The 7 Deadly Sins of Mixing ("The mastering engineer's pet peeves") 

So awesome to hear Magnus! So glad it's been useful and so glad to have you as a member. -Justin

I agree with everything Justin said exept the reverb tips. Well of course I will eq the reverb, but on some genres a big beautiful lush reverb is paramount to the style. I've produced 3 cds for a Swedish band. They play "stadiumrock" like it was in 1985. They don't want "sparse and subtle" reverb. They want my Bricasti hall preset set to maximum LOL

@@kimchristiansen2397 💀💀😭 literally thoo

Justin and Dan Worall must be the two most insightful people I've ever seen on the internet.

Yes I’m weird and will likely pay your course when I have the extra funds ❤️

So glad to hear it! Thanks for saying hello :-) -Justin

But please don't smash em. I've done a two mixes of a song that are both on spotify... One that had a rms of -9,5 db and one that had an rms of -13 db. Guess which one that sounded the best after the algorithms of spotify kicked in?

This!! Vocals + instruments 🔥

Sure, you can do that. Just don’t use the things as references that you think you “should” use as sonic references. Use the things you actually like the sound of as your sonic references instead! If you want to do indie rock music that’s produced like a pop record, then use pop records you love the sound of as your sonic references. In that case, the indie rock records are your spiritual references, and the pop records are your sonic references. Just be honest about what you want your records to sound like, communicate that with your mastering engineer and you’ll be in good shape! I did a quirky indie pop record a few years back that used a big mainstream Justin Bieber track as a sonic reference (among others), even though it had nothing to do with the genre or style. But still, there were elements in the mainstream pop production he loved. I took that reference, and the other mainstream pop references, pretty seriously. We listened to things a few ways, and against a few more “normal” indie rock and pop references, but that mainstream pop reference kept us going in a different and better direction. That record I mastered that way ended up going gold. So I guess it was a pretty good choice! In this case, the “spiritual” references were indie rock and indie pop, while the “sonic references” were mainstream pop. Hope that makes sense! -Justin

Yes! I often says that we do our best mixing when we are not mixing. There are things you can do during the process, such as doing a listen through with a notebook, lying down on a couch in the back of the room, where you are not allowed to touch any knobs. I have a whole episode on this theme here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4KtLNOtEKDo.html

With modern PCs its stupidly simple to copy your tracks ad infinitum. Use it to copy your dialed in track for the verse, chorus, bridge, intro etc. Change some parameters like volume, stereo width (very simple in reaper), saturation, simple tilt eq. Copy for each section. No need to automate and you have liberty to change the sound of all identical sections at once

@@micindir4213 Good tips there. It works the same in Cubase

I agree, but the Lindell Audio 902 de-esser is so good that I many times don't care to edit my vocals for sibilance The insane thing is that it does this without introducing extra latency.

Honestly, I get the best results when I do a bit of both. I get obsessive about editing sibilance but I need some frequency specific volume ducking too.

That’s exactly how hip hip sounds now,you can’t hear nothing else but the kick and 808 lol…

@@kenzoblytheproducertv4934 Haha TRUE! I wish I was making hip hop or trap but my music is more like rock and country - where you should hear the other stuff too :D

@@amusik7 I love rock and country!!!Im really getting a lot more into other genres as well,my favorite is smooth jazz,that’s my dream music to produce a whole smooth jazz record where you can hear all the sounds lol but I haven’t gotten there yet my man…Hopefully soon,I can go on and on about where hip hop is right now,the sampled loop packs a million producers use has truly ruined any form of creativity.SMH

@@kenzoblytheproducertv4934 Sounds great! I hope you will do it and add a link here one day for us to hear it :)

Yeah, music-making is tricky. You fix one thing and something else starts sounding different - sounds play hide-and-seek with the producer.

Absolutely! The courses are made to apply to all genres, with specific notes on how the norms differ across genres. We even have some pretty heavy music audio examples in the courses. At a certain point, it could be helpful to supplement with additional training that is genre specific if you work in a very niche genre, but the principles and frameworks given here will be useful even in that context. If you take the course and disagree, you get your money back. Hope that helps! -Justin

soMic-scoop, huh? Do the soNic scoop people know what you're up to? I'll put you in touch with them if you like

Pan is the most powerful thing. There are stereo enhancement tools as well. But definitely start with pan. Here’s a full video on it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NcdZRbHQq5k.htmlsi=rmqKJjeW13xDu6uc

I do that too. I have the mixing session and the mastering session open , when I render a mix, I put it into the mastering session and listen there. The Limiter and Compression on the Mastering often changes the mix relations of soft and loud.it brings up the quieter parts. So I have to go back to the mix and automate volume quite a few times

@@treborretlaw yeah same process i have going on. it works, so no reason to change it i guess. thanks for the input!

It depends on your budget...

LOL

Thanks for the invite Eric!

Yeah sort of. But then again listening in mono is so dull. If people choose to listen in mono on a small telephone speaker; they are not really into music are they? So I say: I don't care about mono, listen to music on big systems that can handle stereo plus subwoofer. Your life will be better for it :)

@@kimchristiansen2397 listening in mono is dull as you make it, depending whether you have hifi and maybe using too many speakers! Some albums like classic beach boys are only in mono. Fm radio with bad reception collapses to mono. Am radio is only mono. And yes many people listen to music on their phone speakers which is also only mono. Maybe the vocal sounds good in stereo but disappears in mono. Maybe your stereo drums sound great but also disappear in mono due to phase. There are lots of reasons to make sure a stereo mix sounds good in mono, not at all due to hifi reproduction.

@@StephenAnderson98403 I see your point. But I don't mix for people that listen in mono on their Iphone 5. Music is bigger than that ;)

@@kimchristiansen2397 I've got great memories of listening to tunes on some tiny, tinny speaker. I bet iphones sound better than that ..

@@StephenAnderson98403 Again; I see your point. But let me give you an example of what stereo really is: The song "kill the king" by Rainbow from 1977.. Ronnie James Dio sings the song twice perfectly.. then they hard pan those two performances to L and R and in a stereo mix it sounds great. In a mono thing on am radio it would probably sound dreadful, but listening on a stereo system it is absolutely amazing Martin Birch did the mix, if he thought it sounded great, who are we to "complain"? :)

I prefer doing mix bus compression similarly, adding some kind of internal filter sidechain so the comp reacts less to the lows. can squeeze some extra mixbus compression out that way without it feeling too suffocated

Sidechain detector circuit.

if your here itsvalid

Dude, it’s a PODCAST. What am I supposed to do, dance? 🤗 -Justin

@@SonicScoop A hand-knit yarn blanket tutorial would be great.

@gorf first time on the internet or RU-vid? Probably the dumbest comment I’ve seen all month and that’s saying a lot

Maybe just stare at the camera in silence for a while. It’s the space BETWEEN the notes. Actually, I find your talking to be very engaging and informative. Cheers.

Might have been a bad joke?