How do you approach a mix ein general - missing-Basics-question again

[JoeJackson]

Cheers,

I kind of "developed" my own procedure, but as I never learned that whole thing I wonder if something is a total No-Go, or if I could improve that workflow. When I'm only mixing, the procedure looks like this:

- Every fader on the audio-tracks goes to -10db, to prevent anything from clipping
- Then I'm going to pan drums, guitars etc.
- Next is the drumset: I mute everything except the kick - EQ then Compression. Then I add the snare - EQ, Compression. Then OH's, Hihat, Toms.
- Next are the guitars. When I have 4 tracks of Rhythm-guitars I route each side to one bus (that means, the 2 guitars on the left to one bus, the two on the right to one bus), EQ then multiband-compression. At last I check the volume-fader so that drums and guitars fit together.
- Then I add the bass-guitar. Most of the time I copy the track and treat the lows of the bass and the highs on their own (that famous high-pass one track for distortion and compress the shit out of it (Vintage Warmer does that job perfectly), low-pass the other for fundament). First I only add the low-passed track and adjust the volume to add a fundament to drums and guitars. When it sits in the mix I add the high-passed distortion track and raise the volume so that it adds a little bit of that rough crunchy rock-feeling to the mix.
- Normally I have no other instruments, so that I've got an instrumental-mix by now.
- Vocals I add at the last stage, because it's the "instrument" that should fit into everything else.

- And then I'm playing around with faders etc. until I'm satisfied - wich means that I fuck up the whole organised workflow again

I read about "adjusting volumes first with everything panned to center", "Compression first, then EQ" (I don't get it - you would compress everything, including the frequencies you don't want 0_o), and "mix around the vocals as it is the most important instrument". Of course there is no "ideal" approach and no real rules. But there are logical workflows involved and I'm pretty sure that mine can be improved.

I'm not nearly good at mixing and I think I can really improve my skills by catching up some basics. I want to try

Cheers,

joe

 

[JBroll]

I'd very strongly recommend the mono-mixing-first thing, and suggest that maybe you try working with the bass and drums on their own to keep the lows from getting mushy or boomy if that's a problem. If you can afford the CPU usage I'd also compress guitars individually at first (to cut down the usual low-mid mush) and then not do anything else with them until the master compressor, or have individual compressors and then another bus for all of the guitars. Usually I do all the drums at once, because I don't know what to do with individual drums until I've heard all of them, and then when I put in bass and guitars later I wind up redoing a lot of the stuff.

I've also had a tenency to put EQs on both sides of a compression, and compression on both sides of an EQ. The first reason is that I don't like using one big compression stage - I prefer to use a lot of stages that do a little bit in a lot of places, and I'm enough of an obsessive tweaker to feel the need to make sure every compression stage is doing exactly what I want and not bringing up anything I don't like.

I think the best advice I can give at this point is to insist that you give everything a 'place' in mono. It lets you know when you have phase issues (long before you're wondering why you get that weird headache when you play your mixes back) and it's a faster way of finding where to let everything fits.

Jeff

 

[Fivestringcult]

+1 for the basic EQ, first stage of compression and general levels before panning.

Other than that, I usually find myself working with the drums first, then bass, then balance the two together (mainly tweaking the bass and kick), then work on lead vocals and rhythm guitars together at the same time. After that I sort out any backing vocals, guitar leads, synth parts, or other extra stuff, and then it's on to fine-tuning and automation.

 

[JoeJackson]

I think the best advice I can give at this point is to insist that you give everything a 'place' in mono. It lets you know when you have phase issues (long before you're wondering why you get that weird headache when you play your mixes back) and it's a faster way of finding where to let everything fits.

I see ... I haven't thought of that.
That "compression before and after" EQ'ing sounds really interesting and I already tried it ... and failed
I think I need to train my hearing more to find out what needs compression and what not etc. haha

+1 for the basic EQ, first stage of compression and general levels before panning.

Other than that, I usually find myself working with the drums first, then bass, then balance the two together (mainly tweaking the bass and kick), then work on lead vocals and rhythm guitars together at the same time.

Thanks, I'll give that a try! Maybe it would be a good idea to get the low-passed bass and the drums together and then the high-passed bass with the rhythm-guitars.

 

[Fivestringcult]

Maybe it would be a good idea to get the low-passed bass and the drums together and then the high-passed bass with the rhythm-guitars.

I don't see why not. It's not an approach I've tried myself yet, but it's worth a go.

 

[JoeJackson]

I don't see why not. It's not an approach I've tried myself yet, but it's worth a go.

I'm always a bit anxious that I lose the high-end of the bass, so I can treat that seperately.

 

[musickey]

I think the best advice I can give at this point is to insist that you give everything a 'place' in mono. It lets you know when you have phase issues (long before you're wondering why you get that weird headache when you play your mixes back) and it's a faster way of finding where to let everything fits.

Jeff

Hey man this is a dumb question but, How would you set up nuendo to monitor your mix in mono?

 

[JoeJackson]

Don't pan anything left or right

 

[JBroll]

I see ... I haven't thought of that.
That "compression before and after" EQ'ing sounds really interesting and I already tried it ... and failed
I think I need to train my hearing more to find out what needs compression and what not etc. haha

What I'd do to get used to that is take a track, slap on an EQ and a limiter, shoot everything but one range down as low as possible, raise that one range as high as possible, and crank the limiter to get a feel for exactly what that one specific range does. I'd also look at the stages in sequence if I lost track of what I was doing - put on the first, see what needs to be done, then put on the second and see what's expected from that one, and so on. Think of it as sculpting a statue from a gigantic block of marble - some big steps are okay at first, then make progressively smaller changes until it comes into shape.

Hey man this is a dumb question but, How would you set up nuendo to monitor your mix in mono?

Erm... I don't know. You'd have to ask someone that uses Nuendo, there should be a little button that goes between mono and stereo but I don't know what it looks like in anything but Reaper.

EDIT: This post came right before mine...

Don't pan anything left or right

This is probably a better way to start, except for things like overheads that are recorded in stereo - you'd still have to switch those to mono, which leaves us asking the same question.

On top of that, you'll want to return to mono sometimes during mixing. It's annoying to move all of those little faders back and forth, I hate those little bastards.

END EDIT

Jeff

 

[Fivestringcult]

My desk has a mono/stereo select, but I've no idea how to do it in Cubase SX3 besides routing everything to a mono output bus. Surely there must be a simpler way than that, although I've never had the need to look for it before now.

 

[006]

I think it's a generally understood "rule" in engineering that you don't mix things by themselves. As in, you don't JUST listen to the kick by itself and start working on it, for example. Every instrument has a particular sound by itself, but it's got like multiple personalities and when you un-solo it and other instruments are around and on top of it that changes the overall tone of said instrument. Guitar, for example, changes almost drastically when you go from solo listening to drums/bass being there too. Same goes for anything else. I've always believed it was best to do the drumkit mixing as a whole piece since everything is usually bleeding to some degree. Plus it sucks to get that killer snare sound by itself and then it isn't so cool once kick, toms, and overheads are in the mix.

Also, I've always thought it best to do the drums as the very first thing in any mix. To me, a good drum mix is the foundation of any mix project. You can have the most killer guitar sound ever, but if the drums sound like shit then the entire mix will sound like shit.

~e.a

 

[Let it burn...]

i do my levels this way: set bass at -5db > add kick > add snare > add rest of drum > add guitar > level overheads with guitars > add vox

 

[Zombietakeover]

Why do you do this? and does anyone else do this?

Cheers,

- Every fader on the audio-tracks goes to -10db, to prevent anything from clipping


Cheers,

joe

 

[JBroll]

I'd fix problems with clipping individually, you might as well set the master to -10 - but then you'll be mixing everything 10dB too loud. Just silly, in my opinion.

Jeff

 

[AStacy2]

Here's the way I learned a loooong time ago:


Start with the kick, bring it up to about -6db. Listen to the snare and bring it up to be as loud as the kick, don't worry about what it hits on the meters (unless your clipping). Bring up the hats panned half right until they are as loud as the snare. Bring up the toms panned wide until they are a little lower than the snare. Bring up the overheads panned wide until the crash is a little louder than the hats. Bring up the bass until it is as loud as the kicks. Bring up the hard panned guitars until they are as loud as the bass. Bring up the vocals until they are a little bit louder than the guitars. Add reverb to the drums next, solo the snare just enough to make the reverb obvious, then play the whole mix and bring up the reverb just enough to make it obvious on the snare and use a level between those two points for all the drums. Do the same for vox or anything else needing reverb. At this point you should be able to tell what needs EQ because of masking. If you do this once or twice and notice your master fader clipping a little you might want to start with the kick at -9db or so or lower the master fader.


Also once you can do this pretty fast it makes working with a producer a lot easier since you have a set method.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Bass drum-->Bass guitar-->Snare-->Toms-->Guitars--->Leads/synths/strings--->OH--->Voice


In that order, I start with eq and levels first, then compression. I don't mix in mono, but probably should.

 

[Zombietakeover]

thats what i was thinking.....that it is silly to bring all the fader's down like that....

I'd fix problems with clipping individually, you might as well set the master to -10 - but then you'll be mixing everything 10dB too loud. Just silly, in my opinion.

Jeff

 

[JoeJackson]

Why do you do this? and does anyone else do this?

I "learned" that in a very small audio-workshop were we were recording and mixing a song. I thought of it beeing logical - you turn the volume down first into a "safety-zone" and then bring it up again when everything is set.

 

[smy1]

I guess I do stuff a little differently:


a) I find the most important elements of the mix first. In my case this is usually the combination of vocals/bass (pop & rock stuff) or vocals/kick (dance stuff) - if I ever mix metal, it's usually vocals/kick/guitars.

b) I then pull all the faders up that are NOT dead center (dead center are usually: kick, snare, lead vox, bass) and play around with the pannings.

c) I pull down all the faders and bring the one with the most important element up. I usually set that one to quite low (-10d or -8db) so I have ample headroom on the mixbuss later.

d) I then compress/equalize/whatever the most important part of the song soloed. Yea, I know, people always say that stuff will sound different in connection with other instruments, but bear with me. As I said, this is the most important part of the song, let's say I want the vocals to sound really good, so I do my best to get that. No reverbs/delays yet. Just get a really good vocals sound happening and give it it's own character. Then leave it playing.

d) I then pull up the 2nd most important element of the mix and set level/compress/equalize it so that it sounds as good as possible while still leaving the most important element of the song intact and has a volume that is relative to the main element. If my favorite guitar sound of all time would bury the vocals, then I have to change stuff on the guitars, so that (in theory) I don't have to touch the vocals.

e) I proceed to do the same with everything else in the song. Part by part. So what I am really doing is shaping the sounds around the most important element. That way for example the synth will be treated totally differently from what I would do if I started with all the faders up. And the main elements are very prominent, never get lost and sound just like I want them to.

f) When the whole mix is set in this way, I start automating volumes, mutes, etc.

g) After that I add 5-6 reverb units on aux sends, all set to different room sizes small, medium, large, very large, huuuuugeultracathedralofdoom, etc. and 2 delays (usually 1/8th and 1/4th note). I then make a little drawing of where I want to place stuff in a 3d way. Maybe the vocals need to be up front, so I will send them to a very small room, maybe that lonely sounding synth ping needs to be all the way in the back corner, so I send it to the cathedral hall - and maybe the drums need to be behind the bass, so the bass gets a small room (or none) while the drums get a nice Altiverb medium wood room with a HPF at 200 to get the kickthump still happening.

h) When that is done, I usually need to trim some volume off of some faders, because the aux returns make everything louder. I also sometimes rethink my panning.

Hope this helps.

Oh and by the way, this is how mono switching is done in Cubase, so Nuendo should be the same: right-click onto the panning bar on the masterbus, choose Stereo Dual Panners and pull the little lines you see to the middle so that they are both center. Instant Mono on the whole mix. For real mono, you'd actually need to turn off one of your speakers.

A nice plugin is also: http://www.brainworx-music.de/index.php?nav=26&um=&lang=de - try it.

 

[JoeJackson]

Let me bring up this thread again:

Just one question, to get everything right...
Let's say, I start mixing the kick, then bass-guitar, rhythm-guitars etc.
Volumes seem right to me but the master-bus is close to clipping and, for example, the vocals are missing.

I should get everything down a little bit and continue, right? And if I'm close to clipping again, everything else down and add the next track, right?