Lessons
Who I Am
04:13 2Free Preview: Introduction to Mixing
05:42 3The Mixing Toolset
07:39 4Reference Makes Perfect
22:26 5Calibrating Your Room
19:28 6Using a Reference Track
08:37 7Preparing Your Mix
08:50 8Understanding Gain Staging
08:46Analog vs Digital Gain Staging
05:12 10Adding Dynamics to your Mix
11:12 11Getting a Balanced Mix
09:55 12What is Loudness?
14:15 13What Is Compression?
05:06 14Compression Parameters
14:08 15Basic Compression Techniques
19:55 16Multiband, Sidechain and Glue Compression Techniques
15:34 17The Golden Rule of Compression
07:29 18Basics of Equalization
06:07 19High Pass and Low Pass Filters
07:09 20Additive and Subtractive EQ
17:23 21Mid-Side EQ
22:36 22Spatialization and Panning
07:26 23Panning In-Depth in Ableton
14:13 24Using Reverb
28:04 25Mixing Recap
03:44Lesson Info
Spatialization and Panning
moving to the next really big one. Specialization in panning. Now when we we have the luxury of two speakers. Now it is great, even quad order or crazier. But really understanding the placement of our elements is going to add for a much better mix. Because if we have a few elements on different sides, we can actually turn up those volumes and get an overall cleaner mix. That seems very natural, right? And the way I like to think of this is when I'm sitting down to mix and and my speakers, I close my eyes and I think of a stage. And where is the bassist on the stage, Comparatively, to the singer. Where is that? The drummer? Okay, then there is the keyboardist over on this side. And then we have these elements here, and there may be a saxophone player over there. And in viewing that and moving that into my mix, you know, stepping away from the mix for a second. Thinking about it can lead to a very natural sound. But just throwing things randomly in random places is not necessarily going ...
to help you. So come at this with some understanding of What is the space? Is it a cave? Is it a hall? Is it? Ah, what might it be? And where are the elements? So the tools we have to manipulate space are painting reverb delay and mid side. I'm going to show you the mid side reverb effect that I use, which is really cool. Now, 1st 1 what is painting pending is the spread of a sound in a new stereo or multi channel sound field. In other words, left, right, we're in the middle. Wanna pretty simple, right? Well, we can take this step of a step further by looking at Well, how does an instrument like a drum separate into the stereo field? I have this image which shows you some drum placement of like where a mike might be placed if you were mixing and you have the kick in the center. You have the Tom the left time little toe left, the right little to the right snare and so on. The idea here is if you create your drums with those types of slight panting, then you have that fixed. You can even move the whole drum. All in that state you've created and move its placement compared to the other elements, and you can begin to build your for specialization. Let's look at that. I think panting your drums make a much more realistic sound and will help quite a bit. And then we'll look at painting other elements and building goes out right, So I'm gonna play two drums. This 1st 1 is a stereo drum still loading. Okay, buffering might be harder for you guys to hear stereo right now, but here's mono stereo. You can see it right there. Subtle effect in a sense of giving it liveliness. But it definitely that is thes little tweaks that really make it seem realistic. Now let's look back at this picture, and I'm going to set these different things in the drum rack so I could just show you how to do that. A drum rack real quick. You could also do this with panning if they're separate. If you're kick is separate in your snares or whatever, same idea ply. So you could either use your painting on all the tracks, or you can use your panting in your drum rack just right here so my kick would be center That's pretty easy. My rim. Let's say the rim. It will rings on the snare and my snares a little bit to the right, by around six. Let's go a little more shelling that. All right, Same thing. I have a few rooms. Apparently my hats, my hats will probably be around 12 to the right. You know, this is out of 50. So 12 out of fifties. Not all that much. But it's enough. So this could be 11. 12. It's around there. Ghost note. Same thing. All right, So, Tom, I don't have a left or right, Tom, but I'm gonna put this morning left. Let's just do pretty close. Center open ads. Right. Stop. Same thing, Crash. I'll put my crash on the other side of my drums. You're trying to think, like, where would your high hat be? And where would you crash being comparatively. Do that more? Oh, I do have a floor, Tom. So if that one was left, let's do this one to the right. That left snare little to the right. I'm gonna have that image. So you guys can actually just play around with this with your own drums? But then crash more to the left and light ride. Okay? And the ride was still left. Great. So just doing that now, if I move it to mano Oh, actually, don't think that yeah, that affected in quite work. But that way I can spread out my drums, given much more realistic sound, because if everything is mono, it's just it just washes itself out. But if you wanted to, you could just turn on and off. In effect, like utility mano, you can just kind of hear it opening up, the wider it goes. And then mono just seemed It just seems kind of fake. It seemed like, Why would why would it sound like that? Might use the panting for as an alternative of the frequency we did in Q like, say things, overriding each other a little bit, Yes, especially if you're dealing with, like, let's say, you have to guitar parts and they're very similar. Painting them or right or left does lower their overlap, so you get more. That's what I was starting to get into with. When you separate these things, you're lowering volume on one side and raising it on the other. But that leaves room over here for something else, so you can kind of get mawr complicated Sounds through proper placement. Not to mention it just sounds better some way better. If you have a track and mono, you're like, not as interested as if it's lively and moving.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Jose Gerardo Rendon Santana
Excellent Course, Isaac Cotec is a great instructor and a great producer. The course is very well organized explaining each important step of the mix. as well as great tips and techniques. He also includes a great deal of support material with the course including an Ableton Live Pack with tons of great presets and tools to put to practice the knowledge acquired in the course.
Ian turner
this is the best thing money can buy in my life. Isaac makes it look easy and the way he teaches makes you understand everything and makes it easy for you as well. its exactly what i wanted to learn in each video! i cant even sleep because another video loads and im like "ohhhh i need it" lol. i thank god for this class being affordable and the real deal.
a Creativelive Student
Isaac covers an amazing amount of material in a clear and concise way. Great intro to mixing with Ableton or review for the intermediate user who wants to solidify their best practices, DAW knowledge as well as gain some production tips.
Student Work
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