Inswain is a professional recording artist, producer, audio engineer, songwriter, artist developer, and owner of The Asylum Studio. With over 3,000 songs mixed/mastered including those of top 40 artists, and songwriting credits on over 1,000 songs, Inswain can certainly help you take your ideas and turn them into completed songs ready for the radio!
It took me almost a decade to realize that mixing and mastering don't add quality to a recording-they refine what's already there. When I started in music production, I tried doing everything myself, from writing to mastering, with no real understanding. My only goal was to make it sound good on earphones. It wasn't until I heard clean audio from good studio monitors that I understood what quality really meant. Good instruments and good source material make a HUGE difference. Most of what I know about mixing comes from mistakes, not RU-vid videos. One thing I can tell you from experience: you can't get a good mix on headphones alone, no matter the grade. If you're serious, invest in a good audio interface, studio monitors, studio-grade headphones, and a decent microphone. Learn your monitors inside and out-everything else will follow. If you want to mix guitars, first learn to record guitars. This applies to every sound you'll mix. Once you understand how and why you recorded a sound in a particular way, you'll know what’s needed for the mix. Engineers memorize microphones and techniques not for fun, but because the tone of a recording is achieved during the recording phase. The results of this phase inform the decisions made in the mixing phase. No magic happens in mixing.
Pretty good stuff right here! I actually recently uploaded a video talking about essentially this, that a good mix starts with a good recording and really depends on the recording. I also try and do everything myself lol so I know the feeling! Thank you for this insightful comment! You're the man!
The biggest issues is that it's obvious that they're leaving a lot of stuff out. Try just about any of these youtubers guides to a great mix or a great vocal chain and it never sounds the same as what they demonstrate. And yeah yeah every song is different bla bla sure but if we're talkong about techniques and templates as s starting point it should still be comparable and land closer
That could definitely be the problem sometimes! The recording/source quality is also so much more important than anything you do in mixing afterwards and a lot of tutorials use very well recorded source material that most people watching the tutorials won't have access to
@@GrisibagageSnnaa-qz6zw I just mean that the recording quality itself has more of an impact on the outcome of a mix than the mix itself, and a lot of tutorials on YT use very well recorded examples that lend themselves to great mixes; meanwhile, the average bedroom producer won't have recordings at such a quality
@@mollyoko No, almost all of the "top engineers" are using a hybrid set up with plugins at the very least, if not entirely in-the-box. That might've been true 20 years ago but definitely isn't the case today. Awesome that you are getting good results with a console though!
@@inswainaudio its just not true. All the main Pop, Hip Hop & other commercial mixers are using a ton of outboard. Do you need me to name names? Even if they are using pro tools they are still using a lot of gear and a lot of it they just dont talk about. Most commercial records are hitting one engineer with a neve/api or an ssl before the pro tools guy. Majority of commercial records are recorded on a neve/api/ssl to daw with high end convertors. Plugins cannot do what analog does. Digital is binary. Analog is imperfect.
@@mollyoko And 99% of those engineers are using plugins as well. Virtually everybody uses plugins. If you don't, that's amazing! But everybody else is so that's why this content will only continue to become more relevant
@@GrisibagageSnnaa-qz6zw I don't see how having transients being clipped in a mix you are trying to clip is problematic, that is exactly what the clipper is intended to do
This isn’t related and since you post everyday maybe try looking in depth on the TBPro Audio CS-5501V2. Use it on an actual mix. It’s a plug-in hardly anyone has reviewed. Cheers
Nothing works 100% of the time in mixing. Plus if I say "100%" I won't be encouraging people to actually listen to their song and make the proper assessments
@@inswainaudio Ironically that is exactly my point. 99 percent suggest it works nearly everything which is hard to believe. It would be near magic if it works on 20 percent.
Everyone uses Pro EQ is the reason I don’t. 😂 thanks for talking about stock plugs. I’m slowly getting away from 3rd party because of the installation crap, upgrade path, ilok junk, and how they can crash your session out of the blue causing you to disable each one to find the culprit. I just did what everyone fears the most and upgraded from Intel Mac to M processor. You know what that means. WUP WUP. So, maybe 30 Waves plugs are dead to me. I ain’t paying over $1,000 to get them back. Almost forgot there is one plugin in my system right now that causes a thump at the beginning when bouncing out. I think it’s a PA plug.
This is great, thank you! I did keep getting drawn away by the pitchy vocals, I would tune them up a little bit. Just my opinion, really great otherwise.
if u can make that guy sound good many props to you, throw in "Master Plan" vst, there are some others the pros use but it took me a long time to find them and I ain't about to share that.
@@inswainaudio ty u bro, Fairchild 660 Legacy for limiter, Pultec EQp1a, Teletronix la2a, T-Racks One, watch Mix with the Masters you'll find it, level up!
This is a dope video bro. Love the message for trusting yourself and playing your own game. Good take with the podcast as well. Congrats on 400 subs homie!
the mix sucks so bad, did you even use autotune? (ok you did, but you used 40 retune speed, you should've used 14, no wonder it sounded kinda funny in your mix), sounds over compressed in a way that's lifeless, and lacks low mid. it's sad how every mix tutorial sucks, it's like everyone has a deaf ear and can't tell that how their mixes suck, so they keep uploading these tutorials, that sound so much worse than the original song + the raw vocals were already processed through hardware compression eq preamp etc, maybe even plugins to shape the tone of the vocal but maybe not
Can somebody tell me which juice wrld song is this "Please don't run from me, You're so lovely, We both got demons that are ugly...." These lyrics just popped in my head but don't kno the song...
Would you say this example (your song) is maxed out on compression? Like, is it so compressed that even if you compressed only 1 more decibel, it would be audibly worse?
Exactly how much compression one uses is subjective. Of course, I personally think that it could not be compressed 1db more, otherwise I would have. I also think that it couldn't be compressed 1db less, otherwise I would have. However, I think a better answer to your question is this: is this vocal on the "heavier" side of compression? Yes, I'd say it's pretty heavily compressed; but that is the in-your-face sound I was going for from the inception of the song. There are many songs compressed this much though, and some even moreso. It's definitely not an outlier in terms of compression. I hope this helps!
