Learning How to Mix

I learned how to mix by mixing.

I encourage you to continue while you focus on improving your listening skills... eventually you'll get a "feel" for what you want to hear.

You just need to do it long enough to get a real feel for what changes when you make a small adjustment.

best regards,
mike


edit spelling

Comparing your mixes to a pro mix will help... but it can also cause a lot of grief. They get to mix on state of the art gear, and have years of experience before they ever get to mix the big names....

The best advice I can give is to listen to the pro mixes and try to figure out what they're doing with EQ and levels.  Aim for that in your music.  Test your music mixes by placing a couple of your songs on a CD with theirs.... in no particular order. Play it... if your song sounds "up to their standard" as far as volume, mix and eq, you're on the right track.... if however your song is somehow "lacking" compared to the pro mixes... then you need to figure out why.

Pro sounding mixes take time, lots of trial and error and that only comes by doing it...over and over and over.......

What you're trying to shoot for is referred to as "Broadcast Quality"... and that is possible on home studio equipment.

Rent this video for $25. It's not a complete tutorial, it's cheesy and incomplete, but every student of mixing should watch it at least once. If you really like it, buy a copy for $150 - the money will go to a deserving guy who's done a lot to educate up-and-coming mixers.

All the ideas suggested are good ones.
For my input, i bought David Gibson's book "The Art Of Mixing."  It clearly describes how to place sounds in a 3-D soundscape using volume/compression, EQ, panning, and reverbs/delays/chorus spacial techniques.  It helped improve my recordings more than anything (other than possibly the Sonar Power books by Scott Garrigus).

mattplaysguitar


Try starting of with Mixing Audio, by Roey Izhaki.

+100.  This is an extraordiary book for a beginner, and even veterans will no doubt learn from it.  Plan to read it several times.  You'll likely get more out of it the second time than the first ... I know I did.

I suppose you just have to do it and not be afraid of the results and try to learn on the way.

Kalle Rantaaho


+1 to everything said earlier. Not knowing what kind of gear you use in what kind of circumstances I want to add:

"I try to get my acoustic guitars to sound very similar to that of the Paramore song but, I fail every single time"

Do you have recording gear and instruments comparable to what Paramore uses? Tens of thousands of dollars or mics and guitars?
To get an acoustic guitar track sound like Paramores one, i bet you need something like a few thousand dollars Martin guitar and acoustically treated studio and top notch microphones. Also the acoustic guitar needs a different sets of strings for different sounds.

It's OK to compare the overall balance and sound of the reference track, but if you want to get the very same or almost the same results you'll need almost the same quality of gear and studio (+ the know-how).

I would partially disagree with this, to some extent, at least for acoustic guitar. Yes, to get it exactly the same, you probably do need that same gear and especially the same room. But you would be amazed at how damn close you can get sometimes with pretty average gear. It's tricky, sometimes you can do it with ordinary gear, but some sounds are also really difficult to emulate.

I had a listen to the acoustic guitar on Only Exception. This is a pretty generic acoustic sound. It shouldn't take too much to get this kind of sound. To really get the polished, clear, crisp and vibrant edge, you need good guitar, mics, preamp and room. It is significant, but it doesn't mean you can't get really close to the same sound, but with less quality, by using cheaper gear. Have a listen to that guitar. First thing to notice is it's HEAVILY compressed. You need to know a bit about compression to get that sound without really screwing it up. In my opinion, they screwed it up a bit. But maybe that was the mastering. I don't think so though. Some people hate that compressed sound on acoustic. I love it, if it's in the right context. Next, you need the right gauge of strings. I would take a guess at a light-medium gauge. The pick, very important. Sounds like a pretty light pick to me. Probably no more than .5mm. Either that or it's a little heavier and played very lightly, but it still sounds really light to me. I would probably use about a .4mm if I were trying to get that sound. As for the mics, they sound very smooth. Lots of clarity. They sound expensive. The high end is really clear. Could be a tube or solid, don't know. I say mics because that is probably stereo micing there. Likely an X-Y. Either that or careful use of reverb. I don't think any subtle delay or double tracking was used for the stereo spread. Eqed to cut most of the low end. Maybe a highpass to get rid of the lows, and then a low shelving to bring down the mids a little. Mic placement would have had a big impact in the spectral balance too, however.

As for emulating that sound yourself, you need to tell us what you are doing and using, and give us some audio samples.

comparing your mix with reference material is a great plan.  However you need to be aware that the mastering process can boost the mean loudness of the reference track by several dB, so it effectively sounds louder than your mix.  This will naturally sound different (better) because "the louder music is played, the more lows and highs we perceive compared to the mids" [quote Roey Izhaki, on the Fletcher-Munson curves].

So to get a fair comparison you need to adjust the volume of the reference track to give the same mean volume as your mix.

I too am getting whipped by mixing and mastering. Those are some great references given above - Does anyone know of any learning references that include (many) high quality CD audio samples?
 
I want to hear, on my home stereo and on my studio set up, various compressor and limiter settings on single tracks, busses and masters. Also, I have heard a lot about creating space and ambiance with subtle delays and I have absolutely no clue how this even sounds.
 
Mike

mgreene

Does anyone know of any learning references that include (many) high quality CD audio samples?

The Izhaky book comes with a DVD with many audio illustrations of the things he talks about.  It is a DVD, however, not a CD, it that's a showstopper.

Thanks Jonsey and Baer! I'll give that one a shot.

Mike

I'm around the four year mark or so I guess, though with woefully limited time to spend on it, and things are finally starting to click, though obviously still lots and lots to learn. But it's finally not just random experimentation. I'm starting to get to the point where I kind of know why I'm doing what I'm doing a reasonable amount of the time, even if I'm not quite doing it yet as well as I'd like.

What's strange to me is that I worked so hard on learning to mix drums and record guitars and bass and such. And it just sucked and sucked and sucked. And now it doesn't suck nearly so much, but it's not actually really like I seem to be doing things much differently than I did before. It's just such a slow accumulation of information and techniques that happen over time that it's kind of hard to actually ever catch it visibly moving forward.

Now, it seems like I can just hook up the guitar, amp, pedals, mic and pre-amp, slap the mic up there, and get a really nice sound without much effort. Whereas I used to struggle so much and never hardly liked anything that I recorded, and seemed to do the same things that I do now.
 

Lots of good info in this thread.
I'll add my little bit.
Great sound comparable to a good record requires good proficiency at every step, being the very least important the gear used. You need some adequate gear, but you don't really need very expensive gear to achieve very good results.
You referred to an acoustic guitar sound you wanted to emulate. Assuming the composition step is there already, the steps would be:
1) A well sounding guitar that can produce the kind of sound you are looking for. There are really good sounding acoustics for 300 bucks (Fender makes a nice cheap one for example).
2) Choose the play style, pick and strings to get that sound. Very often guitarrists think they would need much more expensive gear when all needed is to learn how to attack the strings. Use new strings for recordings.
3) Definitely learn to use M-S mic matrix. You will be amazed how this recording technique will affect your acoustic recordings. You will need an 8 figure condenser (typically a large dia type) and a cardioid (also condenser, large or small dia depending on the sound you're after). Again, not necessarily very expensive mics, but well sounding ones, even some cheap chinese ones can produce great results. Practice with placement and distance. usually towards where the neck joins the body is a good spot, closer for dynamic and sharp, farther for warmer and more ambience.
M-S will allow you to control stereo width, presence and ambience at mix time, and you will find how big a difference it can make.
4) The room can make a big difference in acoustic recordings. Assuming you don't have access to a pro studio room, at least a minimally treated room is very preferable. In a home studio better to have a dead/absorbent room than a resonant and reverberant one. This is probably the most involved part regarding gear, but if you want to achieve serious results you really need to address room acoustics to some extent. Then learn how placement in the room affects recordings. Normally you will want to record apart from walls and avoiding the center for the most natural and clean sound.
5) If everything was well done up to here, you walked 90% of your way. Then you tweak timbre and dynamics with EQ and dynamic processors, and apply reverb or effects to taste. This also takes it's quote of knowledge and practice, but note that a good recording needs little at mix time to sound great, while it is impossible to make a bad recording to sound great. Yes, you may improve the sound in many ways, but don't expect a great sound from a bad recording. You can not recreate things that weren't captured: the string attacks, transients, clean harmonics... You can not remove undesired things either: excess of reverberation, resonation, distortion, etc.