Five years ago, in 2016, a company called Cloudbounce got in touch with me and wanted me to write a mixing guide. I was given one week for it. Well, that's of course a bit mad, as how much can you say about mixing in one week? Not a lot. Once you start writing, you're already running out of time. So your first task is to narrow the scope, pick relevant topics, and get to work with them till the clock runs out of time. (BTW, a fun fact is that after this job, in 2017, I implemented their online mastering engine in a few months. I haven't worked for them since and hence have no idea of how their engine performs these days, so I can't speak for it)
Still, I feel that the 40+ pages I happened to write in that one week came out quite alright.
Five years is a long time. I hadn't taken a single look at this PDF since 2016, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since...I've worked on hundreds and hundreds of songs, and even the experience from those years would be worth documenting, and this PDF would be very worth revising: I gave it a look a now and felt, man, there are sooooo many things I'd like to add, edit, and change, but that'd be opening a huge can of worms. But the content here is still somewhat relevant.
Hence, I'm linking you to the file 100% in its 2016 condition. This'd be a great basis for a more comprehensive guide, should I ever want to start making a longer one.
Writing āa quick mixing guideā had been in the back of my mind for the longest time. I never got to start with it, as it felt like a massive project, and I was always busy. When audio engineering, discussing it with your clients, and making music is your everyday job, writing about it on your free time may not be the most enticing thought. I had to fool myself to think it'd be quick and easy. How? I needed to give myself a tight timeframe and narrow down the topic.
First: a timeframe. A week. Write about a topic as big and broad as mixing in a week ā isn't that insane? Yes. Very. But to come up with a quick guide, that was it. The content in this guide was written in seven days ā Friday to Friday (plenty of coffee was needed).
Second: I was faced with a decision as to how to narrow the scope down so I wouldn't end up writing a massive book. Instead of writing a comprehensive mixing guide, I needed to slim the focus down. I decided to write based on a recent project. This guide was written right after mixing and mastering an album in reference to that. It helped me determine what to write about and what not instead of addressing every possible mixing topic.
Therefore, this guide is not trying to be comprehensive. It's a quick one that addresses the most common mixing techniques used while mixing one album of ten songs. That way it is tied to actual work instead of being a list of general tips.
Came up with a thought today: why not let my patrons know about some hot breaks to sample ā I'm always trying to promote a healthy breaks culture where producers'd use breaks not heard a lot before. So here's 10 dope ones off the top of my head. Some of these links take you to the digital release, but some I wasn't able to find or maybe didn't put enough time on it. But you should be able to find the record online if there's no digital link. All these breaks are very organic and nice. Hope you like them! Will most def do more.
One interesting fact is that majority of these was released by a Finnish funk label, Timmion (I've used some of these myself).
Alright, I'll try and make this post as short and snappy as possible.
Fact #1:
A lot of producers don't care about how their sounds play back in mono OR they don't know how to check/fix/address it.
Producers should know about this ā unless they work with an engineer that points this out to them and tells them how to fix it (when I master music, I cannot fix it, but if I mix or stem master it, I can ā and in mastering, I tell the producer if he has to fix it).
Good news:
It's very easy to check and fix.
So what is mono compatibility?
It means that sounds are strong/loud (enough) in mono.
There's lots of sounds out there that are wide but they're not necessarily loud enough in mono. Not all sound designers are audio engineers: many of them make sounds like synths, pads, FX etc really wide to impress you, but watch out for how they play in mono.
Why should the sounds be strong in mono? Doesn't everyone have a stereo system?
Basically, we hear in mono a lot of the music we hear when we leave our house and which we don't hear from our trusted system at home or headphones.
Clubs, cafes, restaurants, public transportationā¦you name it.
You're very rarely positioned between two speakers, when you'd experience the sound in stereo. A lot of clubs are in mono, technically, for the reason I just mentioned.
A real-life scenario would be you playing your song that has a nice, wide vocal in a club and realizing it's now too quiet; poor mono compatibility is the reason!
Fact #2:
Really wide doesn't guarantee that the sound has decent mono compatibility.
Fact #3:
Really wide and really strong in mono are not mutually exclusive.
So how do you check it?
There's two ways.
š Mono check method 1: Listen ā nothing to see here!
Have on your master (or on the track that has the sound you want to check in mono) a plugin that makes the sound mono (e.g., a stock DAW plugin that makes width 0% etc ā if you need tips on this, just comment, but I'm sure all DAWs have these plugins).
Flick it on, and listen. If the sounds are loud enough in mono, good. If you notice that some sounds drop too much in level, the sound could be better in terms of its mono compatibility.
So how to fix this?
There's two ways I use.
š MONO FIX METHOD 1)
Have the free Voxengo MSED plugin on the track (not master!) that has the sound we want to fix ā e.g., the sound that isn't loud enough in mono while it's nice in stereo.
The plugin has mid gain and side gain (as seen in the pic above). What your sound needs is mid gain. Flick the sound (or master) to mono, and keep raising the mid gain of the sound till it's loud enough in mono.
Booom! You've made it loud enough in mono.
(A question would be, "Why not just raise the track level?" and the answer'd be "Well, if it's already loud enough in stereo, that method will make the stereo (or the whole sound) appear too loud. We already established that it's nice and wide, remember?)
š MONO FIX METHOD 2)
Instead of SPAN, have a stock DAW plugin on the track that can control the width of the signal (e.g., in Ableton Live, it's "Utility" and in Bitwig it's "Tool". Take the width all the way down. Then raise the level till it's loud enough (it's mono as you do this), and once it is, restore some of the width back to taste.
Boom, done!
š Mono check method 2: Looking at phase correlation meter.
I rarely use this, though, as I do listening checks ALL the time, and hearing is more important than seeing. But I know some ppl are very visual beings, so hey, this can help.
Use a phase correlation meter such as free Voxengo Span.
See the two pics above. See the horizontal meter on the bottom right. See the difference between those two pics? In the upper pic, the meter is leaning slightly left of middle, where on the lower pic, that meter leans more to the right.
In a nutshell: the more it leans to the left (of center), the poorer the mono compatibility will be. The more it leans to the right, the better the mono compatibility is.
And this refers to checking a sound, not the whole song (it's hard to tell about a sound's mono compatibility when everything is playing).
If you find sounds in your song that seem to be leaning a lot to the left, try monoing it, and you will hear, that it loses a lot of level in mono.
When you have a stereo sound, it'll always flicker a bit even when the mono power is good, so don't expect it to stay fully on the right (that only happens with fully mono sounds).
Well, that is it!
TL;DR recap: have a mono-maker plugin on your master, check the song in mono, and if sounds that are nice and wide suddenly appear too quiet in mono, fix them with a plugin such as MSED by raising the mono gain of the sound (not the master)!
Showing you four ways to control the dynamics of your audio signal. In this video, a drumloop is used to demonstrate how it can be tamed, made tighter, and also made more aggressive.
This is 100% Patreon exclusive and not available anywhere else. Please don't share the link, as I have no means of password-protecting it. Do tell ppl about this though by sharing the Patreon post URL.
Iām covering everything relating to the song: breaks, bass, processing, what in my opinion makes for a Metalheadz song, importance of different song sections, contrastā¦everything that makes for a song in general and what to take into account.
70 mins of action.
Song walkthroughs have been heavily requested ā I hope you guys like this one!
So I spent ALL last weekend setting up my new iMac, which sports the new M1 CPU. Man, 48+ hours to set *everything* up from zeroā¦plugins, installations, passwords, all other softwareā¦felt like working thru the weekend.
I got the machine in hopes of getting more juice for exports especially.
I posted about it on socials and Iām not sure Iāve ever got as many msgs about one thing in 24h, phew.
Now hereās
1) a quick low-down and and 2) āwhatās to come on uncle Fanuās patreon?ā at the bottom.
So my old machine: late 2015 27ā iMac / i7 / 32 GB ram. New machine: the latest 24ā iMac with the new M1 CPU.
In a nutshell, in the DAW world, thereās not a TON of difference in time in *exporting* (do read on though, as there are good things). Much, much less than Iād expected. Itās literally just a few seconds, so thatās much less impressive than I anticipated. I did a list of times thatād let you look and compare, but in all honesty, itās not worth reading, as the differences are so small, often 2-3 seconds, so no wow factor there: it'd make for boring reading.
BUT! Itās probably because a lot of the plugins I use as well as Ableton Live run thru Rosetta, so theyāre not *optimized* for the new M1 CPU so theyāre bottlenecking the performance, if Iām correct.
The good thing? Well, I was feeling a bit down after export times, but stress test in Ableton Live reveals the power.
On my old iMac, I had a project where I inserted Izotope Ozone (kind of heavy) AND started adding whatās literally the heaviest plugin I know and own: Ozone Master Rebalance till the CPU just crapped out. Trust me, itās heavy stuff. Often one Rebalance on the master in a project where you have other stuff too can make the i7 cough. So on the i7, I had the Ozone and FIVE Rebalance plugins when CPU hit around 100% and things got useless. So the comparison on the M1 one: I could add FIVE more Rebalance plugs before things went to shit. āOnly five plugins more?ā you say? Those plugins are HEAVY. Often one can make it a CPU-crap-out fest. So thatās good.
A video file that took my i7 some 46 seconds to export took the M1 only 31 seconds. This was a 5-minute video file thru Screenflow with no gimmicks or special processing. If you think how (klnd of big) the difference is for a 5-minute file, itād be definitely notable for a video thatās 30-60 minutes long! NOTE: the software I used on the M1 model IS optimized for M1. Technically the software was the same, Screenflow, on both comps, but on the old machine, it was v9, and the new one, v10, an M1-only/optimized one. Iām happy to see the video exports benefits.
So it seems that optimized software does play a big role here.
Then, a heavy Ableton project of mine is Black Label that came out on Headz. I know I promised a video of it but goddang the project is so heavy, it was a cracklefest almost without video capture, and it made my Screenflow crash once and I lost the video projectā¦and TBH it was crazy CPU cough fest when doing video capture. So I nearly thought, I can't do it. But now, I can run the project AND do video capture on it, and the CPU ain't going crazy...was hitting 40% on a test today, yay!
So in a nuthsell, in audio export world it's not looking super killer so far, but inside a DAW, hellll yeah.
Some quick disappointments in the plugin world: seems my fave acid plugin, D16 Phoscyon isn't working, and there's no update coming, afaik, other than a paid new version, which is fine per se of course.
I should test Bitwig, too, as it's optimized!
So, relating to this ā āwhatās to come next on uncle Fanuās patreon?ā
The video walkthrough of Black Label, of course! I've been requested song walkthrus/masterclasses a lot, so you'll get one soon.
Patreon exclusive, no public free viewing! And thereāll be audio goodies/samples and extrasā¦you know I appreciate you guys! Iāll try to get to that soonā¦Iām amped to talk about it, and Iāll also talk about what IMHO makes a Metalheadz song.
I'm giving out the Ableton masterclass videos I've done and which have been selling through my webshop (a few hundred of these have gone around the world and the feedback has been great). There's a Basics one and Advanced.
Conditions: ā¢ If you're in Producer Tier 1, I can link you to one of them. ā¢ If you're in Producer Tier 2, I can link you to both. ā¢ If you're on a lower tier and you've paid worth either Producer tier, you can get one or both, depending on the amount.
To get them: ā¢ If you meet the aforementioned conditions, just send me a DM here on Patreon and I'll link you to the video file(s).
I got a few messages asking for the samples that I extracted in the last video. I also found a new cool hip hop head running a Patreon page and he seems to do the same thing (sharing his diggings). I prob won't make this a very common thing, but hey, here we go, why not! Just keep in mind, these are not royalty-free material; this is copyrighted stuff.
But here you goā¦hope you can do something cool with them!
Letās take some records, sample them, isolate their elements with RipX, and make a beat out of those with Ableton Live. Been testing that new RipX plugin, and loving it! So wanted to demo it here.
See bottom of YT text for timecodes for sections of video.
Ableton Live allows for a pretty nice way to create a "DJ-style" mix of music. This way you can create a nice blend of songs that has all the music beatmatched!
"Truth And Lies" D&B EP is out, and Iām giving you its stems. All stems are full-length ā just a direct bounce out of the songs. No master limiting, so they're not mega loud, but all dynamics is there.
Feel free to have fun with tons of samples, breaks, bassā¦do your best, or your worst!
Iāll leave all āpromo talkā and release introduction out.
BTW, while Iām giving out all the full stems, Iām not giving out full songs, as they are owned by the label, SUBB, and I respect that. Hence the songs are not mine to give awayā¦and I appreciate them paying for the vinyl etc.
Especially if you're not familar with Operator or FM synthesis, here's a quick-ish tip of the day for creating a classic bass sound from scratch. BTW this technique works with any FM synth, not just Ableton.
In FM synthesis, you usually have one main oscillator, and its pitch is modulated by that of other oscillators, which can create a multitude of different timbres.
Adding a little extra spice using Ableton Hybrid Reverb and its new Vintage mode, which can add a little bit of extra texture.
While there is a lot of technical info out there, thereās much less info on the philosophy of making songs. Ironic or not, finishings songs seems to be a hurdle for many while a lot of the tech that goes into it is available for all.
Sp, I wanted to have a session discussing song structures, my philosophy on getting enough material for a song, progression etc.
It's not fully finished yet; I'll prob do an outro and it'll end up on one of my releases one day.
EDIT: Song came out titled ā86 Northā on my Balcony Acid EP on HeadsState.
I hope this can be helpful in terms of helping people with their song structures, sections, how to introduce variation for sounds and so on.
These days doing this is part of my living, and Iām very happy to help producers with everything they need!
I took this week as a holiday week as I haven't been able to do much of that this year, as it's been intense with work...feels good to recharge a bit a few times a year, and don't we all need it!
On my holiday, I've been testing Bitwig Studio. Without further ado, here's a list of pros and cons of it ā I'm kind of looking at this from the angle of a long-time Ableton Live user. The list would be much longer after more use, but for now, here's some joys and pain points after having used BWS for a little over a week and finishing my first song.
I'd love to hear your thoughts regarding this topic if you have anything to add.
BTW! New video coming very soon; in it, I'm using BWS, actually, and talking about making songs, and in that, I'm using the song I just finished with BWS...
But without further ado, here's the list.
I'm writing stuff below + when I found it good, and below - when I found something I didn't like.
+ Mixer in arrangement. Useful, and I miss this in Live.
+ In-clip editing in audio clips. This is VERY powerful. You can gain, reverse, tune, fade etc everything inside an audio clip. So good. It's crazy that chance/probability also works for audio events in a clip, so for example you can do probability for, say, ghost snares inside an audio clip. It's nice taking a drumloop, shaker, etc., and adding fadeins/out to its parts to make it sound tighter.
+ Modulators (LFOs, envelopes, etc). They feel very built-in and are very visual. I guess in 2021, I'd expect everything to be visually informative. E.g., what's confused me in the beginning with Live (also some of my students) is, for example, the Auto Filter device in Live, as you can't SEE what's happening.
+ Operators. These have to do with how and when midi events are played. A more advanced system than in Live (which now allows for probability, automatic velocity variation etc). I've seen several Live users say stuff like it'd be nice to tell a crash cymbal at the beginning of the clip to only play once in four bars, for example. BWS can do this, and occurrence can also be dependent on whether the preceding midi event just played, etc. And this works for audio events in an audio clip, too.
+ MIDI parameter editing ā "chaos" etc. I like how thru the left panel you can add some randomization, scaling and "chaos" for MIDI notes (do this for velocity, for example). (This'd call for a longer explanation, I know)
+ Custom shortcuts. I feel this is a biggie. You can give most actions your own keyboard shortcut!
+ Sandboxing. This means when a plugin crashes, it'll crash in its own window instead of crashing the whole DAW. E.g., recently I was trying to open an older Live project, pulling my hair out as the DAW kept crashing, and I'm wishing I knew what plugin did it.
+ Show item help. A bit like M4L item help: the devie opens in its own nice pop-up window that has help regarding all its parameters. Great visual help. You also control the actual device whose help you are looking at in that very window.
+ Deactivate track. You can deactivate the whole track with one click.
+ Clip Launcher in both views. I've seen Live users say it'd be useful for them if they had Session View (clip launcher) in Arrangement, too. BWS allows this.
+ Quickly browse device-specific presets. E.g., let's say you have lots of ProQ3 presets. When you have it on a track, you click on a folder icon on the device, and browser opens up, listing all ProQ3 presets you've saved with BWSā¦very handy.
+ Hide deactivated tracks. You can hide deactivated tracks with one click. Cannot hide any track in any way in Liveā¦wish I could!
+ A + symbol at end of chain to add devices (no need to go to browser, necessarily, to add an EQā¦just click + on the track and you're in the browser.
+ Pin actions to top bar. You can pin your most-used actions from dropdown menus to the header as icons so you're able to customize what actions are up there as iconsā¦mega handy.
+ Consolidate/reverse audio clip: no new file is created. When you join/consolidate audio clips in Live, a new audio file is created. BW does not do this. Saves HD space. Same goes for reverse: I've always found it nearly baffling why Live has to create a new file for reversed audio. BW doesn't do that.
+ Search for VST parameters inside a device. Example: you have a synth like Serum or Diva with 100+ parameters. You can actually search for a parameter thru a search field in the device: just type "filter" and you'll only see parameters with "filter" in them. Handy with VSTs where you have a gazillion parameters and you just want to locate an LFO, filter etc real quick and automate it etc.
+ The Grid. It's BWS's "Max For Live", a modular system for building your devices (audio, midi, etc). I haven't used it yet, but I'd say it appears way more accessible to non-nerds: it's somehow more visual and kind of requires no typing and things are laid out nicer and you can just add things from a menu on topā¦looking at this, this actually is enticing, while ā being painfully honest! ā I've never felt that so much with M4L! After all I'm a dude who wants to get that music done, and anything that feels or even looks like math makes me run away.
- No scale in piano roll. Boo!
- Thin grid. For whatever reason, the grid looks _very_ thin for me, and I've seen ppl nag about this. All hail thicc grids!
- No converting midi to audio. What's so great about Live is you can take the chord info out of audio and have Live convert it to MIDIā¦this cannot be done with BWS.
- BW track color. Only a thin strip at one end of the track header. I like seeing track headers fully coloredā¦massive help in big projects.
- Can't save default tracks or song templates.
- Can't hear midi notes when selecting/lassoing several midi notes.
- Browser collections. BW browser still confuses me and I didn't find it intuitive...I'm still a bit lost with it. E.g., if I download a "pack", afaik I can't access that pack per se and see everything it has, unlike in Live. And I can't perform a search inside a certain location (e.g., enter a samples folder and search inside it).
- Cant send send a return to other returns. Sometimes I like sending my delay return to a reverb one. Afaik, cant do this in BW.
All in all, nice stuff, but no deal-breakers or deal-makers. Is BWS good? VERY! Do I like it? YES! Will I be using it? Yup!
Do I recommend Bitwig Studio? YES.
Will I be fully switching over to BWS and leave Ableton Live behind (gasp)? No.
But I'll keep it for added inspo so I can switch over sometimes (I spend a whopping amount of time inside Live every year, and sometimes, a change just for the sake of change is good for the human brainā¦that's why I sometimes work with my MPCs, too, while I don't necessarily find them better let alone faster than Live).
Alright fam! The new EP on Slug Wife is out. To put it very briefly: I'm letting my patrons DOWNLOAD the stems of the songs. (to honor the fact that it's not self-released, I'm not giving out the songs via Patreon, while I do that for all songs I actually release myself thru my own channels)
They're 24-bit .wav, non-limited, so all headroom and dynamics is there. They're all exported out of the songs, so they're just as long as the songs are and they have the same lenght, so if you drop the stems on a DAW, hey you got the full song.
There's plenty of breaks, bass, and various sampledelia. The only samples I didn't include were some vocals that were used on Funtroduction and SP-12 House, as they're owned by the vocalists.
Get some sampler fodder, make a cheeky remixā¦do your best! (or worst!) PS: COMING UP NEXT: Videos. Been testing Bitwig studio recently ā liking it. I have TWO videos coming with it. One is highlighting what I like about it, as it's been interesting to test it from an Ableton Live user angle. The other one is covering workflow and song structures. While there's a ton of technical info and content out there, these matters aren't discussed much (maybe that is partly because they're harder to "quantify" and explain, as they're more creative) while I actually love doing that. So, hold tight...video goodies will come soon!
Recently I've got quite a few questions as to what I take into account when making a mixtape loud or when "mastering" it. I usually don't "master*" a mixtape, because usually the music in it is mastered. But it has to be made loud most of the time, and this video covers what I take into account.
(* = I've actually "mastered" a few mixtapes, and there a lot of the stuff was "demo quality" so it did some work, so happy to do that, too, but it's a more time-consuming process)
Any Qs? Hit me up! I'm trying to take into account patron Qs and suggestions, so lemme know what you'd like to see! Obv. got a long list of stuff coming, but always nice to hear what YOU'd like to see!
PS: Been testing Bitwig Studio this weekendā¦it's great! Will do content about that, too.
(the pic is actually of the plugin that the plug I'll write about emulates)
In my mixing work, I'm always very picky about getting the low-mids right. I want to achieve that certain fullness for drumsounds, an "analog" tone, a cure for "digitalitis". I've used Massey Tape Head a lot over the years, but it hasn't been officially available in any format other than Pro Tools for some time.
Luckily, I found this free DrumSlam plugin by Airwindows that emulates TapeHead. Get it for free here(AU/VST).
It only has three controls: Drive, Output, and Dry/Wet (the latter can be useful when you roast it a lot but want to keep some of the dry signal there, as going wild with it will destroy the punch, just like any saturator). You raise the drive, and you start to hear this mid and low-mid fullness come in. I've been using this on slightly too thin hihats, snares, claps etc.
I also did a VST-based Ableton Live 11 rack that has knobs for Drive, output gain, and Wet/Dry. Get it here.
I think this works best on drumsounds ā I'm always chasing full-sounding claps, hihats, etc. and that's what I've been using this on the most!
Any Qs? Hit me up!
PS: What's everyone gonna do this weekend? Me, will be looking into this LoopCloud sample service (this is def NOT an ad as I haven't tried it yet, but saw a friend demo it to me, and wanna try it out myself). Will also need to do a minimix of 5 tracks of my next EP (out late July - will link all tiers except the lowest to the release!)
(pic is from the web; I used to have a real cool pic of me micing the xylophone in this pack but boo it's gone!)
Hope everybody's summer has been real nice so far. Lemme tell you it's been hot here, and long days in the lab mean I'm sweating like aā¦well I dunno what sweats more than a human when it's 30C outside and when that can truly be felt indoors.
Well, anyways, to switch it up a bit, I wanted to send you a collection of field recordings I did some years ago (should do more of it TBH)! I sometimes like to use these for added atmospheres or create something entirely different.
There's percussive sounds I've recorded here and there, atmos on train stations, on a train, in the woods when it was raining, there's my mom's cat, a coffee machine, a wicked outdoor xylophone I found, traffic light sound (that I've used as a snare on one of my D&B releases)ā¦honestly it's a mixed bag, so if mangling samples is your thing, you should like these!
(COMING UP NEXT: In my mixing work, I can't stand flimsy tiny hihats, wimpy snares etc., and I'm very picky about getting the low-mids full enoughā¦so I'll be linking you to a nice free mixing plugin that I've been using, which adds some low-mid fullness to hihats, claps, snaresā¦plus an additional Ableton rack for it!)
It was probably some 10-15 years ago that a friend told me that you could download good-quality cymbal samples from the website of Zildjian. I've used them every now and then. You can't download them anymore, but you can of course record the audio previews.
E.g., to browse some ride sounds, click Products on top, then Browse by Types, then Ride. You'll get to see all their ridesā¦and man, is that a LOT to browse and listen. There's a good selection of crashes, rides, and bells. Recording quality is great, and there's a lot of energy in those sounds.
Click on a picture, select the diameter, and you'll get to preview the cymbal.
On Mac, I use Audio Hijack to record (off any source). Great for styles like D&B for added energy.
If your summer isn't hot enough, lemme show you how to create some hot tones with Ableton Wavetable: let's do a classic Reese bass that's good for D&B and let's get roasted!
In mixing, I do this often in breakdowns (i.e., the section before the drop, often without beats). I often do this when mixing music that actually has to have an impactful drop (e.g., tech house, DNB, etc). In more chilled styles, where there is no drop, this is not necessary.
ā¢ Widen the song (I do this on the master, and sometimes target specific tracks) towards the drop and then bring it back to the normal width as it drops. I've always heard some producers/engineers say they do the opposite: make it more narrow towards the drop, and then in drop, restore the width. That may work too!
ā¢ Decrease the master gain a bit towards the drop ā 1ā1.5 dB should be enough. Then, once the song drops, boost the master gain around 1.5 dB (in relation to the normal/zero gain, not the level you just dipped to), and within, say, 4-8 bars, bring it back to normal/zero gain. This very efficiently makes the drop slam harder ā you may not "hear it" but you will feel it!
Iām running you through the things I take into account when mixing kickdrums! I always think of kicks as having a few different "parts", and I go through them here and go through some other considerations in terms of how you can improve how the kick sits in the mix. I hope this'll help you to make your kicks sit better.
A quick plugin tip of the day: Gullfoss EQ by Soundtheory.
Or I guess it's not an EQ in the traditional sense that you can move nodes around. It's a really interesting plugin, as it can both boost and tame things, and also just add brightness. It's one of those automatic/intelligent tools.
I'm still not a master of it, and I'm still learning, but I've been using it increasingly, sometimes to brighten things a bit, correct a curve a tad, or see how it tames things (it does have a Tame parameter as well as Recover and Brighten).
TIP: You can actually hone in on the range you want to treat, so it doesn't treat everything. When something's harsh, try messing with the Tame parameter roughly around the range where you think the problem lies.
Taming a ride track today that's a bit harsh, and it works well. It's best to use it in moderation: very easy to overdo, but gotta find the sweet spot.
You may ask if it can replace Soothe or ProQ3, and I'd say no, as it can do the same thing they can, in a way, and more ā in a way. They also just released a "Live" version for mixing, so it's a bit lighter.
Def try it out.
COMING SOON: my best kick EQ/mixing tips! These days I mix kicks for producers nearly every day, so I'll tell you what to take into account.
So, hold tight for more mixing tips on a Patreon near you soon :)
There is one plugin I always pull out first when I feel the drum bus needs some low-freq help.
You may have seen I recommend and use the UAD Pultec EQ a lot for kick lows and drum buss lows. I understand not everyone wants to buy a UAD interface. No fear, as there's a great free Pultec emulation by Ignite Amps.
I think this is well decent on kick/drumbus lows. I always use it as my first choice when I feel the kick or the whole drum bus needs some meat. I've tried comparing it to a simple Pro-Q boost but it's not the same, I feel.
The middle module is for lows.
Set the CPS setting to 60 and CRANK the Boost knob!
Do try this on wimpy drumloops, too. Once again tonight I was working on a nice lo-fi-ass dusty drumloop that needed some serious help with low warmth, so I pulled out the Pultec and compared it to PTEq-X again and felt it's good enough!
(compared to UAD Pultec, I feel you have to crank this more)
There's nothing better than a phat drumloop you can chop and rearrange. I want to give my Patrons some specials, and here's a nugget.
It's from an unreleased song of mine (that may come out one day). I was working on it again and thought, heck, if the song never comes out, at least let's put it out for people to use, because what is any audio/art/music/etc good for if it only exists on one person's hard drive?
I've always liked a slightly "toasty" sound in my own productions: it's not always super "audible" or in your face, but my music always leans slightly towards the oldskool / lo-fi / grungey end of the audio spectrum (as opposed to hi-fi / ultramodern / polished).
I have a pretty big toolbox for "dirtifying" sounds a little bit (or a lot) and Redux fits there nicely, so check it out! I use this in mixing a bit, too.
