Danny Danzi said .....
 
Stop listening to people on this forum that talk a good game that don't post songs with the quality that you want yourself.

 
That is one of the best lines I have read in the past year on these forums. Well said Danny!

Yeah I spent a solid week on my 6th and final remix... Listened critically to each part of each track on the project I've been mixing, as a result I had to completely redo/rebounce the drums, rebounced the organs, changed verb, changed panning, widened the BGV and changed settings on pretty much everything. Added and changed envelopes, etc. I feel like it improved, and I'm glad I put the time in. Now it's time to step back and smell the roses, enjoy some other folks stuff, do some reading and then start a new one.

I know there are people here who can crank out a pretty good mix in a few hours. I guess it's just years of practice and experience as well as a particular talent for it. 
Still saving my pennies for that Transiant Designer...

Here's the problem with Danny's approach. He doesn't live on the West Coast so I can hang out with him.

Words of wisdom there my friend. I can't tell you how many times I have heard diatribes from an "expert" on the internet here and over at GS, then listen to their tracks and realize they haven't got a clue.

I would add some free advice for the OP. Go to Youtube and type in "Pensado's Place". If you have the time listen to all 60+ episodes which are a master class in mixing. If you don't have the time, as they are 1 hour each, go to his site and just review the ITL (Into the Lair) outtakes from the videos. Those are the best sources of mixing information anywhere and they are free. Clearing the middle of the mix is one of his classics.

Know that, mixing is what you do with the tracks in front of you. If you don't have good tracks, you can end up chasing your tail. I would charge you with learning how to capture the source well. If it sounds good after tracking, the mixing process becomes an artistic endeavor versus a mercy mission. Many times a new learner will be challenged with poorly recorded tracks (wrong space, wrong mic, unfocused performance) and then move to mixing while learning all the tools. The chances of success or satisfaction will be very low and your frustration high. Teaching your ear to understand when you have a good sounding track vs an amateur sounding track is important.
 
As makeshift points out. Half the opinions you will get from people on the internet are guys listening on their laptop or earbuds. Mix opinions can be all over the map based on this alone.

Philip


Band_,

Awesome excellent thread, IMHO.  Poetic justice can be cruel, so can loss of life and music.  Just recall Band_, all of us have hit others below the belt at times.

DISCLAIMER: These are merely my opinions.  As someone who is "pretty good" (7/10 methinks), I'm like you.  I'm your peer, your collegue, and your faithful friend hobbyist (I hope).

I count it an honor to be labeled a hobbyist, as I eschew commercial hireling stuff.

I'd like to rise to 9/10 and 10/10.  And like you stated: "Time" certainly helps. 

I am confident that the hobbyist alone will win the day, not the commercial hireling, not the rock-star, not the pretender.  The commercial songs of today are flops on many levels, 7/10 at best.  They are no better than you and I, hahahahah!

I love you and Ben as much as I do Danny and Yoyo, perhaps more so.  Only the faithful fighter will win the battle and you 2 are REAL fighters. 

No one has the answers, my friend(s); only God or Satan does (IMHO).  Collab-ing with top-drawer folks has a place, but there comes a time to refrain from embracing others and placing trust in flesh.

Furthermore, I can't trust myself let alone anyone else.  Your talent is metaphysical (AKA, not from this world) ... a gift you are born with.  Who is gonna place the tender-loving-care in your mixes?  Yoyo?  Danny?  They have day/night jobs that necessarily consume them ... like you and I.

Your/my freedom of expression is a pioneering thing now in the home-DAW age ... where only you/I go at it alone to produce a new breed of stuff.

Your last mix showed excellent and faithful fighting to make beauty.  You chose the CS&N psychedelia freaks as your model.  I'm pretty certain no one envied you nor bought CS&N albums in the last decade.  But you learned a lot about real-Robby vocal textures ... more than anyone embarrassed that still listens to these perverse hippies.

It was over-kill, like so many of my mixes.

In sum:

Better to have over-killed than to not fight the battle with others.  Be a compulsive mixer and you will outshine us all ... no utterance is without signification.  Polish and strengthen the mixes you love and re-post them.  God gave you the success in the past, He'll bring it back I hope.

Perhaps you, me, Danny, Ben, Yoyo, may actually hope to mix/produce an eternal weight of glory ... methinks that requires great TLC, inspiration, labor of love, and a lot of joy from above.

Thanks Philip, I think you are right on the money with the last comment.  Hey I know I've posted some **** but I keep on saying it's my journey (some of that stuff is 5 years old I was a babe in the wood 5 years ago) and I don't want perfect music and perfect recordings.
 
You yourself Danny only said the other day on another thread when you started to pull apart Bohemian Rhapsody, how awful parts of the individual components sounded.
 
Look I post what ever I like and if I am wrong and you can prove me wrong then I am happy to admit I am wrong, you make me out to be unreasonable when I am not.
 
Ok time to put up or shutup again, I think I am ready to go back to work, I have just done a reset of my system (this is something that Danny hasn't taken into account, I spend so much time tinkering with my system that I often forget to take more care with the music) I'vegot a couple of old tunes to fix and I need to start some new stuff just to show you exactly where I am at and that my ideas do translate.
 
I mean Danny is implying that I live in a bubble or a cocoon and that I don't progress:  Poppycock, Fairy Dust and Pickle Water.
 
I will show You!!!
 
Neb 
 
P.S Danny I am a loyal customer of Cakewalk, I have been now for 10 years.  So it makes me a middle user, some have been using this software for 20 years but I am still a middle user.
 
I brought Sonar 2.2 which cost me $400 in 2002, I then upgraded to V6, cost me another $300, then 8.5, another $300.  I brought Project 5, cost me another $700, then the upgrade another $300.  I brought the first version of Pyro and the 2nd.  I am now an X1 user and have brought Expanded and PCK gate.
 
This gives me the right to inhabit these boards, I have also fought those in the idustry with their Pro Tools crap and tried to get people to look at this great program, I have said I was wrong about X1 in the past and I was.  So you continue with your pithy attack, I'm still here and I am doing nothing wrong, well I did go a little too far but, I stand by my opinion but accept responsibility for the delivery!! 

Great genuine wisdom Danny, please don't stop posting here because some of the members are more interested in playing virtual king of the hill and spend most of their spare time on here quibbling over semantics when they should be in the wood shed practicing their skills.
 I share the same concerns regarding new members leaving here with the wrong message but I think the great majority of us hobbyist know when they're getting the genuine article when hearing from the top producers like you.
 The forums are not the same when you're not here. Your wisdom and generous nature will always be loved here brother. 

 Thanks for the link JohnT, I have some of his old posts saved as a text file
It's good  to see you here more often, I've heard a mix you did with a female singer that was splendid if I'm not mistaken. To my ears it sounded like a pro did it. Just wanted to let you know there are folks interested here in what the real pros have to say so if you ever want to share, I'm all eyes

 Robby, I always thought of your mixes as much more than a hobbiest. Some of your arrangements have many timbres and layers, different instruments and such. I think in a way you give yourself a much tougher job to do to get that perfect mix. I think if you put a bit of time in between when you record and when you mix, like a week or so to give yourself a chance to defrag you may nail that home run mix easier with a fresh perspective. JMO. Im any case the performance and capture are always spot on to my ears. 
 I look forward to catching up with what I missed from you.

Very interesting point here made about the quality of the tracks that are used for mixing. Funny thing is, this is two very typical scenarios:

1 - Amateur mixing engineer is given or records low quality tracks at which to work with. Thus it's hard to create a great sounding mix. All the time is spent trying to fix the problems with recording and no room is then given for any artistic enhancements. They are fighting an uphill battle. They read information on mixing from the pros. It doesn't work. Nothing works.

2 - Professional is given or records high/higher quality mixes with which to work with. Mixing is a breeze. It sounds great automatically. Then they are free to use their already superior skills on a superior track to make it sound amazing. They then publish their techniques to mixing an amazing track. The amateur reads these techniques and wonders why it doesn't sound as good as the pro mix.


Thus the degree of separation between pro an amateur is increased. Give both guys the SAME mix, and you may find that the hobby guy is better than you realised and the pro is not as good as you first thought.


Obviously the true pro (a true pro) can still do amazing things with sub-quality recordings, but you get my point.


This just reiterates the importance of getting good tracks in the recording!


Don't even get started on the importance of adequate composition to making a mix sound good.. Bad composition and choice of instruments can make life exceedingly difficult and hard to mix. It can easily make or break the perception of a great mix.

mattplaysguitar


Very interesting point here made about the quality of the tracks that are used for mixing. Funny thing is, this is two very typical scenarios:

1 - Amateur mixing engineer is given or records low quality tracks at which to work with. Thus it's hard to create a great sounding mix. All the time is spent trying to fix the problems with recording and no room is then given for any artistic enhancements. They are fighting an uphill battle. They read information on mixing from the pros. It doesn't work. Nothing works.

2 - Professional is given or records high/higher quality mixes with which to work with. Mixing is a breeze. It sounds great automatically. Then they are free to use their already superior skills on a superior track to make it sound amazing. They then publish their techniques to mixing an amazing track. The amateur reads these techniques and wonders why it doesn't sound as good as the pro mix.


Thus the degree of separation between pro an amateur is increased. Give both guys the SAME mix, and you may find that the hobby guy is better than you realised and the pro is not as good as you first thought.


Obviously the true pro (a true pro) can still do amazing things with sub-quality recordings, but you get my point.


This just reiterates the importance of getting good tracks in the recording!


Don't even get started on the importance of adequate composition to making a mix sound good.. Bad composition and choice of instruments can make life exceedingly difficult and hard to mix. It can easily make or break the perception of a great mix.

+1
 
Also, consider, the Op himself has done mostly covers these last couple years.  That kind of emulation is extremely difficult and tricky.  Few persons here can exceed another master's masterpiece.
 
Its hard to talk about mixing covers, which the Op has struggled with.
 
IMHO, the Ops greatest cover success occurred when he sang and mixed "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother".  In fact, I felt it was mixed and sung at least as well as the original !!!!!!
 
I seriously hope the Op would finally cover one of my (Philip's) songs and/or mix it.

I'm glad the majority of you liked where I was coming from here...thanks for the kind words and the props. :)

bandontherun: You're still kinda missing my point man. You don't have to be talented or have years of practice or experience. You need to know what it is you're listening to and what you're listening for. Let me try to break it down for you one more time while trying to keep it short. Maybe you didn't read my long post because it looked too long and you didn't have the time nor the desire to read it. By your last comments, I'd assume you may have skimmed over or skipped my post. I put a lot into that for you...I'll not make the same mistake again.

So I have a student that does a decent job with mixing but he's still not getting the results he should be getting. He's not a super talented muso, he's not a wizard on guitar drums or vocals. He's just a normal guy that writes tunes and wants them to sound good.

My job as his teacher is to explain what it is he is hearing as well as what is wrong with his mix and how he can fix it. He just doesn't know what to listen for. He doesn't know what a good compressor setting sounds lilke because he can't tell the difference. He doesn't know what good bass and bad bass is because he's never been taught or shown what good vs. bad is. He doesn't know about compression other than when it pumps and breathes in a mix telling him "ok that may be too much there".

He doesn't know about how frequency masking can contribute to the source of your low end problem with everything building up as a combination making that bass sound like it may be coming from one instrument. He doesn't know how far to high pass a guitar. He doesn't know that a bass guitar has way less low end in it than you may think. He doesn't know that you shouldn't boost your kick drum low end in the same area you would your bass guitar. He doesn't know that a simple low pass on a guitar may just fix it instead of sitting there messing with all the high end frequencies individually. He doesn't know the high end in the vocal he's using is creating vocal sibilance because he doesn't know what vocal sibilance is.

For him to improve his mixes, it has nothing to do with talent. It has to do with "ok, this is the sound of bad bass. When you hear this type of low end fuuuuuu type sound like a jet plane engine idling close to your ears in the back of your instruments, you sweep your freqs until you find it, then you remove that blanket. It's not talent...it's being taught what to listen for. As you learn how and what to listen for and learn about how frequencies are literally syllables/alphabet type things inside your musical language, it allc omes natural.

With mixing, you are learning a language. Each spoken instrument has a place...has a voice and must be carved up to it sits in the mix. If you aren't taught how to handle this stuff, you're not going to just get it on your own. You can read all the books in the world and watch all the videos in creation. You're not going to learn a thing until someone shows you what to listen for on YOUR material.

What good is it for me to show examples of high end recordings using high end gear as my test subjects? Right...it does no good at all which is why the majority of these books from pros are bogus. You don't have a big pricey front end...you don't have the plugs they use and most importantly, they are NOT showing you how to handle the instrumentation voices YOU have created using the stuff you used to created the sound. You can be taught how to decipher all this stuff. It has nothing to do with your skill level or how long or short you've been doing this.

I can't put it any other way. It's cut and dry. You learn how to decipher this stuff and learn the language of music or you keep at it and hope you get better. Do it your way for a year. If you find you're no further than you were after a year, send me a pm and we'll talk.

Best of luck,

-Danny

I think that's really pertinent. There's a lot you could read about this subject that suggests you're waiting for a magical moment when it all clicks and you're a mix wizard all of a sudden. And somehow you'll get there by twisting knobs and "using your ears" (lamest non-advice ever, of course you're using your ears).

The reality is more mundane. Like any craft, there's a whole bunch of stuff to learn, and you can just start picking these things off one by one, just as Danny describes above.

As to Danny's point about a lot of big name tutorial stuff not being pertinent, I'd agree. In fact, I'd go further and say that the majority of what you can find on the web and in books about mixing is not going to be all that relevant to you. Listening to a couple of your mixes, you're already pretty good. So that cuts out the 70% or so of this stuff that's re-iterating beginner-level issues, as well as the high end stuff Danny refers to.

A much, much better source than most of that is Mike Senior's regular Mix Rescue column in Sound On Sound, which is deliberately always done using reader-submitted tracks on off-the-shelf hardware and software. Most of the time he restricts himself to bundled plug ins too. So that's a guy with a very credible CV as a mix engineer, working with the kind of tools and materials that guys like us have. Such an obvious idea, it's kind of amazing that you don't see it elsewhere.

Mix Rescues are online for free three months after they're in print, and they have before and after audio examples, and sometimes individual tracks and snippets showing different approaches and methods that have been tried along the way.

+1

And his book - 'Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio' is very readable, very accessible and full of practical, everyday examples that anyone can learn from. (Hell, if I can learn from it, anyone can)