Archive for 'mastering'

These days, everything in the studio seems to blend together. From recording, to mixing, to arranging, to songwriting. Some people are even trying to master while they mix. It can get confusing and convoluted. So the question for today will be: is it OK to mix while you record? And if so what does that look like?

In fact recently a TRR reader emailed this quandry, and I’m sure many of you can identify with his situation:

I might pan some of the guitars, turn them down, etc while I get ready to track another guitar, keyboard part, bass, etc. Is that normal or should I not touch anything on the mixer until the song is pretty much done in the recording phase? – Doug (TRR reader)

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If you happen to record guitars through a virtual amp plugin or box, then you’d be wise to done thing: commit to your sound on the way in. That’s right. None of this, recording the effected sound plus the direct sound, “just in case.”

Just in case of what? Just in case you completely change your mind on how guitars should sound while in the mixing phase? Bad idea.

You Have To Make A Decision

I’ve been pretty blown away by how realistic the Eleven Rack sounds as a virtual amp box. And it has the ability to record wet and dry signals into your DAW. But I would never do that. Why? At some point in the studio you must make a decision. At some point before your song hits a CD or MP3 for download you must decide what the guitars are going to sound like.
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So just this week my band released our most recent EP entitled Lower. It’s a simple 5 song album that was tracked, mixed, and mastered in my own project studio. I thought today I would not only share it with you, but highlight a few lessons (good and bad) that I learned from this specific project.

Less Is More

I would say the biggest lesson that was re-enforced on this project was that less is more in the recording phase. I think I did this well when it came to guitars. During the tracking process I kept stripping away guitar parts until we were left with the absolute foundational parts. This made the songs easier to mix and they sounded bigger in the long run. Go figure.
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Part 4 of 31 - The mix buss (or master fader) is both your friend and your enemy. With a single plugin you can easily spruce up your entire mix. At the same time you can just as easily destroy it if you aren’t careful.

Cut Your Processing In Half

Here’s the idea: whatever processing you want to do on your mix buss, cut it in half and learn to live with it. As you start dialing in some compression, eq, or saturation, when you finally start hearing the effect you’ve likely gone a bit too far. Cut the amount of processing in half and you’ll be just fine.

One of the best ways to get better at recording or mixing is to learn a few new things, use them like crazy, and then repeat the process. But with so much information out there (good and bad) it’s far to easy to have “learned” hundreds of tips and techniques in a given year, but not really know what you learned.

As this year draws to a close, I’m personally looking back to think about the one, two, or maybe three things that I learned and benefited from the most. I want to cement these in my mind so that next year I can use them like crazy. Sure I may have learned more than 3 things this year, but I can’t remember them all, so instead I’m focusing on three. Today I’d like to briefly list three things I learned, but then I want to hear what YOU learned this year.

Kill My Pride And Use Reference Tracks

I’ve always known I should use professional reference tracks in the studio, but up until this year I’ve only used them sparingly. Big mistake. Reference tracks give you instant perspective on your recording, mix, or master. They help you know if your bass is out of wack, if your snare drum is too loud, or if your vocals sound muffled. Why do we hate reference tracks? Because we’re prideful. We don’t want to hear how bad we are and think we can do it on our own, without any outside “help.” Ironically, if I want to get better I should simply pull in some other pro tracks and reference them in all three stages.
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So I finally got a chance to master some albums in Studio One from PreSonus, and I’m hooked. I’ve had my eye on the built in Project Page feature of Studio One Pro for some time now, and all I can say is, mastering in Studio One is pure joy. The combination of refreshing workflow, ease of use, and deep functionality makes Studio One king of the castle for in the box mastering. Here’s a little overview.

Sometimes we have to learn things the hard way. Such is the case with me and mix buss processing. Over the years I’ve been guilty of slapping a plugin on my master fader, cranking some knobs to hear drastic change, and then calling it a day. At first it seems like magic. With one EQ or compressor you can totally change the sound of your mix. But the truth is, those drastic changes were hurting rather than helping my mix.

A Little Goes A Long Way

Here’s the reality of doing any kind of processing on your mix buss: you’re little moves add up big time. If you make a 1db boost with an EQ on your master fader in a session with 40+ tracks, you are in essence applying that 1db frequency boost 40 times and in 40 different ways! Think about it, every track in your mix eventually dumps into your mix buss, so any processing you do  on the mix buss is multiplied across all of your tracks, for better or for worse.
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When it comes to mixing there’s one thing you must know about yourself. You will always prefer louder sounds over quieter ones. If we compare two vocal passes, we’ll pick the one that’s louder. If we compare two plugin settings, we’ll choose the one that is louder. It’s a well documented phenomenon, but how do we fight it? Gain matching.

Compressors And Makeup Gain

Compression is one area that I feel we can easily fool ourselves into thinking a compressor is either hurting or helping our tracks. In one scenario, we’ll slap a compressor on something like the mix buss, dial in a preset or some standard settings, and we’ll think, “Man this makes my mix sound better already!” Could it be that the compressor is simply boosting the signal by 3db and it sounds more exciting? The same could be true if the compressor setting makes your mix quieter. You think, “Where did my mix go?!”
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Today I’m answering a handful of random recording and mixing questions covering a wide variety of topics. One of my TRR readers, Luis Garcia, who teaches recording in Peru sent in a list of questions from his students and I thought everyone might be interested in hearing the answers as well. We cover it all from de-essing to mastering and everything in between.

I’ve talked before about how important it is to compare your mixes to other mixes that already sound good. Mixing in isolation is a bad idea. You get instant perspective on your mix when you bring in a track and listen back and forth.

But I seem to get a related question a lot: “Should still I reference my mixes to other tracks that are already mastered? Isn’t that a problem?” The answer is no, its not a problem. Rather it’s the best thing you could do!

Mastered Tracks Are The Standard

Simply put, mastered tracks are what people listen to, not unmastered mixes. So honestly it would be rare for you to find great sounding mixes that haven’t been mastered to use as your reference tracks. Mastered tracks are what actually make it out into the world and it’s what people listen to. Therefore these should be your benchmark, your standard.
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