My favorite tip: reference, reference, reference. You might have heard the following phrase – “make sure your mix sounds good in mono.”. Music Analysis Guide. Fortunately, some laptops and desktops have them built-in, while other’s don’t. Now you’ve got a toolset for mixing, but how do you measure what you’re doing? For those of us who use headphones, we might get the bass coming through, but we can’t feel it as if it were on a big sound system. It tells you what the audio level is at a given point in time. People will argue you also need diffusers, but they aren’t necessary for a small room. With these differences in mind, let’s look at the studio and how to optimize it for mixing. Ever seen a bass & treble knob on your home stereo system? A lot of it isn’t tailored towards electronic music, which is often created in a different environment. Parallel processing adds some original dynamic back into the sound. Is it true? The cheat sheets are very helpful as they explain why you need to boost or reduce in a certain area. The most important music mixing tip is……. Share 2K. Well, unless you can afford or source good quality nearfield monitors, a good sound card, a good room, sound absorption and treatment, correct monitor placement and isolating monitor stands, you might as well just use headphones. Important: a lot of producers have thrown a technique around that involves inverting the phase of the left or right channel in order to get a wide sound. Tweet. Even more so if you pair it with a good sound card (internal or external interface). Bass traps are used in corners, where bass frequencies tend to build-up and amplify themselves, creating an over-hyped low-end in comparison to reality. Earn Money from Music. Get things sitting in the right place, and then make smaller 1-3dB adjustments. To be honest, compression requires an article in itself. Why is it better to be subtractive? On Live, this is set up by default in arrangement view, but you can set it up in other DAWs if it’s not already a feature. Take these cheat sheets with a grain of salt and don't forget that every sound will be different. I’m talking couches, rugs, pillows, curtains, certain types of wall art and more. No pair is ever truly ‘flat’ no matter which company will try to have you believe it, so rock up to your local music store and give some a listen, even if you’re buying online. Well, if you ever need to find a certain sound, you know exactly where it will be. The great thing about stands is that they are usually height-adjustable, so you can get it at exactly the height you need. It’s important to listen to the timbre and frequencies in each sound, think about what else you’ve got going on and how it will fit in with that. If it’s in the middle, the left and right channels are unrelated (0 correlation). They function similar to a bell curve, except they either boost/cut all the frequencies above or below a certain point. Return tracks allow you to use an effect on multiple tracks – for example, the same reverb sound on drums, piano and FX. At the end of the day, as long as you know how your monitors sound then you can work with what you have. Because you’re aiming for a clean mix, right? 90% of monitors are these days, but it’s always good to check. It’s ok to go into the left side occasionally, but if it’s constant, you may have a problem. That’s not always a good thing. The above rings true – mixing is the second last step in the production process and if you have crap at that point, it’s going to remain crap. A wise man once said, you can’t polish a turd. This article is specifically on mixing, but mastering is still important to consider, given that electronic music production tends to blur the lines. I’ll keep my analysis to two. Now we get into the main stuff – the mixdown process. Use a high-pass filter. I’ve broken them down into two kinds of FX: time-based and saturation/distortion. Generally speaking, filling the room up with as many sound dampening materials and objects is the most efficient way to eliminate poor reflections. Of course, it’s good to be aware of what you’re working with. I hope you found this helpful, if so sharing it with your producer friends is the easiest way to show love back to Producer Brain. If not, that okay. It simply repeats the sound at timed-intervals, giving it an echo-like feel. 10 Ways to Excel as a New Producer. On rhythmic elements, it can help to fill out the mix in a creative way. This saves CPU power and helps to achieve a more cohesive sound in your mixes. They both measure the ‘average or ‘apparent’ loudness, based on how humans actually hear audio. Doesn’t matter whether you use FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic Pro X or any DAW – this knowledge is universal. Dynamics can refer to the punchiness of a snare, the squashed sound of a bass, or the crescendo of a riser. Switching it on and off will let you know how it sounds in mono and stereo. What’s the point though? You’ve likely heard it before – you need good studio monitors to get a good mix. They all alter the signal by adding something after the original signal in time. Just commit! Or, if you need guidance on setting up your studio in general, check out our home recording studio guide. To make it easier to follow, we’ve created a process to follow, starting with the most important to the least important – volume, panning/stereo image, EQ, compression and FX. What’s more confusing is that some of the sounds aren’t ‘standard’, meaning there are no best practices for working with them. The kicks always sound tight and punchy. While headphones aren’t 100% ideal, if you’re using reference tracks (more on that later), then it doesn’t really matter too much, especially as a beginner. Well, I have way more than two that I agree with in this epic article from Sam Matla. One key thing to remember here is – the thicker the foam, the better the absorption. The last tip here is all about signal flow, which refers to the order in which you add processing.