Loads of synths and layers, what do?

[ze kink]

Been mixing this one project for some time now, and it seems I just cannot get it where I'd like it to be. I'm alright with the drums, guitars etc. but there's massive amounts of different synth stuff going on the songs, many of them being in the same register as guitars or bass which makes them drown each other in a bad way.

Just asking for advice on how you guys approach mixes with huge amounts of layers, and how can you make each part stand out as it should? And also some tips on how you process stuff like pad style synth parts so that they are clearly audible instead of just being a background noise. And how do you pan stuff, when everything is in stereo but really just hangs around in the middle channel. Do you prefer to mono them and pan them where you want them to be, or use something like Logic's direction mixer plugin to give the stuff in the middle some more space?

I know there's some guys here who dabble with electronic music too, and I'd really appreciate the advice. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna be the one to mix this project in the end (band's just not happy with the results and neither am I) but I'd like to play around with the tracks some more, even if just for the experience.

 

[AudioPhile777]

Every mix has a focus and each part of the song has a focus... you need to balance that with having everything in its own space.

The instruments that are operating in the same register should sound cohesive, if the band doesn't want that, then they need to rewrite/rearrange the parts.

With synths, I generally remove all but the most important lower frequencies (if applicable) and showcase the range that sounds the best...

In a crowded mix, you have to choose what is prominent and what isn't; You can't have it all.

 

[vespiz]

I almost always split pads and delay one channel 20ms (Hass effect) to open up the center channel.

Make some tracks mono and pan them around where there's room. (oops, read the op again..)
Try a small room/plate/etc to slightly push some parts back in the mix (works a treat with more percussive sounds, like arpeggios).

Then of course you could just accept that it all creates a "wall of sound" and the parts don't have to be distinct and separated from each other.
Unless of course if the parts are fighting each other badly. In which case the good ol' mute is your friend.

 

[professorlamp]

If the synth's are just to fill it out and not lead lines like DT or anything just filter out the lows and harsh highs and take them down to a subliminial level, that what i'd do.

 

[XnaySaturo]

Either have them as ambience more than leading parts, of if they're more important but the mix is already busy, try to thin them out as much as you can. Just EQ out everything you can get away with, mostly lows even highpass up to 500Hz sometimes. When you have a lot of different synths, I usually try to make them work around the guitar sound, rather than modifying both, to get a more consistent sound across songs.

For the panning issues, every single stereo widener plugin or whatever out there just sounds unnatural to me. What I'll do is get two similar sounds out of my synth and pan them to both sides. I work a lot with Philharmonik, so I'll have two different (but similar) string sets panned L&R.

 

[DestroyTheColossus]

Just EQ out everything you can get away with, mostly lows even highpass up to 500Hz sometimes.

+1 Be totally brutal with the EQ, especially the highpass. Don't worry about how it sounds soloed but just that it pokes out where it needs to to get the desired effect from the synth across. Also, as with most sounds in electronic music, you can make them sound however you like and it wont sound odd. People generally know how a snare drum, or an electric guitar is supposed to sound, but there isn't much of a general preconception for synthetic sounds.

 

[ze kink]

Some nice advice already.

The thing is, they keyboards are very prominent and all parts should always be audible, as the synth player is the songwriter and the songs are based around his parts. And that creates the problems with clashing frequencies.

I think I'm going to experiment with a bunch of automated sidechain compressors next, taking e.g. 1,5dB's away from the guitar bus on certain parts.

Any of you do any parallel processing on the synth tracks? I've been thinking of making parallel distorted tracks of some parts and mixing them in for enhanced harmonics, especially on the parts that share a lot of the fundamental frequencies with e.g. the bass.

 

[timislegend]

just because the instruments share the same register doesn't mean they share the same harmonics therefore can be equalized based on the position of the material. in dense mixes it is best to find the best arrangement. so it's not always something a mixing engineer can fix and should be properly investigated by the person that arranged the content.