Lessons

Lesson Info

Demo: Mixing an EDM Track Part 2

Now that I've gotten through these drums, I'm gonna loop some of this, and I'm gonna try to get the base little clear up. So, like, we've talked a little about a lot with medium is this clarity in the bottom end is a big thing. And it's, the first thing I'm hearing now that I feel like the drums air in a decent place and there well rooted, I want to start sussing this out, so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start concentrate a bit more of the synth necks, so I already see that the sub base was pad right from when I split it into mono, which I'm probably gonna want all the rest of this is wide stereos, so we're going to start figuring out our plan here. So for now, I'm gonna let this sub fly by a little bit. I mean, I find a part of the song where this plays above. Wow. All right, there's, this dub siren I really like the sound of what's. Check this that's the only live recorded think that of the entire mix is that dub siren, which was off of ebay? Nice. Yeah, I kind of feel b...

ad, like, uh I feel like there should be more live element of at least at least there's some live recorded element in it I don't think you need to feel shame about there's tons of great songs that are made all the computer of these days I don't think there's any shame and you know, having to need hardware like part of the thing of this crosses what stood in the box and do it you know make it happen so I'm hearing them and definitely want to reverb into the hole on this it probably at some point so I'm gonna just route that there and I'm gonna leave it on bypass is gonna want to dial that and mix right now I'm just trying to get some clarity out of everything so um let me see when I get a little ah so actually to get a little extra base on this because I noticed that there's something down the bottom that I'm not particularly fond of so somewhere up here even know that's not the lowest point I could do like I'm try to do with the rest is just just get rid of where there's not much there to get some more clarity this one I'm like I'm gonna go a little higher same with this what I know that there's a little bit left down there at sixty but it's not anything pleasant and it's just getting in the way of my base so let's find this piano this place in the other section because this has a big crush on it big crushers obviously choke down the high end but it sounds awesome and it's the right effect for this but I do want some or that high end back so I'm probably brightness something do it right now in the process so that's feeling somewhat close I'm going to probably go back and get that a little more but some brightness there like I said, we're going broad strokes were first getting a mixed together not going to get too crazy about zoning in on whether that's six point five or three point four k I'm just going to try to get this so that we can work a little better and get a better balance and get a vibe off this love in the vibe on the drums but I want to get a little bit more so I'm hearing a lot of frequencies that are a little, uh condensed in this one so I know I'm gonna want to do a good amount of cuts in that um but I'm not gonna worry about that quite yet okay, so then this siren we have is right here find a part where plays a bunch seiken zonen so this one from the jump too I hear it being a little less exciting than the other ones, so you this time I'm gonna go to a different preset, though, that I kind of feel like would work for this, which is called color and saturate. It looks like it's not as close to what I want. Uh, saturation on dh saturating color it's actually called. Okay. So saturated color and I must start with this low. Theo theo! So you here, that's? A little bit busier than the other fab filters I've been doing? It's? Not as bright. I feel like this is gonna help this cut through the mix. And this is just me knowing emotionally that I know the sound of this and what this does the sids. And so I'm do it that does something I really like makes me want to turn that volume up now more so now we have a couple down lifters. So for you e d um, not aficionados. A down lifter. Well, let me just play you what? It sounds like this truck. So you know this term the's air really, really common there's up lifters and down lifters what's play this. So what these basically do is they build you into apart, and then they take you down so he's already sound pretty good, I'm going to put just for fun the lowest amount that I would probably do incident this doesn't have a whole lot of lows, but I'm going to just put these on because they're not really bothering me about the bottom and clearness I'm trying to obtain um they sound really good, so next we have this g b tone, which just happens a few times of the song, so that sounds like it's mario ah g b aa or gameboy uh, zs that's trying to try my best to emulate the start up sound of the game boy, I knew I heard of my childhood excellent um cool, then there's this sweep effects like I said here, it's just this is all about that I'm just trying to get a little bit more clarity in the bottom before you think it started doing one's from cool. So now that the bottom ends a lot clearer, I'm going to do some new re balancing I'm trying to find some panning and we'll see what's going on here so let's do a little blood thinning give a cruise through song so here's something that I think is useful is so when I opened this song, I noticed this truck ended up actually being mono so brought it down, but I kind of feel like I want this to be a stereo truck, so how do we make that happen? So massey tools makes a great plug in called our massey the company makes a protein called massey tools and it's free it's a little hard to find the last time I tried because the block post that links it doesn't work but they've this monitors territory now you can do this with lots of plug ins just this one takes a very little dsp and then the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to make a sound field stereo with and I'm gonna use a preset called ad with tomato signal so this with a little bit of phase shifting is basically making this a little bit more stereo what's your so that's sitting much more the way I would like it and now I want um to get a little braver so like I said we're going for this this one was bothering me a little there's a lot of density and the frequencies and I want to get this a little thinner so when we work on this a little bit so yet again we're going to use that technique we talk about find the frequency a hate the most first so let's do that real fast I hear the one I want now I want to wait e so let's talk about this with since I tend to find that never in the history of my life I'm able to get away with like minus six point eight on a lot of guitars like once in a while but with since you could regularly get away with taking out ninety be honest since sounded when it's a little too dense especially something soft since then they're just the little cluttered and frequencies at times and it could really give some space especially it's not a big deal but a song but it's taking up a lot of density so that's another one was weird rules that's a little different from rock tdm so let's hear how this sounds of dialogue a little bit so the one they are noses I like so much this it's hard to find what I want to focus on and make the most part so I'm kind of bring things up and down trying to trying to find my way through what I think sounds coolest so the one thing is though now I start to feel a little process so this would usually be the timei check twitter clear my head for a second so instead of checking twitter is there anything on the internet you've covered this a couple times but I think it's an important point that's come up again uh which is why we cue the master before mixing couldn't you just e q every channel individually the way you want yes and you'd be adding all the more phase shift to it and I tend to find it just gives a better character to do it they're going to do it for many years of my life, I did it that way. Before I started queuing my master bus once I started doing it this way, I found that though it's just it is a different sound for one and it's just the sound I prefer is really all that comes down do. Um, so but I would also say this is it also saves a lot of dsp and a lot of time you don't have enough plug in power to do this, putting a bunch of high boosts on it's, just much more efficient and along the same note, you know another topic youth talk about a few times from any vh fifty one fifty, which is, he asks, always subtracted v q. Now I know that you use some additive ecowas. Well, can you talk about your your thoughts on that topic? Yeah, I think both are great tools, but I use justus bunch, but I know plenty of people who pretty much never subtract. I know plenty of people who you know, both sides of the coin, and I think you have to find what works for you. I think some cues are better at it. That ready to I used from waves tends to sound better and may boosting than cutting. I don't really use it if I want to cut I used this massenburg cue that I'm using or maybe others but without ready to it doesn't do it you just got to find what works for you you know it's funny there's this a sort of idea that subtract a v q is better because it doesn't color the sound and boosting does but any anytime you e q you're changing your coloring that's the color of the sound you are literally controlling the colors and here's the one what I will make about why I think we got so out of added the week he was one out of the queue is noisier so if you're concerned about noisy and you're talking about christine steely dan records and making really precise stuff yes added cue could bring out noise and bring out artifacts and all sorts stuff especially the high end. Secondly, the math was so bad when these points first came out that like boosting high frequencies on even the best accused in the box when back in ninety nine why start mixing records was like torture I would literally rather send it out to an analog q and recorded back in just to get a boost like if I really had d'oh I would do it. I would actually track things too bright a lot of the time if I knew I had to bet mix on my early proto like id the first version of a pro tools ali system I would track things a little too bright because I could do I could take them down instead of brighton. I think these air internet myths that have been obsolete it's the same thing is like we've been talking about is how fast guitar sims they're getting better how fast the drum sampling programs are getting every soft since some better every year it's like starting to be like every quarter something comes out that just one ups the next one and we have to remember that some of this philosophy is outdated stuff that's been handed down because the old men are just not shutting up on the internet and still telling you the student same stupid things that they learned fourteen nineteen, ninety nine when boosting accuse was terrible. I was fourteen years ago on their soundblaster sixteen years on the sound busters that the worst sound card in the history of mankind we have anything else? Yeah, we have another question from bobo studio, whose milton here in seattle and below, says some mixers always use an r t a do you ever use it for mixing? I use an r t a in my mastering every once in a while when I go, what the hell did I just get handed in general? I really rely on my years? I don't like looking at things I don't like the idea that I can rely on my years to get things to sound the way I want and it's very rare I'm unhappy an r t a I just feel like it gets used going if I make this look like it it's not right now I will say this that if you're like why doesn't my mix? I like this you put it are today and you see twenty d b'more base on your mixed in the mix there trying to match that probably gives you and there's too much bass and you can turn the bass down and these broad starts but trying to get things that look the same I think is really, really ridiculous, but every once in a while sure it might give you a hint about what you want meters or are for confirming suspicions, not for dictating what you should do. So you know on that note you said you don't like using your eyes I have the exact problem I do like using my eyes and after force myself not to because I always if I see a spike, I think I should get rid of it. I maybe I shouldn't I closed my eyes and I'm consciously not closing my eyes here because I feel like I will cook any in fact somebody took a picture of me with my eyes closed out here the other day was that and I closed my eyes a lot because I want to just feel it, I want to listen back and find a reaction I don't want my eyes to tell me what to do, so I do it all the time and then I find out I'm not even moving the control and I'm wondering why it doesn't do anything. All right, jesse lower b side wanted to know what's your peak to average during mixing and how much do you want the peak to average change slash or expect to change after mastering? I literally don't pay attention to it because it's not my concern. I listened to it with my ears. I don't read the meter, I do look at that dural meter and I memorized the way it looks from soaring a song, so I know if I'm getting off track with mixes for mountain album, but I really I think every song breeze different and every mixed breeds differ. I don't think you khun make a certain peak to average that works properly, I will say this I didn't try doing that for about a year, and I didn't totally realized I was not going down the right road. I thought I had found like a formula for some of these pop punk records I was doing. And I was trying to get it that way and then once I start just so being if I start to be a lot more happy with my records, I use my years every time cool let's now that there's a fresh perspective let's get back into this so what I'm doing right now is I'm noticing I'm not hearing this sub speak the way I wanted to speak and I speak I mean it's not eyes articulate a lot of the time the subs are cut off of the hyatt they should be like it's great to filter out those highs when you're at your film because that's, what gives it that sound? But then once you're you cueing the mix, you may want to compensate and bring it out a little bit, so I'm trying to find where that works now, but now that I brought this up, I did it immense high shelf at a really early frequency compared to what most high shelf star there's a frequency I'm not liking in here, so I'm gonna get rid of that and keep working. The next thing I'm hearing is I want to make this dub step based a little bit more aggressive now that that sub base is starting to come out this way form looks crazy and yet again what's always remember wave forms can look crazy and still sound awesome wow this is why I also talked about getting bypass before you scroll through those presets so you don't hear all the crazy sounds wow so the thing I'm supposing now is now I'm my blend is getting well what I'm liking my tone so I'm going to pull down my moderates and moderate a little choir so I can get a better blood this is one of those things I talked about that a lot of the time I'm a lot quieter than this so I'm noticing now I want to also talk with us so like we talked about for I haven't heard grasses rough mix of the storm so there's parts that I'm starting to like hey that side of sub school I hear buried try to poke about find where the right places are since I don't really have a road it up but I'm trying to give a fresh perspective to this there's times that I'm like oh, I'm totally missing out on this so I'm realizing this break beat as I heard it kind of shine through it this might be something cooler to rely on for the so let's talk about this other mistake I just made that I was hearing some of funny with is that I didn't put the fate fader follow on my ox is this is always a great idea in case you want a pan so that your stereo image doesn't get messed up going into your compressor so getting back to this book said this was the one where I was like, really feeling that the frequency of opportunity it's not quite coming out and I'm feeling like this is a good candidate for our friend that I went to the wrong one on uh, the stereo with wider preset so you know, getting rumor my whole thing you want to tweak the preset this is probably one of the few ones where like I play with this with but this is one of three presets that cause the cottages does a thing that's not like super tweak like words does it there's not a lot to tweak out sometimes treat this with but a lot of time this is just the setting I know I want I wanted out so this for your speakers and it's kind of just a setting of its own? I thought here's another thing is that a lot of time these dub step sounds also benefit from this, so I want to see which one might be better before I go ahead and commit ah, the idea of this one being the one and I'm kind of election like I'm not a little better even know this puck said did stick out war this is a little bit more important to me that it's big and wide and this is what I hear like on a lot of stuff like you know, you really hear, like I think of, like skrillex, bang rang like you hear that wide, wide dubs absent, that it really brings the energy of the storm there. So now I want to find something else to do with this puck. Since, since it's kind of really getting on my nerves and I say getting on my nerves, I think it's, a good part of the song, but it's not sitting where I wanted to sit yet, so we'll try thinning it out and see if the base what's me, put it somewhere better. Still, not quite to ever do. I do like the west base. We see what's what? So that is sounding cool to me, so that kind of helps that a lot for me.