coffee_and_tv Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 cheers gemsy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 So, I really want to get into mixing in the future, and I thought, why not start now? However, I have no idea what i'm doing, and was wondering if anyone just had some general tips about what not to do when mixing music. Any advice/info is appreciated. I know that this is pretty general, i'm sorry. I don't really have a specific thing that I need help with, I just need some general knowledge, if that makes sense. Also, I need some help with some terms. Like, what does panning hard LR mean? Anyway, I know that this is random and may be kind of stupid on my part (i'm a noob to this), but any help is appreciated. If you're interested in it, try to find a course locally where you can make use of a studio as that'll do far more good than reading anything online (which can actually do more harm than good!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burning_October Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 I'll try and find a place, though I don't think I have one near me. Although, one questions, what does panning hard L/R mean? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phill Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 it means it's panned to the left and right and not in the center. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toff Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 I'll try and find a place, though I don't think I have one near me. Although, one questions, what does panning hard L/R mean? Panning the sound so its exclusively coming out of one speaker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burning_October Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 Oh, okay. So why shouldn't you do that? I've read in a lot of places that you shouldn't do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toff Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 Sounds unnatural. A good way of approaching panning is imagining your watching a band live. For example, lets say your watching a stereotypical rock band setup. Youve generally got your singer in the middle of the stage, so its a good idea to have them panned Center. Youve then got your got your guitar on one side, say the left, so youd pan that a little bit to the left, maybe to 9 O'clock (this would let some of the guitar signal spill into the right speaker). Youd do vice versa with the bass on the other side. This gives the instruments their own space in the stereofield, and stops them sounding jumbled together. Then youve got your drums. A technique i use is to pan certain parts of the drum kits to different sides. In rock music, the kick and the snare are typically the drums that are driving the beat of the song, so its a good idea to keep them panned center, maybe slightly off to either side. If the drummer has a few tom rolls, it sounds pretty funky to pan maybe the high tom slightly right, the mid tom near-center, and the low tom slightly left. If youve got 2 overheads, its also cool to pan them to different sides from eachother. With panning, you wanna create space in the sound, so instruments can have their own little bits. And ive just rambled on to fuck there, so Im hoping it answers your next 1,000,000 questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doog Posted May 25, 2009 Share Posted May 25, 2009 best tip I can think of for any newbies to recording/mixing is the old adage "less is more". death magnetic is the perfect proof of concept for that theory. they turned everything up and it sounds like ass Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
montgomery Posted May 26, 2009 Share Posted May 26, 2009 you should start with mixing something simple such as a song with 1 guitar, 1 kit, 1 bass, and 1 singer. No layering, just pretty much 1 layer for each part. Once you get that down, you can start slowly working towards more complex projects. If you haven't noticed, most major label produced albums have a shit ton of layers for each instrument. What you need to figure out before you start laying all these instruments together is how mids and verb effect sound scape. Volume level is the easiest part of mixing; if you are having a hard time finding a good volume for a certain instrument, then your reverb or mid adjustments are out of whack. If you know what you are doing and get the right frequencies cut or boosted and the right amount of verb, then finding the right volume level should be incredibly simple. Also, you can't mixing something to sound good if it wasn't engineered good. Mic choice and placement are crucial to a good sounding record. I find my strength in mixing to be guitars, and my weakness to be vocals. I can make vocals sound pretty damn good on first instinct, but I over think them and end up destroying their mix. I can make guitars sound like pure sex though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted May 26, 2009 Author Share Posted May 26, 2009 death magnetic........sounds like ass I'm fucking sick of the band-wagon mentality surrounding the sound of this album. It's the best sounding Metallica album. It sounds better than everything they've done before. Less compression overall would have been better, but it still sounds fucking good and before any of you morons without whammies say "bbbbbut it's distorted" IT'S A METAL ALBUM and it does not cause "distortion on your HiFi" unless it's a peice of shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted May 26, 2009 Share Posted May 26, 2009 Oh, okay. So why shouldn't you do that? I've read in a lot of places that you shouldn't do that. Like I said, go do a course or even subscribe to SOS and ignore everything you read on the internet. Generally stereo mic'ing techniques require you to pan hard L/R, if the technique doesn't, then you can make full use of the stereo field by doing so. If you have a mono channel, you reason you don't generally go hard L/R is that you lose the stereo effect, 'stereo' doesn't mean 2, it actually means something more like full or thick. Nothing to do with sounding unnatural. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 I've done a new rough mix of Somnambulist, a song some of you listened to before. This is the album version, un-mastered, with a shit vocal sound so far. Let me know what you think! All opinions welcome, especially on the mix. Just downloaded this, got to be honest the other mix you did a while ago seemed to have more punch to it. Although the clarity in this mix is much, much better! Have you got anymore songs on the way? Edit: The guitars sound a little too far panned to the left channel. Edit: NO WAIT my left speaker is fucked. Just listening to again through a decent set of headphones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 It's changed loads now. I'd say we're about 70% there with our 10 track album. It does sound good, but I keep fucking up little bits. I spent about an hour absolutely destroying the guitar sound on a song yesterday - very fucking depressing. I think a lot of it is my shit monitors. I might go back to hi-fi speakers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Looking forward to hearing you stuff! I've got harbinger and the first mix of somnambulist on my mp3 player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 oi! get them off! That was for opinions, not your enjoyment. I'll put some more up next week probably, to test my mastering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 oi! get them off! That was for opinions, not your enjoyment. I'll put some more up next week probably, to test my mastering. Hah they're staying on there Cool man, when you get the album together let me know and I'll definitely be up for buying it. The PE album still gets a fair few listens. ;] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 lol, I really should have made a good job of the PEs album, it's just I couldn't work on it and not be out of my head. It just goes to show, you need a sober engineer, no matter how fucked up the musicians are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Lol I enjoyed it none the less. The rough sound fits the music perfectly. I don't think a highly polished sound would work with the music ;p I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 yeh, but it could have been half-way decent rather than varying from shit to average. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 It wasn't too bad. Besides if the songs are good I normally ignore the mixing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 Fair enough! We were actually going to get together again last week but Aid chickened out again. I'd love to be doing those sort of crazy gigs again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 I've really got to get my arse in gear and see a few of the K&T bands this year. I keep getting flooded with work or stupid bills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 yeh I want to see Industry but they cancelled their manchester gig and I cba going to leicester. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samcoma Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Haha if I had my car up and running I'd be going everywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheddatom Posted June 15, 2009 Author Share Posted June 15, 2009 I have a great car and free fuel i'm just a lazy cunt. Basically because i've never had to go further away than nottingham/brum/manchester to see bands so now I can't be arsed. We might be doing some london gigs in a couple of months with Creep Joint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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