Teach Me Mixing.

Hey, everybody.
Sorry for the length of this, to start. So, it's come to my attention that I am simply a terrible mixer, specifically to the end of music vs. vocals. (EDIT: this message was written before final vocals were recorded, so it's a little better now.) Take a look at my song, 'Survives';
http://soundcloud.com/davdud101/survives
You can definitely hear the individual guitar parts- chords, bass, left solo, right solo, left drone, and drumkit. But you can barely hear what I'm singing- and that's the biggest problem... Let me break it down a bit further:

Turning the music down does two things- makes the extreme level of noise in my lyrical very apparent, and makes the instrumental too quiet.

Turning the music up not only makes the music too loud (to the point that important things are getting distorted), but forces me to turn up the vocals to the point that they're NOT drowned out (which, by the way, never works- they're always drowned out at this point, and the whole track is waaaay too loud, not to mention you can hear the background hiss from my cruddy equipment)!!

Mind you, I have a couple different headsets at my disposal, not to mention a (seperate from DAW) stereo and an additional pair of crappy $7 computer speakers. I technically have no monitoring system at this point.

How can I go about fixing this??
(Bear in mind that I now think it's not too bad, although I do wish the instrumental could be a bit louder)

And question #2....

I'm in Cakewalk Music Creator 3, which btw, works fine for me ATM. I also have a BOSS BR-532 portable studio that I use to record my guitar tracks. So... What software setup should I use in my DAW? How will this one work;

Vocals tracks --> vocals bus --> master
Instrument tracks --> instruments bus --> master

So that they end up in the same place, but I can fade and adjust levels, etc.

Also, as a small side question- how does one go about doing a good EQ?

From your post, it seems to me like you're struggling w/ creating the basic balance of your mix. If you're looking for something that'll help you grasp a few basic principles, I'd suggest checking this series of videos.

http://www.lynda.com/Audi...-Bootcamp/87006-2.html

They give you a free 2 weeks trial (IIRC) which you can cancel afterwards -  more than enough to watch the whole thing. 

Simply remember NOT to take it too literally and that every song/mix is different. But in terms of creating a balance, I think this one could probably help you out.

Oh, I humbly disagree on a few points in the videos. 

But I think it provides a few good cues, especially when it comes to creating a balance, something so basic (yet fundamental) that it is most often overlooked in favor of processing and sculpting things w/ EQ and comp. 

For the rest, it's more a matter of grabbing the concepts and seeing how certain tools can be used to achieve certain results. 

How was the vocals recorded and in what kind of a room and what kind of a mic? Even with my tiny PC boxes here at work the vocals sound as if there was a disturbing room echo and the sound is sort of muffled, whereas the instruments sound reasonably OK.
Or is it an FX? IMO that kind of sound is very difficult to make clear and defined in the mix.

David.... the first step to a better mix is realizing that you need a better mix. No one can teach you mixing.... unless you pay money and go to a school that teaches it. But that is expensive. So in the end, you must learn for yourself. All we can do is offer some advice and tell you to be patient, study hard, and mix lots of songs and have a look back in 3 years or so. You'll see you have made progress. 

Now on the part about how you get it?  Man... the experts have written libraries full of books on every aspect of the topic. Buy a book and read and study it so you have an understanding of the topic. Then try those things in YOUR mixes. 

My advice would be to start at square one. Go back to the individual tracks.... I build a mix based on the bass and the drums as the foundation. All other things build on top of those 2. 

Try to get the tracks sounding right...straight in. If you have to use FX and plugs with EQ to get a track to sound good, it probably was not recorded as good as it should have been to start with.  In 90 percent of my projects, there are NO plugs in the tracks. The tracks are straight to the master buss with no EQ. 

Vocals tend to be effected a bit. Mainly to bring out the sparkle. Vocals..... man, that's a topic that could easily fill several books alone. With vocals, you really need a clean recording of a singer in tune....or use something like Melodyne to tweeze the off key notes into the scale. 

Since you have MC3.... I would attempt to do ALL my recording IN THE BOX. I understand the whole "crappy equipment" thing.... but you can still make clean recordings. Do not use the BOSS BR-532 for recording unless it is absolutely needed... (as a preamp for a mic or something.)  I started out using a similar all in one Korg and it actually was making the tracks sound like crap. I plugged the mic straight into my interface and suddenly it was crystal clear and clean as a whistle.  I sold the Korg on Ebay the next day.  You didn't say what sound card or mic model you are using. A good mic and soundcard should give you quiet clean recording backgrounds with little noise or hiss. 

As far as monitoring... I would not hesitate to use a decent set of headphones if that was all I had. I'd use headphones over $7 computer speakers no question at all...... use what you have until you can pick up some studio monitors. No problem. 

I was mixing last night the newest tune I posted. I think everyone fights with the volume... because I was fighting to get the vocals up where they belonged in the mix on the new tune. Then it was a back to square one moment..... if the vocals won't go up.....everything else MUST COME DOWN. Plain and simple..... but so often never looked at as the answer..... most times we pop in a compressor, and some other things to boost the levels well beyond the red line.  I went back through every track, checked it's assigned busses and pulled levels down and started mixing again from that lower perspective. Suddenly, everything gelled. The mix came together flawlessly in a short time at the lower level. 


I use busses when I need to. I don't use busses just because I can. I might have 2 or 3 sub busses for :
1. vocals (if I have several vocal tracks), 
2. guitars (again if I have several), and on occasion 
3. I will place the bass and drum kit into a buss simply to control their level in the mix as a group as I did in the last mix I posted. 


On good EQ: the best EQ is when you don't need to use EQ. If the track is right, no EQ is needed. I try to keep my EQ as flat as possible, and just like volume issues.... EQ works best when you CUT the offending frequency.... not boost everything else.  If you are going more then 3db up or down on EQ... you probably want to consider tracking the instrument better. It's not a cardinal sin to boost something 5db if it works..... but that is not something you want to get into the habit of doing. 


Some more advice:  SLOW DOWN.   I know that when I have a new song written, and I want to record it.... I WANT IT NOW! Done, finished, mastered, sounding good, brilliant guitar solo's, etc, etc, etc...


Sometimes getting it right takes multiple tries over several days or more. As  home studio owner, you are not recording to a clock that ticks away in dollars. You have all the time needed to get it right. So... if the singer is singing off key... you can delete the track and do it again or punch in the fixes.... no time limits. Its when people get in a rush they settle for second or third best rather than working on it until they get the absolute best take on a track.


Your example kinda sounded like it was thrown together rather quickly and called "done".  Back in the day, I did the same thing. If I tracked a guitar and I kinda missed a note or timing was just a slight bit off... hey no problem, it adds character. Now multiply that across 8 to 10 tracks and soon you have a real mess on your hands. I now go through every track listening for the glitches and mistakes. Nothing stays that is off even the slightest bit. I listen to vocal takes for the smallest pitch issue, or clicks and other lip noises. They all must go. I don't care if it's a country artist or a Seattle grunge band, none of them allow less than perfect tracks out of the studio. 


I hope this points you in the right direction..... the song sounded good, but there is obviously some work that needs to be done. Take your time, learn a few things.... ask questions here and get those mixes up to speed.  

I've been here almost 5 years now.... I have seen improvement in my own mixes, and I have seen lots of people come here and with time, their mixes have improved.   I have confidence that you can learn this. 

After listening to the track here are some comments.

The music is actually pretty good however, you need to do some self education on mixing drums and also EQing drums and bass. I agree with ChuckC on the low end. It's a bit shy there. Also that hi hat is too loud.

The vocal sound and EQ are atrocious. Can't tell if that room sound is an effect or the actual room but a drier vocal for that type of music is the norm or a short delay on the vocal. You may be challenged by the microphone, preamp, compressor chain or lack thereof. Also, background vocals generally are best recorded with a different chain or just microphone to sonically get them in the mix as complimentary.

For some encouragement, your are not far off however. Drums and vocals are the areas you should concentrate on and this could be pulled together. I would as others suggest, retrack the vocals in a place where you can treat the walls or near a curtain or blanket. Get that under control. Then work on different EQ for the background vocals. I might go with some more compression on the vocal once the EQ is corrected in the mix.

1. work your levels with no effects until all the parts are cohesively balanced. slowly correcting problem areas with eq and compression. Then, you can start spicing it up.

2. have a few reference tracks handy that you like the sound of. easiest way is to just have them in the project.
refer to them (listen) often. I mean every minute or so and work your mix to what you hear from the references.

My comments were about the mixing tutorial, not your stuff. Sorry if that twernt clear.

davdud101


@ Kalle: It's a pretty good room, not extremely sound-damp but not enough that it would be picked up. I have a major tendency to add the reverb effect to vocals- don't know why, it just seems right. Does it sound bad? Because for whatever reason, I feel like there is supposed to be *some* kind of effect on the vocals. But then again, I know nothing. 


Thanks so far on the comments, guys... Keep them coming!

I'm an amateur, so my comments need to be read with that in mind.
I don't think I could ever make that kind of a vocals sound sit in the mix, especially because the song is of that genre, loud and full of energy. With only a piano accompaniment it could work, because then it would get all the frequency space it needs, but it lacks crispyness, clarity, definition, edge.. it's like recorded in the bathroom with a towel on top of the microphone.
+1 to Middlemans comment. Instead of reverb I would try some delay with only a little reverb. If you want a longer reverb you should IMO put it through a send with an EQ before it and exclude the lowest end so that only the higher part gets reverbed. But before that, you'll need a proper sounding dry track to start with. You did not mention, what kind of a mic you're using.
 
Eq is used to emphasize or decrease certain frequencies.
 
And note that I have only heard your tune through poor loudspeakers. The more experienced ones here are able to give more accurate advice.
 

davdud101


     Thanks for that reply, Chuck- Really informative! I never really thought of that some parts dominate freq areas, but I guess that's what keeps a recording sounding really clean.

    No problem at all, I am happy that I can now help some others on this forum, as they have all helped me (and continue to) along my journey as well.  It helps me to think of the EQ kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.  You have to cut out a notch in instruments so that others fit with it.  Each instrument is going to dominate certain frequencies on the surface  and they do overlap a bit underneath.  But you make sure you get rid of anything that will be distracting or detrimental to your audio tracks when combined.   Guitars that sound good in the mix will often sound a little thin when solo'd because the low end chunk a guitarist wants in his sound is being occupied & filled in by the bass.  
    Then once you have all that worked out you will run into times where there are 2 different instruments like guitars playing different parts.  They need to occupy the same frequencies but each need to be audible and clear separately...  Now you start to play with the stereo field and panning one of them off to the left & the other to the right to get separation.  But be careful not to leave a huge hole in the center of the mix!  Learning to mix is an art in & of itself.  You are literally learning to play a new instrument.  It takes years, sometimes decades to become really proficient at it.  
  Enjoy the journey & the learning process, each little epiphany can be exciting as hell!  Clean clear audio doesn't come together over one or two moves or techniques.  there is a cumulative effect of each tweak making the mix a little better.  A little EQ, some compression (whole other bag of worms), panning, proper use of effects and each does a small bit of improvement.  Add them together and your mix starts to shine getting clearer & cleaner.  Good luck with it sir!

Ideally, you take care of as many of those conflicts as you can in the composition of the song. Really good songs often don't have that much going on. It's a common thing for newbies to think that they have to have all this stuff going on, and not to consider how the parts fit together. You can have a fat guitar and a bass in the same song, as long as they aren't playing on top of each other. That's all about good composition, coming up with a song structure where instruments aren't fighting each other any more than necessary. When it's necessary, then you have to start EQ'ing things to fit (though a lot of that ideally should also fall to the performers, to adjust their tone to fit better as performed.)

The modern approach (in poppy stuff anyway) often seems to be a hundred tracks, each of them fractionally EQ'd and all layered over each other. But it doesn't have to be that way. The fewer parts there are, the fatter and juicier each of them can be, because there's more space available. And the better they are arranged to work around each other, even more so. And that kind of thing also creates movement and syncopation as well, which I think is almost always beneficial to a song.

And the sparser the composition, the more you can use ambience (reverb and delays and such) because there is space for them, and that gives your mix depth as well. That will keep the composition from sounding sparse, by filling in the gaps in a nice way. That used to be a fairly common approach, but these days it's done a lot less often seemingly.

It's definitely nothing to be embarrassed about though. If you watch lots of documentaries about artists and bands and the making of albums and such, as I do, now major artists will sometimes talk about going through all these types of issues. And a pretty common one is that failure to understand that everything can't be huge. There's only so much space and if you make one thing bigger, that makes the other things sound smaller. You have to decide what's important and what's secondary. Give the important stuff the space it wants and the secondary stuff loses.

Lots of good advice for you here - mostly that there are no shortcuts - only way to learn this stuff is to do it, then do it again and again...eventually you will get better and will be horrified by earlier mixes you did that you once thought were good. I've only skip read the replies you have so far, but I think the first thing you need to do is get a proper soundcard (interface) and a better mic. There will be many opinions about which mic you should get, but a Shure SM58 is a good all rounder for not much money. I use mine all the time. Which interface you need will depend on your budget and how many inputs you need. Establish this and then ask the question of other users in the Gear Forum. If you jsut record Guitar and vocs the Cakewalk VS20 may be a good place to start.  When it comes to mixing, one of the things that I do is to mix the busiest section of the song (often the chorus) first. Once this sounds well balanced, I find a lot of the other work is done for you, rather than starting with a less busy section and having to keep finding space for all the other elements as the song builds. A useful check you can do re relative levels is just to use your master fader to fade the song out and listen for what instruments disappear first. Whichever thing is the focus of the track should be the last to fade out.

Watch the free videos here  http://therecordingrevolution.com/category/mixing/ and you will learn a thing or two. Some of it will probably go over your head at this stage, but generally he's not too technical and explains things well for us mere mortals.

Most of all enjoy the journey, no point in doing it if it's not fun.  There are always people in these forums that are prepared to help and I have found it to be the single most valuable resource of free advice - some very talented people here who you can learn a lot from just by reading what they say - I certainly have.