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Demo: Mixing an EDM Track Part 4

All rights where we last left off. I realized I messed up my head room and now the mix out of terrible. So I had to get it to sound good again. I have not touched a swiss. We went back because I gave my years a nice little break. The one thing we did do is beat down was grasses rough mix so that I have something to compare it to when we want to do that with later. So the only thing you'll see is that there's a new little favor here. Other than that, I did not listen. But I want you guys to get a real view and what happened? So let's. See what happens since I messed up my mix and when I had because I screwed up my head room. Let's start at the top. Wait. One of the things I realize singh is I did something bad when I turned down this head room. Which is that? Because these were not set to pre fader. I also turned down my drum sub, which made the drums get really lost. So hearing this back, I realize the mistake. This is one of those things that happens when you do things different ways ...

as you go it. And you have to trust your years yet again I can't just trust my technique and now I see that I have to re balance these drums and get this drum sub up so that the drums are coming too wait here and also I want this first near to have a little hearing also I want this first and have a little river too yes cool. So now I'm feeling good about where I was before compared to now and so what I want to do next is I want to start just sort out some panic because everything we have panned is kind of all the way out that outs and it's just a little mushier that unlike so I want to establish what we have here to work with and what's on the outs and what khun b in different places so let's first focus off so the first thing I'm feeling like is that this siren khun get a little bit more exciting and I'm feeling like yet again our friend, the stereo with plug in in some sort of way now I'm starting to feel like I could feel the piano kind of feels all right heavy I imagine because this was where people this was done on usually you have a map of the keys and just like a real piano, the work he's happen a little bit more to the left and the right of the high keys but I'm like wondering what we can do about this so it cuts a little where I'm a narrow this stereo down so it's a little more in the centre thumb also do this in the top because that's what's most clear so the big issue I'm having here is there's so many things that I feel I could benefit from the stereo with but like I said, I there's something weird that happens when you put too much stuff in the stereo with plug ins so but what I'm going to do instead is this sweep effects can often benefit from a cool delay so I'm gonna create a delay for this and probably just was the reason I'm not going to do it on the main track is his um actually make some of the sound come out through delay that's widened a little bit and that will be a little bit different so uh that's why I'm going to go to our friend the echo boy which is the delay I've been using a lot one of my standby favorites on dh you walk into the tempo and then I'm going to just listen to this sweep a little bit here which delay starts to feel good to me in the track thes e it's also making input and as the tip goes mix all the way up to what because you're on it so really this is I'm going to try to get this to a different space in the next to the other thing is I'm going to throw this in tow that long whole reverb we have as well um so let's hear that that's cool let me see what happens when I widen this out a little bit so that started really well to me so to me that's just making that sound kind of get in a different space in the mix I really liked something else said in his drum course that like, you know, people just off describes like river putting a different space in like, you know, it sounds like it's not really reverb like puts it in a different space it's that you really just are able to put it like I don't think you said whenever you put a whole reverb on it really sensical hall it's more like it's just goes in back of the mix instead of in the panning structure a lot of time and you can get some details that using time based plug ins to exist a little bit mohr in the depth of the mix in the three dimensionality instead of the two d of the panning I know that sounds really like woo hippy hippy or whatever, but he really does work a lot of the time and that's what I'm really seeing here so I'm starting to really like that, and we're that seeing the mix that's, another panning problem solve, but there's still a bunch of panning problems, so I've not solved yet. So the other thing I will say about this is, um, there's a break here, and that delay hangs into that break, so we're gonna have to cut off. So what we do about that what's also say this I see a small editing mistake here is that the sound seems to come back in after that so let's go in and find the each time that happens and get rid of that. This is also another great reason to print down your sense, because and I'm not calling rise out on this because is that it's actually looks really good. I do this all the time, and I print out myself since and my samplers and I go, oh, you're an idiot e that's great! And you know, and so let's also say this this is an otherwise things once you know, once you find an error like this, don't just fix that one, check the track for the rest of them and make sure it doesn't happen again because as we just saw, it happens two more times in the song and now it's fixed and it's not a problem anymore. Always, once you find an error, check other things for a cause odds are it happens again, so we now need to get rid of this delay whenever that gap happens, so that gap looks like it starts right around three and then ends on the one I'm gonna lupin and try to find the best way out of solo. So I want this to be out of the way right there, but the other thing is is because the delay as a cool ring to it but I'll often d'oh is then I'll let it fade back up after the one and let the character stay there. So then what I'll do is each time this happens, I'm going to copy and paste that exact page on it wasn't bothering me so much that it did that, but I want that little gameboy sound to ring through and be really clear each time because grimes did a great job on writing that part and should be is clear that's our focus, we don't want things like you don't all this automation thing yet again we want diminished and bring out things to focus on and the vocal and that will gameboy sound are way cooler than my delay tail, so we're choosing one and going for it let's now hear this and hear where this tone someone even make this tone a little bit more harmonic I'm going to go to that other priests that I used last time, the saturated color so I think that's the one that's going to work well, let's try out my and I'm kind of feeling like I was wrong and I'm craving my basic saturate er and I don't he is much volume on this, so as we're obviously seeing two there's tons of times that when I would get to appoint the mix, that is a small detail, I'm just gonna loop it. So the next thing I'm realizing I'm not happy with is I'm not happy with the volumes I have my down lifters on, um, so I'm going now loop this and try to get those a little bit better from hearing on this down lifter, it'll probably be cool to have a little bit more reverb on that tried down about here still wanting a little bit more excitement out of this cool, so that's feeling a little bit better for me? So I got a little sidetracked from solving my panning dilemma. I want to go back to try to solve that. So this is a great time, I think, to actually do what I talked about before, and I'm remembering I'm strapped this chair, something do this like this, um so one of the things I said the first day that I didn't prove my point of this you can pan in mono so what I'm going to now do is I'm gonna go to mano and I'm going to find space for something because I'm just still not finding where I want these things to be penned in a lot of time what you could do is you could go into a single speaker of mono and you can pan around and yes, you can't actually hear pitting emma but you can hear where the space and the panting is for it a little bit better sometimes this was a trick I picked up reading an old sounded sound magazine for ballot boulder and then I don't usually trust magazine interviews, but then I had a friend who assisted alan moulder for a while he said yeah, pads and mono all day long so then I tried it for myself and it did work so that's why I trust I think yet again trust but verify so let's get into doing a little this. I'm not sense what I made this lead stereo, but it still is just not doing what I wanted to say I'm gonna play around with finding where this is going to, so now that I've heard that that feels a little bit better, I'm getting another idea from hearing that turned my speaker back on and I'm going to see because the other thing about this is we have to test it and make sure it actually does work in stereo cool so that's feeling good the one thing I don't like the place where I listen mono even though I have the stereo within the dub step son I heard nothing but awesomeness once it went tamano even know we're putting a stereo wider and this is the same they were talking about what that waves stereo widening is that I don't always find that happen with that one but with the air stereo wider and the brain work stereo weidner which I might have in here so I could actually see the name of nope I'm not correct I did not bring with me um it just works a little bit better so now that I have that I'm feeling like I still want a little bit more aggressiveness out of that I mean dub step since our the dub step basis with the truck is called in the mix and so let me play with this iran see if it brings me anything good I should also note I moved the stereo with down instead of putting the surat after it in fact in good form romney even put the saturn after because that's usually what works best so the next thing I'm hearing and I should say that just made me happy is I'm wondering about in the dense part so this chip to and that goes throughout it and in fact why don't you explain everybody with the chip tune is because you'll probably do a better job of remembering it to me but I think it's an interesting thing for the audience like what what chip tuning it actually is chip too, you know is basically the use of retro in aa video game hardware tio produce music and primarily dance music s o people he's a range of different things primarily focusing on the game boy and other nintendo products and things like that but people also do it with the the n e s or nintendo entertainment system but that sound is ah basically trying to emulate the sound of ah, a sound you would normally hear in like a game boy or something like that so low fidelity simply say it's an eight bit synthesize exactly yeah it's an a bit synthesizer thie ah the gameboy itself only had aah ah for audio channels and and with that each only had the ability to go up to eight eight bits where you know we're a bit comes from are the terms so a lot of people just called chip tunes in general because sometimes they use super nintendo which had sixteen the processors but but ultimately it's um it's kind of where it got its name cool so the reason I had you do that one because I think it's interesting for the creative live audience and to is because while you were doing that what I was doing is going that ship to in truck I'm sure you guys this and get some of the boring this out of the way is this is the panning for the song so this is our left and right if you're not familiar I'm feeling like it might be cooled out this chip tune bounce around the stereo spectrum each time it plays a little so I'm making a curve with it so it does that so I did that by drawing an automation points and selecting out here and you'll see I'm going to do this and basically every time and place him to start bouncing around the stereo spectrum and see if this gives me some more space because I'm just about happy with the stereo spectrum um and then I want to make some space in the mix and that's on dh that's and that's the last one but syria my sonic idea did something cool so now I'm a big one for panning things and cool ways, which is why I just did that and I actually once I brought that volume up because it wasn't cutting as much I really like that I do find that this now needs a little weak you to cut all the on that sounds real natural to me so now I'm gonna want to do that though every time this part happens so I have to go over on dh copy this automation lane like I did before and I'm do that each time it happens so I go over the first note and does it but then it goes too far on this one we also will click it we have a buildup on this one so I don't want to do this in the versace I'm saving it so it's special in the course too so I have to do this and we also have to see how it reacts with this sweep that's happening in here cool because that happens and there's that sweep in there I kind of want to go center to this and let that go more gradually I would try and concentrate on this a little bit more but I want to show you guys cooler things I would actually measure this and get this so it's a little smoother but I think this is cool anyway so I'm liking that let me keep putting that in every time it happens because once you find something cool remember to do it so you don't get forget later so that's there now so that's feeling pretty cool to me so the next thing I'm going to do is I'm realizing that in this dense part yet again now that my panning seem pretty good there's still a lot of clutter, so I want to start solving that by accuse, so we're gonna go into yet again. That process I described before, but we didn't go through where is I'm going to try to find a frequency on most of these since where I can get rid of it? So everything that's playing, I'm going to find my least favorite scent that start cutting something away so I can get some more articulation killer so that's already something better to be on that since so as you could see, I should explain that process, so because I like the way that sounds a lot and I feel like that is as important crazy, I want to hear in the mix to make sure getting rid of and how much I'm getting rid of it is really helping, but that already is helping for me. I'm going to find the siren next and where exactly plays? Sure, the simon doesn't play this part, so I don't need to do that one, because that's not as big a concern our lead plays here e so a lot of the time you'll find the money frequency that's in here somewhere between two forty three, sixty that's the one when you need clarity that can be gotten rid of a lot of the time. Thief funny thing with this one is as I pull it down is that even though I'm cutting and taking away from some of the sound it's actually laying the sound b'more clear and talk even though we're getting lit a rid of less of the volume of it it's becoming clearer to me and it's sounding nicer to me let's get into the next one so this one I already took a frequency at someone and give this a pass until maybe a second round if I'm still feeling like this is something I want to do just because I already took out one even though I did feel like this one's a little cluttered um this one doesn't play all the way through part of me feels like I wanna accent this nd accent it so let's try this theme make its perspective and hear this in the truck without the queue so I make sure I do so for me to want to boost something between like one in three k were vocal exists a lot of the time in the clarity and the vocal is this I want to be sure I really wanted it sounds really nice right here but do I really want to do this but it's get in the way of my vocal? I don't know right now I'm finding frequency to get rid of so much we're already let's make sure we're not lose anything something way more aggressive to me. I always like way more aggressive in the style stuff. All right, I want to now listen through a little bit and see what I hear way one thing I feel like now that the dub step base is eating up my drums when it comes in I like the drum vibe when they first come in, but I got to find a way for these drums to stay cutting, so I first instinct is to try my trusty distortion plug in that I do a lot of the time on this stuff, you know, see if this works it very well. May not so I'm liking that it's not bothering how much I like the sound in the white part when we hear if it's doing something heavy. So I'm noticing that there's something in the drums that I think can make them a little bit more crisp, so I'm going to get into here start working on something that brings these drums out, so they're not so I'm not sure if it's this frequency, but I'm gonna give it a try. So adjusting this compression along with the cq, I'm still trying to try to find that place where the drums kick through and let me say this that this is probably one of the biggest struggles of mixed this music and why you see people mix this music even pros for hours and hours and hours more than we have today is that it's so dense and there's such a struggle but I'm feeling good about where we're getting is going to keep going so I think I have a helpful hint about this too so when you see me adjusting the queue all the time on here um the thinner the you are the higher number I should say this is always a we had one to describe it so basically the higher the number is the thinner the mount of boost as you could see if I just this it gets smaller or wider and it tends to be smoother um ends just like a less abrasive to the original sound you have, the more wide it is or the lower the number and the higher number can be like very like destroyed the sound a little bit but they also get a frequency out really transparently. So a lot of the time when you see me after I'm adjusting the mix I'm playing around with this I'm trying to find where it feels more natural and write that normally wouldn't that I move around the peak and dipped to try to find a sweet spot that seems to be working well so that's feeling way better let's keep moving so something about this now is starting to make me wonder if in the beginning, in some of the more sparse parts, if we kind of tweak these high hats out a little bit with some of our river and if that would be cool, not really doing it for me, okay, so with way so we may experience just doing there, I felt like there's something that wasn't hitting in the mid range, the way I wanted to on the streets of fire, which we reported from here, there was another mid range bump that was a different frequency of different q a different amount, but I am feeling like there's something that I hear in elektronik musically, I like these days and emotion in the song that I want to bring out, so I just brought that up there on deny adjusted the saturn to kind of compensate for that and see if I wanted a different amount of distortion on there. So the one thing I'm noticing now, though, is this dub step baseline is not quite hitting the power I want and it's not giving me some of the frequency response, I want him to play around with this wow, so just like when I turn up the cue to find the frequency I hate a lot of the time when I'm trying to shelf, I'll turn it up a little higher. So I could hear where this frequencies I like start to bloom, and then I'll pull it back down to a more reasonable volume. So with me here with this sounds like in the mix in a job. Cool. So that's feeling a little bit more powerful. I'm going to try to see if I could lay off this so that's, feeling a little core to me.