EQ is a tricky thing. It’s super helpful for sculpting your mixes, but it can also make them sound terrible. Especially if you’re doing any of these things below. 1. You Move the Wrong Knobs This is beginner’s mistake number 1 but it’s worth pointing out. If you’re only moving the frequency knob without moving...
I’m dedicating this week to fighting The Loudness Wars. What war is that? The war where everyone is competing to be the loudest kid in the room. It’s similar to yelling at you at the same time. Who are you going to listen to when everybody is screaming for you to hear their spiel? You’re gonna...
You’ve noticed how the world keeps getting smaller haven’t you? The internet makes everything available, right there at your fingertips. For us engineers, this means we can offer our skill set to anyone around the world. For musicians and bands, this means they’re not limited to the two mixing engineers they know in their hometown....
Do you always have a hard time using compression? Are the knobs too much to handle, and are you ALWAYS unhappy with the result? Don’t worry, you don’t really need to know how to compress. Especially if you’re happy with your source sounds. I mean it, don’t worry about it. You can achieve something similar...
This is a guest post by Kim LaJoie. Bass mixing isn’t easy. It’s one of easiest ways to tell the difference between a lousy mix and a great mix. If you don’t know what you’re doing, your bass will sound boomy or hollow or tubby or messy or indistinct. In a great mix, however, the...
Sometimes you’ll produce music that’s simply uninspiring. If you’ve got your music production down but you feel like it’s lacking interest, what do you do? There are a few simple ways you can spice up a mix and make it more interesting. Percussion An added percussion track in the chorus helps lift it up. I’m now talking about...
Don’t you dare touch that reverb! Let go of the reverb for one day, and use a delay instead. Delays are easier to handle, and some are much less confusing than the average reverb. Sometimes you just need a little depth, delay can easily do the job. So when would you substitute your reverb for...
As you might know, there’s one thing I’m highly passionate about in mixing. Bussing and routing. Subgrouping and routing your tracks together can make a massive mix seem smaller and easier to handle. I’ve already touched upon all the advantages of creating subgroups. But there’s one thing that you might be doing wrong if you’re...
A melody makes a mix go ’round. For 99%(made up statistic) of music, the song revolves around the vocal melody. Especially when you consider how many songs use the same four chords, there would be no way to differentiate songs if you didn’t have the melody to tell you which one it was. So you...
When you use EQ, not everything needs to be squeaky clean and filled with high-end sheen. Sometimes it’s useless to add “air” to certain instruments. You don’t need to, and your mix might suffer for it. In some cases, too much high-end just adds hiss and noise instead of those clean highs you wanted. Give...