►Get the Lauten LS-208 Mic used in this video for $50 off here: bit.ly/lauten208-50off ►Get FREE plugins that run on your GPU: gpu.audio/sonic-scoop ►Get Mixing Breakthroughs here: mixingbreakthroughs.com ►Get Compression Breakthroughs here: compressionbreakthroughs.com ►Get Mastering Demystified here: MasteringDemystified.com
something that helped me a lot when i was really getting started was to make a mix template. spend a few hours today making a good template that can get you started, save a bunch of busy work, but still be flexible. this allowed me to spend more time following my feelings and navigating the session quickly without fumbling around setting up sends and searching for plugins. i dont like to load up my templates with a bunch of plugins because i want it to be flexible, but i do have a template i keep coming back to with an ssl channel strip on each audio track. having this set up quickly helps me not over think, move quickly and not forget what changes I wanted to make, helps me learn the ins and outs of the select few plugins I actually trust…. I mean, the pros of this workflow are endless. I may outgrow this workflow eventually, I do make changes to my template as my experience grows and my needs change. but setting up some templates have been absolutely crucial to getting busy work out of the way and letting me really just focus on the music. the prepopulated ssl channel strip also makes it super easy to do ear training as well. I can do a mix with only eq, or a mix only with compression. i can turn the channel strips off and only mix with volume and pan. the potential for a simple template, especially as a beginner, cannot be understated in my opinion.
man point number 4 is so true. ill often go months without doing a mix because ill be doing engineering and recording for bands. but each day that we make progress ill take an hour or two to do a quick mix using only pan, volume, and if i have the time, eq. I do set up a limiter on the mix bus, but it’s there for utility, not for the mixing. by limiting myself to these few options its kept my ears tuned and further trained them. i can get so much more out of little tweaks now. these one hour mixes sound better than some mixes ive done in the past that i spent days on. points 3 and 4 are absolutely critical.
number 7 too… gadamn its so true. ppl say to get it right at the source. well, cant get closer to the source than the musician. not just for technical ability, but for their heart and soul. so true. but also, when recording musicians live their ability is important in a similar way to the arrangement. the register and parts of the kick and bass are important, but also the way the bass player plays the part can glue the low end together. ive had mixes where the drummer and bass player werent playing well together and i could not get the low end to feel right. on the other hand, ive had mixes where the bass player new exactly how to play around the drummer and the low end was the most beautiful low end ive ever achieved in a mix. that mix probably took half the time for a 100x better result.
Awesome info as always Justin, I would like to comment on your bad mixes comment but great song Mess Around performed by Ray Charles. Comparing this recording in 1953 in mono and recorded most likely in one take live is an awesome sound for the technoligy they only had for that time period in mixing and mastering. That's a great example of simplicity and great musicians showing how it really should be done. Drums,Bass Piano,Sax,Vocals in one take. Music today is so over produced with flooding the mix with so many unneccesary tracks to the grid, pitch correction makes it so sterile and fatiguing to listen to for long periods. Analog was the answer back then and is still the answer to great mixes and mastering to date. Great sounding mixes have been done in the box but with the polish of analog gear to digital for todays standards. You also nailed it when you mentioned working with better musicians then your mixes will improve and better for the mastering proccess. Thanks so much for your opinion and options to improve our mixes.
When you select the mic you'll use to record the guitar, you're mixing. When you choose which guitar you'll use, you're mixing. When you choose what strings are on that guitar, you're mixing. You're mixing from the get go.
To each there own … but I’ve never seen a longer plug for sponsors on any music video. I’m staying with it, but it’s definitely a deal breaker for me. Having said that I appreciate your years of experience and smart advice.
Hm. I guess you don’t listen to a lot of podcasts? :-) Some of the biggest podcasts in the world start with 10 minutes or more of advertisements. I do about 90 seconds in the middle and 90 seconds at the end on average. So it’s less than the norm. I went a little long at the end of this one because I was genuinely excited about the new mic. But by that time the episode is basically over anyway! The benefit of this general approach is that you get fewer video ads interrupting the episode throughout, and I can afford to do content with more depth, more often, instead of doing other things. (You also have the option to skip ahead.) I know I’ll get more views of I end up serving you even more ads by doing lots of highly edited 10 minute surface level fluff videos, but that’s just not my jam. It’s not what I like to watch or listen to, it’s not what really changes lives, and it’s not what I care to focus on right now. Hope that makes sense! -Justin
Hey Andy, Do you have a lathe? :-D If not, you're just doing a digital master that will be pressed to vinyl. My approach? 95 times out of 100 I treat it the same as the main digital master. For most clients, I just do one great sounding master that they can use for anything: Streaming, download, CD, vinyl, tape cassette, etc. For an extremely small minority of clients who have lots of budget and lots of fans, you can do an alternate version of the master for vinyl, usually with less dynamic range processing, as loudness masters less in that format. There are a couple of other small considerations around low end... It's generally advisable to avoid really loud, really low frequency stereo bass, jus to be safe, but the person cutting your master to lacquer will have an elliptical filter to help mitigate this if needed. And, there is a tradeoff between how long a record can be with how much low frequency amplitude you are trying to cram onto it. But again, this is generally addressed by the person actually cutting the lacquer, and they may make recommendations on that front if the record is so long and so bottom heavy that it might warrant being a double album to avoid losing some lows. But that's an uncommon conversation to have. There's really not too much to worry about here! Just make it sound great :-) I talk a little bit about vinyl in the course, but it''s really just a bit more detail on these core ideas. It will definitely help give you the confidence you seek though, and I think could help you tremendously in general. Very best, Justin
Become a better musician! :-) Or, failing that, at least become a more emotionally compelling one, warts and all. But that’s kind of the same thing. -Justin
@@SonicScoop I was told that I can fix all that in the mix? Jk, I do my thing fine. But I’m having a blast learning mixing. Thanks very much for sharing your knowledge and doing so with such clear expertise.
Haven’t heard back from him. He doesn’t really have contact info I can find aside from Instagram, where our message is probably buried under mountains of spam. -Justin
This is gonna sound like one of those cult things where the chap went to the preacher and was delivered and now wants everyone to know... But in reality, as a composer, mixing was a huge pain: and I get the arrangement thing 'cause convincing orchestral cues always come from craftsmanship and no mix can save a badly orchestrated track, but what if you KNOW that the arrangement is exactly where you want it to be but are still unable to make it sound good? To cut a long story short after Mixing Breakthroughs mixing became such an enjoyable part of my workflow that at some point I considered pursuing a career in score mixing. Whereas in the olden days it really bugged me. As a proof of concept I remixed some of my old cues (2015) using your framework, I was able to mix them quickly and finally get them to sound how I wanted, back in the day I would spend literal months on each track and it never sounded good.
It’s embarrassing how long it took me to realize how important it is to have someone else mix my music. I hate listening to my own songs over and over again and tearing it apart and rebuilding it, it ruins the song for me. I love mixing other peoples music though!
Very relatable Tyler! Thanks for the comment. I have a whole episode about exactly that idea: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0FJhpL0VHaI.html
