Mixing Beats THE EASY WAY - MPC X Beat Making Tutorial (BACKWARDS MIXING) 

Great tutorial. I used to screw up so many dope beats before I learned how to mix top down. A lot of times beat makers will put plugins on things that are already sounding good just because they think they’re suppose to do it. Top down mixing forces you to be sparing on the individual tracks. I like your method it’s similar to my own, a lot of top down tutorials don’t have hip hop in mind and don’t emphasize the drum gain staging before top down mixing begins. For hip hop the drum bus and master bus work side by side. I haven’t seen anyone on RU-vid besides you that made that apparent. I use the MPC X also, but more often as a VST inside FL studio. My Master Bus typically consists of a console plugin like NLS Bus, Pultec style Eq, SSL G bus style Compression, Fab filter q3, stereo widening, soft clipper and tape. Also a limiter. Once dialed in I mix the other busses and individual channels. I mix with my limiter hitting about -3 compression to have an idea what the master would sound like and turn it off before export to track beat with vocals. When I track vocals to a 2 track beat I only have the NLS and God particle on my master bus. Since the beat is already premixed I don’t use God particle at 100%. I would use God particle in FL but that plugin is processor hungry. But it acts like all those type of processing in 1 with great overall Eq multi-band curves. Hit it with the drums at about -5 db and the rest of the mix is a breeze. I track vocals in Protools or Luna. Cheat code is using a reference track not being processed by the effects chain to A/B mix.

Again, appreciate your response ig yesterday ✊🏾

Hey Drank, this is REALLY good info. You are definitely an inspiration for me and others, no doubt!!! For those of you that are not on board with the Drank & the SFG, you are missing out🎉. Yes, please keep making follow-up videos JUST LIKE DIS!!! So we can keep making music!!!!!

Show us how you mix the rest. That was insightful!

Awesome work Big G. Explains everything about gain staging before the DAW

Dang Kang, you deserve a "Drank" for this one Mane! I (and anyone else who is Paying attention)Always Learn something useful from Your uploads. I have heard about Backwards Mixing but it wasn't demonstrated the way you did it. It makes it more Native to me since yu did it in the MPC software. Thanks again.

Hell yeah bro! Preciate you fam! Peace & Blessings!!!

The level setting tips are gold. I’ve done variations of it for decades. However, the backwards mixing tips are similar to the “Top Down” mixing technique which has been getting some outsized attention lately. I personally choose to not use this technique as it is a subtractive mixing technique instead of an additive mixing technique. It’s easier for me to work bottom up building my layers and effects on top of each other applying the bulk of my effects and dynamics to the individual elements or sub mix busses instead of the master bus. While my situation is a bit of “old dog, new trick,” I do feel that while the end results MIGHT be the same with either technique, the technique does tend to influence the result. Within the DAW or MPC itself, our concern is usually less about clipping within the channels as 32 floating bits makes it a non-issue for the mixer section, but it is an issue for the plugins that have specific thresholds. It is always best to follow best practices in level setting regardless of DAW or “real” audio gear. The real analog outboard gear has to be treated very precisely and is not tolerant of sloppy technique. I’m spoiled (and influenced) by my years of live sound mixing, where we configure the channels and all the channel processing so the faders sit at “unity gain” for the “normal” level. My mix is 95% there and I only need to touch the faders for guitar solos and normal variability during the performance. Because of this, I also tend to set my DAW and MPC up the same way. I don’t adjust the trim/gain knobs for what we call “gain staging” these days, I adjust them for the mix. Within reason, of course. I will gain stage the channel input so it hits the gate and compressor with normal predictable settings, but will gain up/down things (level set) so the fader itself is unity. When building a mix, I personally always start bottom up, by establishing the drums and bass at the levels I want. (A good start point is with the peaks of each setting at -9dB). Then I keep adding my layers (pads, samples, leads, vocals). The end result is my mix hitting around 0dB give or take. That’s where my master compression and limiting kicks in and keeps the levels and LUFS happy. The only exception is when I’m doing audio for video, or anything with a lot of spoken word as we work backwards by starting out with the vocal/voice and add the music and effects underneath. Anyway, good advice, and I always glean something useful to either directly incorporate or give me ideas on how to do something totally different. For example, you EQ’d into the compressor. Depending on the situation, I might do it into or out of the compressor, or both. EQ into the compressor so the compressor compresses the channel correctly and predictability and is influenced by the right frequencies. EQ out of (after) the compressor for tone. (Then let a light the buss glue compressor address the level variances). Yes, all methods are still an iterative process.

Appreciate the knowledge! SFG!

Fantastic video Kang 👍

Great Tip!

Tappin in...One love bro

Great, keep em coming.

Thank you!! This is helpfull. Can you show us how to mix ur 808

Appreciate the gems, fam

🙏🏿

We need the follow up

Follow up

How did you adapt to the way it’s structured where it groups the drums together then all the add in instruments have there own track. Vs Making say 8 tracks at 12barloop Drums melodies everything have individual tracks Then jump into song mode And paste the 12barstamps out to build the song how you want then draw in the fade in/out with the knobs if you wanted or Evan add a riff to the stamped out song I don’t understand in song mode why you still see notes maybe it’s me and I’m going about structure wrong with it

Good video but bro use only the mpc tools please

Is there a way to individually process (eq/compression/reverb etc) each drum sound? Like eq kick one way, the snare a different way, big reberb on snare but none on kick and so on?

Quit talking with your hands bro