What is your top tip for cleaning up muddy mixes? Thanks everyone for being such an amazing part of our community! I feel so blessed to be a part of it! Please all be well, look after yourselves and thank you all so much for everything that you do! I am so grateful for you ALL!
"Thanks everyone for being such an amazing part of our community! I feel so blessed to be a part of it! Please all be well, look after yourselves and thank you all so much for everything that you do! I am so grateful for you ALL!" Right back at ya Warren and Team ;0)
My top tip would be to give the most space to the most important element - usually the vocal(s). If the vocal is fighting with something else for space (distorted powerchord guitars are a prime offender), the vocal should usually "win" and the other part should yield space to it. It doesn't have to be all the time - sometimes automating an EQ band down when the vocal is singing, and back up when it isn't, is the right thing.
This video looks much like the ones 2 or 3 years ago, in the sense that you look younger. Health wise you did something good. Keep it going. 2 months ago or so , you looked so tired in a video. Can t help to say it, i m a nutritionist and longevity buff :) Always nice to learn from you. I m also year 1 Sound Engineer in Manchester England (spirit studios). Thanks for everything. Our teachers know your channel & Dave Pensado channel. Btw Dave said he installed a basketball space outside the studio and he would go every 2 hours or so to move those muscles to stay healthy. Did you hear of this trick ? I think is very needed for mixing engineers/ producers. We sit too much.
People, we need to start seriously filtering who we listen to when trying to learn something properly. On YT there are too many 'knowitall' beginners who pretend to know what they're doing. This channel for example for me is a true and reliable reference.
This channel also grew on me. I watched a lot of other channels. I am mostly a visual artist and a musician, making my own video game music for my small games and therefore I'm always looking for mixing and mastering tutorials. The same thing you describe can also be applied to the visual arts side of things on YT learning material. One can sense when you have found a source that suddenly feels honest and reliable. It's a feeling of someone having lots of knowlede and thought put into their craft and spent a lot of time with it, as well as how he presents this knowledge. Suddenly you feel trust and feel comfi to learn from him/her. These sources are not easy to find. I am so glad I now realized this channel is one of those sources.
FabFilter MB (a multiband comp) has a great "clean up low mids" preset that I like to tweak the bands a little and that helps a lot. Soothe 2 (the 2 version recognizes LF content better) and also has a great input-dependent ducking features
Great tips, Warren! What are your thoughts on sidechaining a compressor to duck bass guitar and/or synth bass when triggered by a kick drum? I know this is very common in electronic music, but do you ever do it with rock music?
@warren, so i noticed you have a audient interface. I was looking to upgrade from my ID14 to a UA Apollo x, totally off topic i know but whats your thoghts? Great vid as always! hello from nottingham
I agree! Learned a lot of new tips and tricks from here and I love that it’s not ”HERE’S HOW YOU DO IT” but instead ”here is one way to do it, here is another”.
Im in sound engineering school/ university and i still learn more from this channel and interviews with mixing engineers. School will not make you good, believe me. Mix a lot.
Point 1 is soooo important. This „fix it in the mix“ approach is annoying sometimes, it’s almost a religious belief in the power of plugins nowadays. How do they say? - Record as if there were no mixing and mix as if there were no mastering.
The only thing I fix in the mix is my timing which can be... terrible at times, so elastic audio helps! And just clip gaining. Fixing the actual sonic of my instrument just doesn't work!
Yes, I always learned (and still say), "garbage in, garbage out." I also love UBK's info on this topic - "the mix doesn't start after the recording is complete. It begins with the writing, pre-production and playing." Or, something like that haha Great vid, thanks!
Its about knowing what you have on those 5 or 73 tracks and using the right tools to put them in their place in the mix. Youre in the right place though because Warren is better than most of my teachers I had in engineering school. He's had hits (I have trouble taking advice from people who havent proven they can make better records than me. Theres no issue here, a #1 hit with The Fray will suffice) and unlike a lot of people he clearly doesnt feel threatened by sharing his "secrets"...
It used to be the same for me. I can recommend establishing really good and - even more importantly - consistent shemes for coloring and grouping your tracks. I used to think coloring was more a fun thing for aesthetic reasons, but I was wrong. it honestly helps me so much now. I'm getting to a point where I halfway "hear colors" in my mixes. Meaning there's certain groups of instruments (the mid-rangy chord stuff for example) that's light green. Leads are dark green. Both are in the green instruments group (and bus). Obviously it doesn't matter which colors you choose personally. But when I notice a problem, I also have a feeling for which color of tracks I'm gonna look at to fix it. Which immediately narrows it down to usually a hand full at most.
Related to that: Invest the time to create a template. This makes it easier to stay consistent with track orders and colors (and associated mixing choices, obviously). For example my INST bus already high passed at 200Hz because I just know I will do something like that anyway. The time invested in a good template is returned *so* quickly.
I love the way you demonstrated this on a massively saturated mix with huge guitars and bass. So often people do tutorials on fairly thin clean mixes where it's difficult to hear the changes they make. Also like the fact that you aren't afraid to get aggressive with an EQ. So many people only ever advocate tiny tiny tweaks all the time. Keep up the great work! 👍
This is a great video. I love the Brian Wilson example. Thanks to all of your videos you have shared on this subject, I am better at arranging low end instruments in my midi orchestration. I absolutely love all of your work from Produce Like a Pro training site. When Im not lazy (LOL), I actually do OK midi orchestra mixes thanks to you.
@@5-waymusic421 Trust me I'm the expert, the best way to deal with low frequency issues is to get rid of low frequencies. We don't need no stinking low frequencies around the house!
I think that that sub synth should be set in monophonic, in that way when the notes change they don't clash together for a few seconds, like it happens here. Probably that would make the low end a bit cleaner. Idk correct if I'm wrong but coming from the synth world, this rings my bell.
I do love hearing all the bottom end having its own space, what you did with high pass and a bump is what gives the kick its thump, guitars thickness, vocals low mid. Low mids are a tricky one as not all monitors have good forward low mids, or lacking low lows, so its common to hear error in those areas pushing more bass to hear the bottom which ends up being BOOMY! in the car speakers, or the low mids on an acoustic overpowers the car speakers but sounded ok on the monitors. Also room phase in the seating position, wherever that is on the EQ will end up being added, where it builds up being cut. I know I mixed to the room, every time I moved studio changed rooms my previous mixes sounded completely different. Thanks for the tutorial Warren!
Haha Love me I'm Rich Bass , just finished the tutorial in the PLAP Academy - Wonderful pro content again, this is very helpful, Warren Rocks it again !
I must say this: you are a true master. Everything you teach here is pure gold, because you give practical examples, not just theory. Keep up your great work, Warren!
Good solid techniques, that a lot of people(this guy) forget these fundamentals> Years ago a friend showed me that gtr eq technique, and somehow over the years I'd forgotten it. Thank you for the refresher! ;:-)
Not a mixer, just a bedroom song writer. #1, when tracking, cut more low end from the guitar than you think you should. That's why you have a bass guitar.
Thanks, Warren. I thought to myself before watching this video, "I have learned more from Warren than from ANY other source." Your real-time hands-on walkthroughs followed by explanatory recap is very helpful. Your videos are a troubleshooting Godsend - logical, practical, and spot-on musical with a 'you can do it' theme throughout. It means a lot to me. The one takeaway from my audio engineering studies/personal experience is that the human hearing range is 20Hz to 20KHz, and the goal for every mix is to present a sonic equilibrium within which each frequency has equal-opportunity to be contextually heard, according to how we humans perceive frequency (Fletcher-Munson curve). That is what I consistently learn with each new video you provide. Thank you so much! I typically approach a mix by, first, applying static EQ to all tracks. Second, I apply dynamic EQ to address what static EQ cannot. Third, I apply sidechain dynamic EQ (if surgically necessary) to address what standalone dynamic EQ cannot. Then, and only then, I apply compression (where suited), followed by limiting. I repeat this process for each bussed effect (reverb, etc.).
I remember starting off and using a 16 track mini disc recorder which was "the thing" in that time and we'd have to bounce out drums, keys, guitars and bg vocals to stereo tracks in order to make all fit.. Fun stuff.. Wouldn't go back to that at all though.
Warren my mixed used to suck... now they just kind of suck.. but I’m learning so much from you I’m hoping in years to come I’ll listen back and be happy. All thanks to you. Legend.
Pieces like that are very hard to mix. You did a really good job with it. I’d have been tempted to dispatch a lot of the simultaneous playing to the distant back here and there so each voice can have its 15 seconds of fame or infamy. But musicians don’t appreciate being quieted down even if it makes the final product much better. Since I play all the instruments myself, I only have one weathered ego to deal with. Makes mixing easier.
I could definitely hear and appreciate the effect of your changes to each of the individual tracks. However, listening back through a high-res DAC/headphone amp and high-end IEMs, the overall mix sounded a bit odd. The guitars really dominated the percussion, and the kick overpowered the rest of the kit. I would love for you to say more about making these kinds of decisions in the context of the overall mix, as opposed to making decisions by watching spectrum analyzers.
Yes I feel the same while listening to it on my studio monitor speakers. I appreciate the video and the point of it very much. But I also feel something similar. It was better when soloed/paired with each other, but wasn't better overall. The mids and highs remained seriously muddy too, but maybe that was not subject of the video. Also I wonder what kind of non-studio speakers can really reproduce drum kick around 45-55Hz. The bass guitar became lifeless, compressed. I would have done bass - kickdrum sidechain maybe, but these tracks are all muddy and would be hard to work with.
@@tiborfulop5298 My home speakers are flat down to 25 Hz. They are dual-woofer towers from ProAc. That kind of bass linearity is not common. However, given my experience with them, and having compared them to other speakers, I think something like a Sonos Play:5 or an Apple HomePod could reproduce bass in the region of that kick. So I guess the answer is you start to get that kind of bass response in about $300+ smart speakers, even if its being done by DSP rather than the natural response of the drivers. Anybody listening on cheap headphones, laptop speakers, inexpensive bluetooth speakers, even most car stereos, won't get those frequencies, or they will be at least -6db.
I wish I had your videos as a guide back when I began making music. I always knew I have composing skills but lacked when it came to mixing and mastering. After watching tons of your videos I've jumped more steps forward in mixing than during the last 10 years. Many thanks, you are a great teacher and you seem very nice person. I promise to tell everyone to subscribe your channel if I ever get my foot in the music business.
Loving these videos! This is the best most logically explained info I have found. It's crazy how I've gone years w/o thinking of these totally logical things and then wondering why my mixes still sound crappy. LOL I seem to have found these videos at the perfect stage of my understanding for the material. Thanks and keep em coming :)
PEOPLE! Do you want better mixes? The easiest way to do this....listen to this man. His advice will get you there. Even with my very basic recording setup, Warren has taught me so much. His methods are airtight and he knows his stuff. He's never lead me anywhere but down the road of better mixes. Warren is the real deal.
I have personally found that as long as everything collapses to mono nicely and there is no frequency masking, that the less low mids I cut (especially on the mix buss) the better. It will sound a bit "muddy" but I prefer to tame it with a multi band compressor and it yields a much fuller and thicker sound imo. I use the compressor to sort of duck, or push down the excessive low mids without removing them from the frequency spectrum. Again, as long as there is no frequency masking down in mono I feel the thickness that this delivers is really awesome
Hi Odin, thanks ever so much for sharing your insights! I don't personally subscribe to solving the muddiness on the Mix bus, I like to find the fault inside of the mix itself. Many thanks Warren
Mixing in mono as the first phase and constantly referencing the mono mix is sooooo important. Best way to hear vocal levels and BGV stacks in relation to the lead vox too
Pretty wild stuff. Whats amazing to me is the actual simplicity of the song itself. Pretty basic structure and , I must admit, I was a bit leary about the distorted bass at first, but you have the discipline to see the bigger picture. When you finally played all the tracks at once...outstanding. All the instruments doing small parts, yet combined it was epic without being busy.
Great video, can you one for the "harsh" frequencies too? It would be nice to hear the before and after with all plugins out (the ones used to clean up the muddy mix), and in.
I'm just on a binge session at work absorbing tips as a complete beginner to music production! Love the way you present information and the wide range of topics you cover!
Well Warren...I am always astonished and admired at how good always is your work! At 16:45...the magic happens and all sounds great. When a person knows so well how to do his job, I'm just observing and studying, hoping to get at least half of your results! Thanks for sharing, as usual :)
Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" used an electric and an upright bass a few bars overlapped to compliment each other. The 16 tracks are laid out amazingly (thanks RU for the donation) :)
This lesson is put together beautifully. Super production! I’ve been working in GarageBand without the ability to record live drums and bass. Consequently, all my drum and bass tracks have to be cut virtually. The frequency response of the virtual instruments by themselves is decent, but they tend to be weak in the mix. It’s tricky to beef them up without running into the muddiness problem. What I’ve been doing as a work-around is duplicating the tracks, then EQing each track in different ranges, similar to what you’re representing here in this video. For drums, I select a main or fundamental drum kit. After working out the lines, I choose a second kit with a different frequency character, then copy and paste the fundamental. I repeat this process a third time with a third kit. I shape the first kit with bright frequencies that give definition to each instrument in the kit. The second kit gets shaped with darker mids to pull out the toms and give the snare a good punch. I’ll even run this kit through an amp sim - the toms really sit nicely with a touch of gain or crunch. For the third kit, I work out low and high frequencies to pull out the kick and draw some additional cymbal definition. The result is astounding. The drums are right up front, clear, and punchy, similar to an acoustic kit. I take same approach for bass. Picked bass for the fundamental track that emphasizes middle and upper range, usually with a fair amount of crunchy gain through a guitar amp sim. Copy and paste to a fresh track, choosing a softer bass style. This track will pull out the lows and maybe some low mids. I’ll sit the second track a bit higher in the mix. Also, to create a little more width, I slightly offset this track so it’s behind (or later than) the fundamental. The result is a huge and present bass guitar that sits just perfectly with everything else. I’d love to hear any feedback. What do you think about this kind of approach? Thanks again for this great video! I picked up so many great insights.
You seem to be such a down to earth guy spilling out producing knowledge :D there are other content creators about recording who come across a lot more condescending Keep it up!
Would really appreciate A/Bs of before clean-up/after clean-up so we can hear the changes applied to the whole mix to better appreciate what has been achieved.
Joe Jurneke indeed! Although Chris is very famous for using his 48 track digital machine! He was one of the first people to use 48 track digital while most people were still 24 track analog!
I enjoyed this teaching session on "mud removal" from a mix. Very helpful! Would you kindly tell me what EQ plugin you are using in this video? Thanks so much! Jack
Great examples as usual. I'd read about sticking a sub under a live bass to get a clean punch, but this is the first vid to really demonstrate how great it can sound. And in such a busy mix it really comes through nice and clean, but sounds 'real'. Thanks for the effort you put into stuff like this. For someone like me, where this (unfortunately) is not the day job, jems like this are awesome ;-)
Man I really love your videos! One feels you are not saving any knowledge or tricks for yourself, rather giving it all and actually wanting people to learn, not caring just about the number of views. A rare thing this days, keep it up please!!
Hey Warren. I have been checking out your studio tours/interviews for a while then segued into your production techniques. All great stuff! So accessible to everyone. Cheers to you for all you do for the community. I used to use Pro Tools with its vast amounts of plugins, routing and track count but dumped it all for a Tascam DP32 (seriously miss automating levels). I goof around with songs and when I get an idea it would take way too long for the system to boot up and I would lose the vibe many times. The Tascam gave me the speed with a short power up and a couple button clicks to arm tracks and lay down my ideas quickly when fresh. My big problem is the limited mixing abilities of my DP32. I get great "demo" mixes on headphones but when I lock the master recording by printing the effects in the final output recording it doesn't translate. When I pull it into my computer the mix sounds tiny and frail. I have to boost it by at least 6 to 8 dB of gain and then EQ to get it back to its original sonic quality, a reason I have been researching your application videos (and they have been helpful). I am sure there are a lot of us out there that use these types of recording setups because we don't have access to top gear, hell even mid level gear! It would be super cool to see your approach and tips and trick arsenal put through one of these porta-studio units. I know you are a well know and experienced producer working on top of the line and vintage gear but would you take a challenge? Would you be interested to produce a tune on a Tascam DP unit? See what yo can do with the onboard effects, only (8) XLR inputs . Master it internally and see what you end up with? It's also possible to get the raw tracks into a DAW to mix in that environment (which I haven't done). Could a track recorded on a Protastudio complete with its bigger brothers during an A/B session? If you ever are ever willing and able to get yourself in from of a Tascam DP 32 I think it would make a great addition to your video catalog for a lot of us that have never used an SSL. We could see what an experienced producer can pull out of a very common recording unit. Could be fun. Thanks for your youtube channel!
@@Producelikeapro I've been using this advice in stitching together kids chorus videos for our church, just watching where the mud is, because it adds up with 8 or 10 cellphone videos. EQ like mad, differently on every kid. (also ReaFir to subtract out background noise in this case, which you would never do in real life).
One of my best friends is Matt Butcher, he is a world class front of house mixer, recording engineer and musician. Go listen to him mix the Gorillaz or Blur and it will blow your mind! An amazing FOH Engineer
@@Producelikeapro I don't know how often you go see live shows but would you agree it's a trend to maximize the low end at the expense of everything else, regardless of genre?
I've never commented on any of your videos before, because I'm mainly here to try to learn more about recording with a DAW. I'm from the dinosaur school of recording I guess, where we used tape, and mixing desks, outboard effects, and microphones, to capture the performance of a musician. From this video, I would kind of get the feeling that I really would prefer to have all the sounds come from organic instruments, and leave all the virtual instruments for the video games. Maybe that's why the music of the day seems to lack the soul of the music that used to be... no one has the patience to learn their instruments, and put in the sweat to make it happen. Warren, thank you for posting your videos. You reveal a lot about what to do, and what not to do when mixing recordings.
@@Producelikeapro Hello Warren, I am pleased to meet you also! I've been a subscriber for a couple of years because I find many of your videos very helpful, and some are very entertaining, ( Interviews with Jack Douglas, Aspen Pittman, Billy Sheehan, Tony franklin, and many others). I'm basically just a guitarist who loves to compose and play, but I'm also proficient in bass guitar and drums. I've been watching and listening to your videos to help me put together a home studio of my own with the goal of recording and producing my own music to the best of my ability. My biggest hurdles are in trying to make the transition from the analog recording world to the digital one. You offer a LOT of information in the digital recording age, and sometimes I find myself a little overwhelmed, but I don't give up. One day, I will have some recordings down to my satisfaction, and I credit your videos as a large part of the guidance I've followed to get there. Thank you!
Thank you so much Warren, these points are so useful and can't be overstated. Really helping my understanding of how to accomplish what I'm shooting for.
PATIENCE is KING! I'm reminded of that every time I get excited to record and I completely pass all the fundamentals looking franticly for a big RED button to push. I've wasted so much time by just not taking the time to go step by step . Thanks man for these vids not only keeps users objective but as for me keeps me grounded and eyes on the best production and post production possible. which is the prize. Hope everyone finds this in the best of health and knowing that no virus of any kind imaginary or not can stop the love for creating. Music or the Spirit of is truly our Commander and chief our ears hands and etc... are just her aids. Again thanks
I just found your channel while listening to RU-vid at work and I seriously can't believe it because it feels like a hidden treasure I can't wait to get home today
@@Producelikeapro no, thank you man! . It's no BS stuff you're posting up and I've always had this muddy issue with my mixes and you've helped me no end. Really appreciate it. Would love you to hear my last few tracks since I've been checking out your videos. Very subtle changes but big differences.
Warren, Warren, Warren! Yet again you’re a cut above the rest! A huge thank you for posting amazing videos like this and all your work on RU-vid and the academy! You have helped me no end! I don’t need to look elsewhere to help me improve my mixes and to stop my current job and do mixing as a real job! Now to get some clients to help achieve that! Wish you were still in England so I’d have the chance to meet you and pick your brains more! My eternal gratitude, Brad
Thanks Warren. I learned a few really great tricks!! I'm so thankful for your content always. Stay well and again thank you. You provide a priceless service to our community.
