Mix help

I've gont through the mixing tutorial and I'm reading Mixing Engineer's handbook by Bobby Owsinski. I'm getting to grips with the purpose of mixing etc, but I need help using MC4 - where to start etc.

I've named all the tracks to make it easier (acc guitar, midi drums, bass etc) and opened the Console View. I can see each track in a strip of it's own with it's own volume faders, as well as TTS-1, Master Bus, and my soundcard's output volumes left and right faders.

This leads me to the next question - what on Earth do I do now???

The way I generally mix is to do all my tracking...get it right and than mix it... I set all tracks output to a master buss. everything funnels into & through that buss/channel in the mixer in MC4. there are advantages to doing this...

1. You have ONE fader that easily controls the volume or all tracks. the individual tracks still control their own levels with their faders, but....If I hear my wife calling from another room, i can pull that one fader down, to hear her.
2. You will insert your compressor & other final mix effects into that one track instead of haveing multiple instances of the same effect in 10 different tracks....this saves big time on processor power & cpu cycles.
3. You can also elect to not have certain tracks in the master sub mix.... I have left the bass out in some tunes because it has more "presence" in the final mix straight. that is up to you.

That is generally as far as I go in the mixdown process. I have found it to be sufficient. The big danger in mix down/mastering is often doing to much as opposed to not enough. Add effects ONLY as needed.
On the song Corridors (soundclik site) I added just a touch of HF exciter to the lead vocal. All tracks were 100% dry as recorded. The guitars were recorded with the delay in the tracking....but otherwise 100%dry. All tracks were sent to master buss where a tiny bit of compression & reverb was used....both dialed back considerably. All meters were kept out of the red/clipping during the tracking & mixdown. I don't remember if the bass was in the master buss or not....I think it wasn't. It was dry.

For a more detailed mix.... you can set up a 3 layer approach. layer 1 tracks....layer 2 sub mixes of like instruments, layer 3 master mix.


The use of master or sub busses will be a good thing... if you have 4 vocal tracks for example...set up a sub buss called vocals sub or something you can ID real easy....send all the vocal tracks to that "sub buss" and then send the sub to a master buss.....

Think of it like a tree...all the similar things....vocals...guitars... go into a sub buss. that sub buss outputs into the master. This is handy if you want a special FX to be on just the guitars...ot just a bit of high end boost on the vocals but not the horns.... This can be as simple or as complex as you need.

edit: like Beagle said...trust your ears. mix it, post it, ask for comments, get feedback, learn....repeat....

yep.

http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPAN/

install it as a VST FX in a track or bus bin.

That just means to download the file, unzip it into the SHARED VST folder (in the C:\PROGRAM FILES\CAKEWALK\MUSIC CREATOR 4\SHARED VST)

then you'll need to run the VST scanner for MC to pick it up in the menu options.

as far as tracks automatically assigned to the master bus, MAYBE. you should always check.

On the subject of a visual analylizer, I'm wondering if you really need it. Music is an audio experience, and mixing, the addition of eq, reverbs, etc., are all better left to the ear. I have only used the visual analyzer once or twice, just to find an annoying buzz or hiss or hum.
The initial reasoning was to spread your sounds across the frequency range. Beagle has a chart that shows the frequency ranges of some instruments, but, you could just use your ears, and common sense. Bass, kick drums, lower toms, all are in the lower range. Violins, cymbols, most horns, higher range. Piano and acoustic guitars ride across the whole range, from low to high. In the mix, you may at times use eq to carve a little off the bottom of one instrument or the top of another, in order to give some space for a different instrument to shine through in the same general freq range. But, you have to be careful. Filtering out all of the highs on a kick drum might hide the snap of the hammer hitting the head, or the sound of the click of the pedal, parts you didn't notice, but are important to that sound you liked before you started adjusting it. Bass guitar, or upright, has a lot of higher harmonics that are important to the sound. The snap of a snare, the mellow of a violin, all can be lost if you start looking at the visual output and applying eq according to that alone. Also, if you work an instrument in solo to sound great, you may find it sounds wrong in the mix.
I guess the point is, mixing can be very time consuming, you have to be willing to listen carefully, for more than just volume, and work instruments in groups, use panning to help provide space for competing instruments. It is not "rocket science", it is time consuming. I will work a mix of 5 or 6 instruments for hours, more instruments get grouped to busses, busses get grouped, effects are added at various stages, so time is necessary. You need to learn to listen with different ears, mixing engineer's ears. But looking at the spectral output does not seem to do anything but isolate an annoying sound, in-frequently.
Of course, all that is just my opinion, and I can send you my work flow, I've detailed it out in some different places, all I need is a little time to compile the thoughts, if you are interested.
Later
Albert

Albert--that extremely detailed post above doesn't sound like it comes from someone who is supposedly tone deaf!

Yea beag I've now inserted it in the audio fx bin for the acoustic guitar part (that's the only audio track in the song) Here's a screenshot....what does it mean lol?

[http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk318/rpulman/SPAN.jpg]

By the way I tried to get the screenshot directly in the post, but it didn't work.

You're welcome! And you're doing great! If Reece would have answered my question about mixing the way he did you, I would have said 'huh?!" In fact, I probably did often enough that they learned to dumb down their answers for me! I'm glad you're getting the hang of this stuff so quickly! It's a great addiction! lol

Most 'Audition' buttons play a short clip of the selection, as little as a couple seconds.

Thanks for the detailed answers, and I know there's plenty of other people want questions answered too - so apologies if it looks like I'm hogging it.

Most of what you talk about comes through experience and there's no shortcut for me there, worse luck. I'll read everything, try and take it in, and keep at it.

Trying my hand at the console view at the mo to see if I can spruce up my little acoustic ditty.

In my master bus I've got the Voxengo Oldskoolverb and the MC4 FX compressor. Due to my being so unsure at this point, I'm trying all the presets and tweaking anything that stands still, listening to the various differences (big and small). Reading lots about it too, thru all the posts, mixing tutorials and books/internet.

First question is the order of effects application, i.e. is it a chain? Which effect get applied first by MC4 in the master bus. Starting from the top down in the master bus FX bin I've got the reverb, then the compressor. Is the compressor compressing the reverbed signal?

Second question - if it is a chain, what should the order of effects be in the master bus?

One way to fix that EQ problem is if the guitar has an active pickup, is to plug it into one track and mike it on another, adjust the built in EQ on the guitars pickup, to be a bit more trebley, and mix the two tracks to taste. Also drop the span in the FX bin after a good multiband EQ and adjust till you get a better balance. Lower the bottom end and boost the upper bands.