You know how you’ve heard that you should cut rather than boost right? USE SUBTRACTIVE EQ! IT’S BETTER FOR THE SOUL! Well, you might also think your instruments always sound weaker afterwards if you only cut the signal. Not to worry my friend, that’s absolutely understandable. Better yet, there are a couple things you can do...
I hang out at Pensadia every once in a while. It’s Dave Pensado’s student’s Facebook group. It’s a fun place to hang out, ask questions and get insight into your productions. The discussions can get pretty heated but at least it’s not as bad as Gearslutz. Don’t even get me started on that… No, people...
As you might know, a few weeks ago I was talking about what I was learning from mixing the Dueling Mixes metal song. Well, after that post I sat down and watched Joe’s video on how he mixed his version. (In case you don’t know, you get to watch two different mix engineers mix the...
I’ll be doing regular segments on Dueling Mixes from now on. More specifically, I’ll share with you what I learned from mixing their song each month. I’ll try my best to give you some examples of what I did and let you listen to the progression of my mix throughout the month. Crappy Speakers First...
Hip-hop mixing has always stumped me. I guess you could say that if you knew the basics of mixing and production you could mix a hip-hop track. But I also think some of those sounds are so niche-specific that I would have to do some serious practice and research if I wanted to know all...
I’ve been on something of a plug-in binge lately. I know my friend Joe Gilder will cringe when he reads this. He’s the mix wizard with the stock plug-ins and he keeps churning out smooth-sounding mixes like there’s no tomorrow. Which is kind of my point, which we’ll get to in a moment. I recently...
Translating your mixes from your studio monitors to every other system is an important aspect of mixing. Your mix can’t just sound good on super awesome speakers. It also needs to sound great on earbuds, laptop speakers and (hopefully) big massive concert sound systems. What I usually do is check my mixes on my laptop...
I sent out this tweet yesterday about my kick drum EQ while I was mixing: Well THAT’S a weird EQ curve…#kickdrum #EQ pic.twitter.com/u3fb19Y3rT — Bjorgvin Benedikts (@audioissues) June 24, 2014 I thought it was funny looking. But the thing is, the way it looked is completely besides the point. Fellow Twitterers were also quick to...
Back when I was starting to learn guitar I couldn’t understand the concept of scales. I thought: “Eric Clapton didn’t need no music theory and neither will I” What a dumb kid I was. I didn’t want to learn music theory and what notes were in a scale because I didn’t understand how it would help...
You know the vocals are usually the most important part of every mix. That’s why I thought I’d put together a handy tip sheet for you that you can use the next time you’re struggling with mixing vocals. Here we go: 1. Filter and cut – This is simple but important. Filter the low-end, cut...