Do you want to make professional, radio ready music?
The goal of The Band Guide is to bring professional level audio training to GarageBand, Logic, and beyond. I have worked in recording studios around the US as both an engineer and a musician for the last 15+ years. I have used some of the highest end gear in the world and some of the most budget gear and what I have learned is...
it's not WHAT you use, it's HOW you use it.
ANY DAW (yes, even GarageBand) has everything you need to make great sounding music, I am here to help you with the how.
Thanks for that, has made things a lot clearer. I’m one of those guys who is baffled by ‘do this’ and ‘do that’, but once I actually UNDERSTAND why, I’m sailing.
I liked Dave because he highlights other instruments in the mix better, which is the part that makes it more interesting to experienced metalheads. But then again I listen to it on earbuds
All these mixes are good. You can mix a song in thousand different ways. And often when we mix we just rearrange the whole track to new shape. Best is to set the volume at the right level during the whole recording process. To make the necesarry mixing job be as little as it can gets. Too much pulling faders usually only mess up the track. Just tame some peaks and level during recording. In that process we already choose the rightest level. In relation to the rest of the sounds.
2, 8 and 4 are my favorites. Andrew Scheps! Live drums feel. But I prefer the sound of the drums on 4 and 8. Could they have used trigger, while Scheps mixed the original drum tracks?
Im finishing up an album right now and this was a really helpful and digestible video! sometimes I feel stuck with my mixes, like Ive done all that I know how to do but its still not sounding right. this video made me feel like I can go into my next mixing session with more critical thinking and intent behind my decisions. thanks!
It's very apparent when you listen on run of the mill air pods who is willing to sacrifice the bass to achieve monstrous guitar tone and who is not. What do I personally like? I like not making that sacrifice. I feel like it breaks one of your tenets of a professional mix (the one that says you should be able to clearly hear everything, and nothing is hidden or missing) if you can only hear the bass guitar by listening on a "good" system, and even then you will actually feel the bass more than you hear it, because the mids are simply gone. If you can't hear the bass, and I'm not talking about tv speakers or a phone speaker, but if you can't hear it on mid quality headphones or make out the attack of each note in your car, to me that is objectively not a professional mix. But I mean, that's my beef with metal, and it's bled over into all of rock music. Although, Borgren seems to have it under control, doesn't he? Now get off my lawn!
I think a faderport makes most sense for StudioOne users due to the tight integration with the software. I had tried a Mackie controller but was disappointed that it didn't integrate as well> I'm sure the mackie is great, but for me the Faderport 16 and StudioOne made the most sense.
This video has to be the best instructional video for vocals. I have experience that. goes back to the analog days. I say to this I was able understand Colin's video with his audio off. I'm currently online on a church service.. This video surpasses my. threshold. to share with my music community.
Do the "producer kit" settings hold if you convert to a midi track? I want to keep the layout of the split drum mic channels and options for switching the individual drums, but don't often find the drummer patterns to my liking, and thusly prefer to write them in.
Number 7 is a really great balance between natural sounding and cohesiveness. 2 is the most natural and live sounding so i would say those 2 are my favourite. 7 for studio album 2 for "live" version
always solid gold advice! another small tip to help with speed and creativity - do the boring/mechanical "admin" tasks first in a separate groundwork session to get your tracks ready to mix. then come back to it later fresh to do the actual creative mixing.
Excellent work + channel, Colin! Thank you! I'm a new sub, and I'm an oldie Garageband-er, as in Snow Leopard Black Mac days haha! This new GarageBand is wild!!! I dunno if anyone here has tried the very old versions, but it's not even half of what it can do now! Anyway, question, please! I was thinking of getting a Mac Mini and fool around with good ole Garageband again cos of your awesome channel. Would a stock 8gb RAM do fine with non-synth/midi heavy songs? I've watched this whole Mixing series, would a song like this be able to easily handle it?
I think what you’re missing here is also that this is a lesson in mastering. Most mixing engineers do some mastering these days - but generally a mix only will result in much more dynamic range (like Scheps’ mix). This test would have been more accurate if they’d gone for a more subjective volume normalization then LUFS IMO.
