Yesterday I squashed some of your fears about EQ by telling you that you can use it however you want as long as you like the end result. To recap: Subtractive EQ isn’t better than boosting. It’s just one way of using an EQ to get a good mix. You can boost and cut as much...
As someone who has been studying EQ for over 15 years now, let me bust one of the most annoying myths in music production: “Cutting is Better than Boosting and Boosting a Lot is Bad” This is what I think about this advice: Sure, subtractive EQ is a great method for getting rid of annoying...
This week’s mix tip video features the song “Simon Taylor Denver Cash” by The Promise is Hope, and it’s a beautiful singer/songwriter-style folk song with acoustic guitars, dual lead vocals and spacious reverbs. I mixed and mastered the song and I thought I’d help them promote their release by doing a quick Youtube video to...
Mark writes in with a question about mixing philosophy I thought you might find interesting: “I’d love to know your philosophy for what to start a mix with? Drum kit first; introduce the bass, build from there – end up draping the vocal on top? Or get the vocal sounding how you want and mould...
Headphones can be a powerful tool for mixing and mastering. They eliminate many of the issues caused by untreated mixing rooms, such as frequency buildups and harsh reflections. They make it easy to clearly hear all the details of your mix. They’re compact and portable, so you can take them anywhere. And best of all,...
If you’re using Dropbox, WeTransfer or any other similar service to send mixes to your clients or colleagues – stop. There’s a better option and it’s designed exclusively for audio people like us. It’s called Filepass and it was created by Brian Hood of the Six Figure Home Studio. Brian and I have been friends...
If you’d like to dive into an in-depth Q&A session on the mixing process, I recently took my regular Live Happy Hour sessions over to my friend’s Youtube channel. Chris Selim is a French-Canadian music producer and he runs the popular channel Mixdown Online. Watch our conversation below for a boatload of info on mixing,...
If you want to make your bass cut through on small speakers, this week’s video will let you in on a little secret. If you use a parallel bass track, with some EQ and saturation, it’ll add that extra dimension in the high-mids that helps your bass get heard when you play it on standard...
Roger is the “audio guy” in his band. There’s always one. He told me that he hadn’t mixed all that much before. He’d only done rough mixes for his band but they were always lacking clarity, punch, and separation. Maybe the mixes were good enough to create demos for the band to listen to, but...
I can hardly believe it…I crunched some numbers this morning and… Step By Step Mixing has sold over 11,000 copies – half of those copies on Amazon alone! If you’re a proud owner of a copy, I’d love to hear from you. Here’s how you can share your experience and spread the word: Leave a...