerable improvement in his productions since he first started attending Feedback Friday as an Audio Issues Insider. However, he had follow-up up questions regarding some of my feedback from last week and I thought it would be a good opportunity to answer them in public so others may...