3 Rules of  

Can you mix and master my song

That part begin at 19:50 of the podcast after the musicianship question.

@@OnTheLeftHandSide thanks

I love your videos, man. Thank you!!! I'll try to remember to check the website with 5 steps to mix.

@@emmabmusic if your in Nigeria I can do a great mixing.

Scratchy and Whiney!

I get a strong sense that no one really knows what those words mean.

​@@cisium1184 i have my 2 cents on those boomy: a lot in the bass department without the high end to balance it out muddy: can be read multiple ways, but i would go for: "long sustains bleeding into one another" first and foremost for EQ in particular would say "not giving each instrument their own frequency pocket to live in, which results in fighting for attention" but general lack of dynamics and/or attack curves could be considered muddy too i guess and since attack usually comes in the higher frequencies (at least higher than the fundamental usually), making things boomy is a recipe for making them sound muddy boxy: a small cabinet/room which makes sounds extremely dry and small, also kills off sympathetic resonance and the such harsh: very tiring to the ears high pitches, generally with a very strong attack. strident: never heard of the use of the word before, i wouldn't know (i just found out it kind of means harsh aswell lol)

Clippy

Mike Roberti *dwarves

GOAT

🕶

Annie you are ok, you are ok, you are ok Annieeeeee

Thaaaaaanks🙏💕

Thanks for this

Great video...finally understood how eq works and what is the aim...Can u also do a video that explains which instruments typically falls in which freq...

My first day as a trainee sound tech at my local venue the guy training me said something that stuck with me forever "EQ is really simple, usually you want boost something in its weak range and cut it in its peak range" whenever something sounds off, thats my goto solution.

@@gauravpandey2037 a lot of instruments fall across multiple ranges. Drums run the entire thing, kick on the low to cymbals on the highs. Guitars cross 2 or 3 ranges, depending on the type of guitar, the style being played, lead or rhythm etc. Pianos run the entire range. Really whats more important is worry less about what instruments fall where and rather focus on the actual music being played. I have guitar solos that only use the high notes and if you are eqing that, you are going to do it differently than a guitar part that is moving up and down the fret board a lot.

@@kaigreen5641 so I am someone who has just started getting into the production world...I play guitar but when composing on my own for arrangement point of view my mix dont sound that good.....some instrument is always overpowering others...So I want to understand how to use EQ on different instruments to make the overall mix sounds good...

Keep it up, Thomas! Hope you're having a blast doing what you love!

Indeed

you have to equalize to achieve balance.

@@Radical_Middle He should know that

"Equalization"

@@ramboooo23 it depends UK/USA English have different spelling

@@spanellaful I think they spell taxez with a z now, but I could be wrong.

noi

I'm actually trying to teach other, non technical folks about EQ during streaming. But them self-tuning the EQ for their voice will be hard

It's a legend talking to another legend woah

Morsomt å se deg her 😅 Lykke til med vidunder maskinen 🤩

Ah, my favorite musicianeer finding similar resources. I feel I'm on the right path lol

marble machine

koshersalaami And listen to the "Room" not just your headphones.

Visuals can be useful. It's hard to have decent bass monitoring in an ameteur studio, so maybe checking bass visually is a good idea! Or those air frequencies, like will it sound good until it sounds dull when compared with other tracks? Look at how the highs roll off on a graph then. But no 'mixing' but checking visually of course.

this quote surpasses the video ;)

Greatest mixing quote ever!

Woow

LOL I agree, awesome teaching!

Ronnie Parfait I dig it. Although I’ve never heard Making a Dino from Marble, we joke that our engineer can certainly make Chicken Salad out chicken sh!*. I was told that good photography isn’t taking the right picture but rather taking a whole bunch of pics and knowing which ones to throw away. Taking a wall of sound and crafting it into the vision of the artist IS an art in itself. I’ve tried mixing my own work to moderate success but conceded to let a professional do anything I want publicly distributed. (Still... I can’t help watching these videos and think I’m going to get better Chicken Salad in my home studio 🤣)

steelman774 HAHAHHAHA ok boomer

Jake Below Me too!

well it is... and the shirt needs to be made.

As long as the back says "And the Devil is Your Best Friend"

MixDOWNNN

The Waterboy

Did it multiply your understanding? Or did it "boost" it? :)

i know this is considered good practice but could you explain why it is?

@@emilyschmanks I have always understood this to be with relation between a parametric eq and a graphic eq. With a parametric you are selecting a range of frequencies and with a graphic you are honing in on a tighter more specific range. Boost the wide (para) as that will help all of the frequencies in the specified range, but then cut in the narrow (graphic) as then you can pin-point which specific frequencies are causing the most trouble. I hope this helps

@@tonytygielski3703 that's an excellent explanation, thank you!

@@tonytygielski3703 I don't get this logic. If you boost wide when you only need some of those frequencies you'll have to make a bunch of narrow cuts afterwards to compensate for it. I think the only reason for this rule is that it helps keep live instruments natural sounding to not make narrow boosts. But for anyone who is working with sounds that aren't all live recorded or not trying to work in a traditional live genre mold, this is bad advice. You don't always need guitars in a pop or EDM song to sound "natural", often you just want to fit them into a busy mix.

If you have to boost anything you are probably not compensating for the room first. Be very careful when using boost for that way lays distortion.

Thanks. Share it around!

Ive been " producing " for almost 20 years and my music sounds so....flat in comparison to commercial tracks. I still adore to produce once in a while and meddle with music, but yeah, unless you study and practice a LOT or have communication with other musicians and engineers ( of which i have ZERO, nothing, ive been completely isolated in this sense since day 1 ) you wont get that far. clyp.it/4mjzzrmd I did this track like 1 month ago. I can´t get it to sound how id like.

@@positronikiss i have far less experience than you, but my guess is either your drum levels are a bit high or there could be a little extra compression to bring up the other elements - feels like some elements aren't as prominent as others if you know what i mean? cool progression though. only other thing i could think of would be to maybe find a reference track that has a similar instrumentation / genre to your track, and compare the frequencies and levels of the various elements between them. (just my opinion though, and i could missing the mark you're aiming for.)

@@WiresDawson Thank you kindly for your input and I believe it's very valuable feedback. Will take it into serious consideration. Best wishes Wires!

Hristo Hristov thank you

You may not hear it but you will miss the fullness of sound. No matter what anyone tries to tell you Harmonics go down as well as up frequency. When two frequencies interact you get the Sum and the Difference all the way down and up. I am a Sonar and Physics of Sound guy who has over 50 years of experience. This effect is measurable.

Im 35 and still hear up to 20k luckily. But honestly, whenever I hear speakers that are prominent above 15 16khz I cant stand to listen to them long. I prefer a roll off at the high end so those super high frequencies are still there but really really quiet.

@@richb313 when you say a sum and a difference between two frequencies are you referring to constructive and destructive interference?

I can generate some sounds played at high frequencies, amp them, distort them, play them through some speakers, record it reflected back from a room, and plop it into a spectrum analyzer, you're not going to have significant sub harmonics from that, I've been doing it a ton lately to learn about room resonance and the air transfer function - though depending on the room you may see inharmonic frequencies coming back. another thing you might see is higher frequencies resonating with your ears frequency detectors to some degree, I'm not totally sure about the exact physics of that but I'm somewhat skeptical that lower frequency range detectors in your cochlea are going to be activated by high frequencies. can you say more about what you've seen generate subharmonics from high frequencies?

It's called psychoacoustics, you don't need to hear it but it will change the whole mix.

I agree

He's definitely still talking about mixing, he's just referring to balancing the overall mix (of the main output), rather than individual instruments. Mastering usually involves extremely small EQ changes because it should already be well balanced in the mixing process. Mixing is not only to make sure each instrument/track is heard, but to make sure the whole frequency range is balanced and to position each track on the stereo spectrum (which can also affect the balance of frequencies on the main output).

Lol, that instantly occurred to me as well!

Well, its the same. You should be thinking about EQing in terms of the whole as well as the part. EQing isnt the primary job of mastering- either they fix what the mix eng failed to do, or its like an enhancement, or correction to limiters removing certain things. Ideal is mastering engineer would just use a limiter to make the volume standard then go home. But things arent ideal, and its evolved a lot more especially since ameteur mixers send them imperfect mixes.

He even has the pronunciation down lol. I can't unhear it now.

@@ThatOtherRaccoon Dude, what have you done?? All I hear is James Hetfield now. xD

He was James Hetfield's vocal coach. Duh. Noobs....

James Hetfield: "I am the table". We can hear him, but what you didn't notice, - we can also see him.

Cause the EQ is perfect.

For real

solid logic

I watched an Andrew Scheps video interview somewhere where he said a band once asked him to make the vocal 'warmer'. He did so, they said it was now muddy. Turned out they wanted reverb.

Chris Norris lol exactly

I think you've answered you own question there! There's a million ways a track can be recorded and mixed and that's why the "rules" should be used as guidelines. "Boost the 1K range for clarity" but like he said that could be 1kHz to 3kHz and you have to listen to the whole mix to find out. Cutting less is more. The different between and -1dB and -1.3dB reduction could make a huge difference. Each track has a personality, you just have to find it. Being a recording engineer can take years to get to a proficient level so the more you mix the better you get :D

RR19996 in my opinion. Take 500 hz and 4500 hz with the smallest Q and about -6 to -12 bro ong😭

I usually up or down by 3 db for reference, its a good starting point and later you can do more for a clearer change

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated!

Too little of one is too much of the other...so its just all the "too much" of the other freqs. Thats important, so if you eliminated too much "harshness" its now "muddy and boxy" then rather than cut low mids, why dont you dial back the high-cut used to eliminate harshness.

Ah yes - the old "Disco Smile" as it was known :)

Yanni...Laurel...yanni...laurel. Honestly thought, what's a V? A scooped EQ? I'm net to this stuff.

try dropping down in the 1-4k range a couple db that usually smooths it out.

Robbie maybe im wrong but I think if you had hearing loss the high frequencies would go first. Everything would sound dull. I think what youre experiencing is crappy speakers. Most speakers these days even studio monitors are boosted at the lows and highs. Its really annoying because its obvious theyre just worried about the initial audition so they can sell them faster. All the best speakers Ive heard and owned always sounded dull and boring when I first heard them.

ERROR. Eq is the way to make every instrument not fighting with the others.

Nothing goes wrong. You don't know what tracks you are going to use and you might collect all kinds of takes with various mics, amps and what have you. Unless you are irrelevant you are going to want to try new things as you make music and who knows what can happen. There are good mixers and bad mixers, but to question the level of mixing that takes place doesn't compute.

As previously stated, EQ on the one hand is, as you say, to _repair_ sound (which could of course be done with the mics, too, but you don't know how things are going to sound when coming out of speakers together, you know? And you have to adjust pan and all that anyways... the "repair" is there to compensate what was lost when going from being in a room with the musicians to hearing it after it was recorded and converted to just data), but it's also there to make things go together well. When you simply record a drum set and a bass and put those signals over one another maybe the bd will always knock down the bassline because they share frequencies, and that will just sound shit. Now you can either cut out certain frequencies of both so they have their own ranges or seperate them via panning the bass a little or something like that, same for other instruments. That's something that maybe wouldn't be a problem live but definitely is when recorded.

I appreciate the replies. I know that they come from people that honestly believe that EQ makes music sound better. But their replies reinforce my contention that EQ mostly ruins the realism with sound quality. Instruments fighting with each other?: Then pick different instruments, or change their placement on the stage, etc. But why use instruments that sound bad together, with the idea of making it less bad with a mixing board? You don't know what tracks you are going to use?: What does that have to do with EQ? Use a mixing board to combine whichever tracks sound best. But why send any of that through an equalizer? Cutting out certain frequencies? There is no way to do so without affecting the surrounding sound. If you record your voice, then that recording is as good as it can be. When played back through quality, neutral equipment, it should sound exactly like your voice, because it is your voice, captured and preserved without alteration. If you then apply EQ to that recording of your voice, then it will no longer be an accurate representation of your voice. When played side-by-side with the original, it will sound colored and degraded. The replies to my original comment explains why so many top hit songs sound wrong; sound crushed; contrived. What gets released to the world is the sound of the gear, not the sound of the talented artists. Like having the best food ingredients and a master chef, and then someone adds ketchup and salt to everything before serving the meal to the customer. Of course the chef's creation will end up getting buried in the mix, under a pile of additives. This is why labels such as AIX, 2L, MA Recordings, Reference Recordings, Water Lilly, Chesky, and others having policies against EQ and all other superfluous processing and anything that will harm the pristine sound on the master tapes. And their recordings sound glorious.

​@@NoEgg4u It kinda depends on the type of music. If you are talking about acoustic genres then i guess there's nothing wrong with you wanting as close to the real timbre of each instrument as possible. I would argue that there isn't an objective ideal to the setup (the acoustics of the room and particulars of each instrument and play style) of a live performance or studio recording. Enjoyment of music, especially on the level of timbre, is a very personal thing. Ok with the chef analogy, sometimes a meal needs more salt, salt isn't always bad and neither is EQ. On top of that EQ is not additive, you can't EQ in a frequency that isn't there, so unless the chef is already using ketchup it's kinda a weak analogy. A musician will not usually know exactly what their signal sounds like, as the acoustic sound will interfere with playback (and noise cancelling headphones will impart their own colour on the sound, quite different to a hifi system) so if they were a chef, they would be one with quite a stunted sense of taste. An audio engineer might have a more advanced understanding of timbre than the musician and in that case the 'meal' might be undersalted. I'm pretty sure a kitchen doesn't just have one chef per meal doing everything, one chef might make the stock, another chops and another fries, each imparting small variations on the final taste. There might be a master chef in the kitchen, but if anything he would be the one tasting the work of less experienced chefs at the end once the cooking (performance) is done and adding the salt/pepper (EQ). Similarly I would argue that a master musician may not have as good an understanding of timbre as a mixing engineer, whose job it is to colour a mix. Neither is totally in control of the final product, as in most kitchens, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily worse or that the artistic vision of the musician has been betrayed. If you are talking generally and not specifically about acoustic genres then i hate to break it to you, but lot of guitarist use pedals to make their signal sound 'better'. Even if they play clean, it's unlikely they will have the tone pot on full at the bridge pickup (which picks up the most harmonics) if they use a single coil because pure, unfiltered sound isn't always good sound. And as soon as you have hum cancelling (either from joint single coils or a humbucker) the signal is not longer as true to the string's vibrations and from your standpoint is not longer 'pristine'. Most variations and settings of electric instruments could be argued to count as 'degraded'. The line between good realistic signal and degraded bad signal is kinda arbitrary to me at that point, and EQ is just another variation that has the capacity to improve or worsen the final signal. Someones whose job it is to mess with the tone of a mix is probably as good at messing with tone as a musician is (Mayer can take at least some responsible for how good Hendrix sounds, even though by making pedals all he did by your metrics was 'bury it in a pile of additives'). EQ is good when used well and bad when used poorly, like any effect, like any component of musical expression.

@Flat Eric I haven't been eating for three days to reduce my carbon footprint.

I guess its recycled paper

I was about to comment about that, sych a waste wth

Collateral damage :)

sensing some serious boomer energy here