How to Use Reference Mixes (The RIGHT WAY) 

One way in which I have grown as a musician and have applied to what I do in my mixes is: I am a guitar player (I love metal... everything metal) I listen to my favorite guitar albums and without putting too much (any really) thought into my playing, I'll try and replicate the rhythm style of my favorite guitarists but not try to figure out the notes. I got to a point where I'd just try and Invision what it might actually look like, not exactly but what they are doing and pick out parts or riffs that I think is neat and got to such a stupid point where it was almost cartoon like version, serious but like someone who is not a musician but doing a cartoon that doesn't really know what the actual guitar parts would look like and they are drawing it how they think it might sound. And then I work and work and work on it over and over again until by the time I look back at where I started looks like a completely different planet. I do the same with mixes. I have my favorite mix engineers too. I don't memorize frequencies or anything technical like that but I have a mental snippet of what I love about how drums sound (because that's where I start and love working on drums), I think about the style of the drums that are being played and the spirit of the music and allow it to take its own shape, sometimes the bands ive worked with, I listen to the music that they love and have inspired them and maybe they have a particular style they would like to emulate but at the same time make their own. I've been fairly successful in that way. If you listen to a lot of music, it has its own life and if....IF you can be still enough you can see (hear) it as it take on its own type of life and become an entity all of its own...sounds like some hippy shit I know. But that's how Id describe my process. I don't know if anyone else does that but fuck what other people think

Awesome to hear! Yes, that one is huge. Makes a big difference. -Justin

I'll do this one soon! -Justin

Awesome to hear! -Justin

I plan to do that soon. Maybe even this week :-) -Justin

Awesome to hear, thanks Rich! -Justin

He’s one of my top 3 favorite mastering engineers of all time. I’m constantly referencing against his best work to make sure my work is in that league. I’ve just learned so much by studying records he’s mastered. -Justin

@@SonicScoop Howie Weinberg, too. Listening to some Sonic Youth "Dirty" today.

He's a good one! I've interviewed him. Wild character that guy :-) The two other guys on my top three list are Greg Calbi for sonics along with Ludwig, and my own mentor, Joe Lambert. But Howie has mastered a huge proportion of my favorite records of all time.... even when they're not my favorite "sounding" records of all time. Howie has such a good sense for getting the right vibe and attitude for a record. I'd put him in my top 5, easy! If I wasn't so personally biased in favor of Joe maybe he'd be in the top 3! I'd have to think about it. But he has one of the coolest catalogs in history. -Justin

You got it! I’ll do that one soon. -Justin

Glad you could catch it one way or the other! -Justin

Yes, good one! For years, the DM album Ultra was my sonic reference. That's post-Alan Wilder, so I'm not sure who recorded or produced it, but it sounds amazing.

I have a ton of audio examples in the DAW of this of listening in the members section, and in the mix breakdowns playlist here: ru-vid.com/group/PL3yghKGBjggRR_iZ0K6m4qMYLYUQ6UV-e Next week (probably) I’ll open my 5 favorite references in the DAW. -Justin

Sorry to hear that! What do you think is holding you back? Is it a lack of experience? A lack of having a system? If you want to join the members section we have regular mix feedback sessions where we can help you discover he low hanging fruit for you and get concrete advice on what to do from here to improve. Very best, Justin

Working on it! -Justin

This is what using references to learn your environment is all about. When you know what "good" sounds like in your space, you will have a much easier time answering this question. You may occasionally need to refresh your ears throughout the day to remind yourself of what "good" sounds like in your room. In the beginning, sure, doing a lot of direct AB comparison and attempts at copycatting can help you learn faster. But hopefully, you can abandon doing too much of it as your confidence grows. -Justin

Glad your are digging it! If the free stuff is this helpful imagine how useful the paid stuff probably is :-) -Justin

You should generally be level matching when you reference, yes. ADPTR Audio's Metric AB tool is great for this. In the first part of the video I talk about referencing in mastering. AS it goes on, we begin to talk about referencing in mixing and recording, and how it is different. Short answer is that in mixing it's more about consulting other recordings determine how they solved certain problems or questions about relative levels, brightness or low end between specific elements, only occasionally consulting references when you run into problems. For recording, it's more about reminded yourself periodically of what "good" sounds like in your space. For the more detailed answer, finish the whole episode! :-) -Justin

Kii make great speakers! But I’m not so sure they remove the need for any referencing. You still have to learn them, you still have to tune yourself every day, and the room is an even more important part of the monitoring equation than the speakers. Even if you had perfectly flat monitors and room (which is impossible), you’d still have to learn them. “Flat” is not what we are used to hearing, and so we have to learn even that, and we have to occasionally refresh and refine ourselves even once we’ve learned them. For instance: How bright you like to hear things will vary depending on how early or late in the day it is, and how tired you are, and how much caffeine you’ve had. So even if your monitoring is flat, you’re not! :-) And even once we’ve done that, we have to think about what the right balance and tonal decides to make are. Great monitoring is a big help! But it doesn’t give us taste. References help with that too. They help us develop our tastes, and understand the norms of taste in a given genre, whether we want to adhere to them or abandon them. Deeply understanding what great records sound like on your system!) is a key component in making great sounding records yourself. I hope some of that makes sense! -Justin

@@SonicScoop I disagree. You want your music to sound the best on the best speakers, so the solution obviously is to mix on the best speakers. Additionally, you want your mix to sound great when played loudly in a very large space. This is why professional studios mix and master in large studios with large speakers positioned in the far field. The large space helps simulate an anechoic environment, which is how speakers are measured. This is because the sound waves travel too far to cancel each other out. However, not everyone has that luxury, so speaker manufacturers have designed speakers like the Kii's that take the room out of the equation thanks to their cardioid design. This is what Jacob Collier has stated: if his mix sounds great on the Kii's, he knows it'll sound great everywhere else. Reference mixes are only for amateurs who cannot or will not invest in a proper solution, which is to get a pair of speakers that play flat from 20Hz up to 20kHz. They might get you 80% there, but the last 20% is what separates the men from the boys, so to speak.

“Reference mixes are only for amateurs”. What are you smoking mate?

Seriously? You actually believe that last sentence? Do you by any chance own a pair of Kii’s?

That's just how I am! If you like the information, do what I do and listen at 2x speed! :-) This is my preferred format, so it's what I do myself. I also don't have 40 extra hours to formally script and edit every video for short attention spans in exchange for the peanuts RU-vid pays, like some of the youngins' do! I save the tight scripting and editing for courses. On RU-vid, I do livestreams, and I try to exhaustively cover the topic. That's my niche. IMHO, the 1-5 minute videos most people do don't actually help much... and the tightly edited 15 minute videos aren't sustainable to make unless they are exclusively sponsored by some outside brand with products to sell. (They take 10x longer, or more, to make.) -Justin

The phrase "overly verbose" is verbose. 🤷

45 mins IS brief for the amount and value of info here

I was personally hoping to see some practical workflow examples at each stage but I think Justin’s approach is more of a podcast/discussion. I’m definitely looking forward to him cracking open his 5 favorite references. I think that would be super valuable.

Until RU-vid flags and silences them