I got a question from Howie West regarding last week’s post on using a reference mix. You’ve mentioned ‘reference mix’ before. What exactly is a reference mix? and how do you get, find or choose one? What is a Reference Mix? A reference mix is a commercial quality mix that’s usually been mixed and released in the...
I got a question from Howie West regarding last week’s post on using a reference mix. You’ve mentioned ‘reference mix’ before. What exactly is a reference mix? and how do you get, find or choose one? What is a Reference Mix? A reference mix is a commercial quality mix that’s usually been mixed and released in the...
One of the cooler mixing tricks at AES I learned from Andrew Scheps. In case you don’t know who he is you can listen to my interview with him here. Anyways, us some of his mixing tricks. One of the most interesting things I saw was that most of his processing was in parallel. Especially...
Man, we’re up to lesson 10 of the Things I learned at AES! I went there and took notes so you don’t have to 🙂 If you missed any of the lessons so far go check them out here: How Laziness Can Get You a Grammy The 3 Key Takeaways from Rumours by Fleetwood Mac...
Here’s a tip I picked up about using contrast to make your vocals translate really well. Mix translation, or making sure your mix sounds the same on any system, is a very important part of the whole mixing process. Making your mix sound great on your system but suck on others is pretty useless. It’s not...
I got quite a few responses to my weed-riddled garden story the other day. Turns out there are some engineer/gardeners out there (Hi Alyssa!) that enjoyed my analogy. Some didn’t like it that much but that’s ok. I’m not for everyone. In fact, if you get angry easily at what people write for free on...
Got this question from a reader, “If you got in situation where there are no monitor speaker how will you use normal speakers to get your track sound like they have been mixed in monitor speakers…” This is one of those situations where I do advocate actually buying gear. A Little Goes a Long Way...
I borrowed a P.A. for a show a couple weeks back. I played a big bar so I needed some extra oomph for the vocals and acoustic guitar. The thing about this P.A. though was that it was too user-friendly. Or at least the designers tried to be very clever without consulting any of the engineers that...
During our recent interview, Matt Ross-Spang said something really profound that we all should take to heart: “When I put an EQ on a track I lose something” He was talking about mic placement and how important it is to EQ something by moving the mic around, NOT by phase-shifting your tracks with EQ. Even...
I’m a big lurker in the Dueling Mixes community. I usually just grab the multi-tracks, have some fun with them, watch the videos from Joe and Graham and learn some of their secrets. It’s such a great way to be subjected to different styles of music and it keeps you on your mixing toes. This...