Part 21 of 31 - Getting your vocals to sit on top of the mix seems to be a challenge for a lot of people. Let me clue you in on a little secret: just mix them last and you’ll be fine.
I find that whatever I mix last tends to be loudest. It’s natural, I’m fighting to have it heard over the rest of the tracks. So why not use that to my advantage with vocals and mix THEM last? Brilliant!
Part 20 of 31 – Need your mix to open up? Feel things crammed and squashed together? It might be time to mute your guitars for a moment in the song.
As much as I love playing, recording, and mixing guitars, I’m aware that they are notorious for soaking up tons of sonic real estate in your mix. It’s just the way it is. SO, to create impact and open your mix up for a moment, mute the guitars for a few bars and let the magic happen.
Part 19 of 31 - The way to get a great mix is to create impact. But impact starts with a good arrangement of a good song. In the mixing phase however, you can still tweak the arrangement for maximum impact.
The easiest way to help your arrangement out is to take out the bass for a few bars of the song. The moment it comes back in, you feel it. You’re creating impact not by adding something, but by taking something away for a moment. Ironic, isn’t it?
Part 18 of 31 - When you mix you sometimes get into a zone. You only look forward, never looking back to where you came from. The problem is, without looking backwards you never know if you’re actually improving the mix.
Are you actually making your mix better with those plugins? Or are you just making it different? The only way to know is to stop every 10 minutes, bypass all your plugins, and compare. Have all those adjustments actually helped the mix get closer to your goal?
Part 17 of 31 – For the longest time I always thought that to make my mix sound bigger and beefier I needed more pairs of guitars panned wide. Turns out I only needed one more, up the middle.
If your mix is balanced nicely but you are needing a bit more oomph in the guitars, consider picking one part and panning it up the center. Something about layering a guitar right over the bass and kick drum does wonders for thickening the mix right up without losing clarity on the outsides.
Part 16 of 31 - Are your double tracked guitars getting lost in the mix? Need more separation and clarity on some lead guitar parts? You might be in need of some simple EQ carving tricks.
Sometimes when I run into double tracked guitars that sound very similar and are blending together, I use simple technique that gives me some focus and allows each part to be heard. It’s called complementary EQ and it’s as easy as 1+1=2. Let’s take a look.
Part 15 of 31 - If you’re still looking to fatten up your snare drum and our EQ treatment alone isn’t cutting it, there’s another great tool at your disposal. It’s called a compressor. Jackpot!
So to fatten up this snare, we’re actually going to squash the peaks a little bit. Why? Well by turning down only the peaks, we can turn up the whole snare, which in effect turns up the tone and the tail of the drum. And to our ears that sounds like fat awesomeness!
Part 14 of 31 - Working with a thin, maybe weak sounding snare drum in the mix? Need to fatten it up a bit? No problem. Just grab your stock EQ and let’s get to work.
The key to using an EQ to fatten up a snare is to go searching for the fat frequency. Every snare has one. Usually in the low mids. Once you find it, you can emphasize it over some of the other frequencies in the track, gain match it, and KABAM: fatter snare!
Part 13 of 31 - Are you sure your EQ or compressor is making your track sound better? Could it be that you’ve only made the track louder?
The honest truth is, we as humans tend to think that louder sounds better. If you do any processing on your track that makes the track louder, you will favor the sound with the plugin than without the plugin. Louder sounds like we’ve enhanced it somehow. To fix this, you must gain match your plugins before making a true comparison.
Part 12 of 31 - It seems to be the age old question: should you EQ before you compress? Or the other way around? Well there is no right or wrong way to do this. But here’s a suggestion.
My preference, generally speaking, is to place my EQ before my compressor. I like to think of EQ as a way to clean up or fix a track. You can remove offending frequencies and accentuate the better ones. Then you can use compression to enhance or reveal more intentionally what’s left.
Graham Cochrane is a creative and versatile producer, engineer, songwriter, and worship leader based out of Tampa, FL. He provides remote mixing, and mastering services to clients worldwide.
As the founder of The Recording Revolution, Graham's articles and tutorials have been featured worldwide by Avid, PreSonus, Slate Digital, Editors Keys, and Behringer to name a few, reaching readers in over 40 countries.
For more information and samples of Graham's work, please visit www.grahamcochrane.com.
@TakingBackSunda As many times as it takes for it to sink in :-)19 hours ago
Reader Question: "Should You Mix While You Record?" http://t.co/gQt9AlaG4M20 hours ago
Do you find yourself "mixing" as you go in the recording phase? http://t.co/9VS8UIKRTW23 hours ago
