Today I looked at two videos to remind me of the basics of mixing - something that I need to do regularly.
Compression
Everyone wants to hear the vocal loud and clear.
Because I am rather new to mixing, and I produce songs in multiple genres, I've needed to take time to learn the basics from pros on the Internet and traverse the tedious journey of finding my way of getting vocal compression to do its magic. I'm still learning!
I see a lot of great videos on YouTube about this but I never seem to get enough of these. Warren Huart is my favourite mixing guru. In the video at the top, he demonstrates how to use multiple compressors to attain an even vocal where all the words are heard clearly yet the phrasing remains in tact.
Vocal compression is when you set a filter on a vocal track so that it causes the extreme tops to be cut off above a certain threshold level. You can adjust how low or high that threshold is and how fast/slow the compression kicks in/lets go of the notes. Everyone uses it to create a more upfront sound and to increase clarity (not only on vocals but on all tracks). It takes time to learn to use it sparingly and well. But it can also, if used incorrectly, destroy a track or a whole mix.
By striving for perfection, I ended up with a bland song
One of my newbie mistakes was to spend tons of my precious time gain staging (volume equalising) individual syllables to make sure that they are evenly loud throughout the track. I did it because I thought that it was necessary for the plugins (apps) to function properly. I thought that the sweet spot level of -18dB was so important that I could spend a whole day adjusting one track, pulling down the loudest notes to -18 dB and cutting off "s" sounds a the end of words, tweaking all the irregularities as I went along. This was insane because it killed the phrasing of the song, stole all my time and ruined the track.
One of the things that takes time to understand and master is how to compress vocal tracks well so that they fit well in the genre at hand. If you do it well you don't have to change individual note very often, s you can learn from the video above.
Check it out!
Less is more and using plugins properly saves time and gives better results than idiotic cutting and pasting. I'm learning and the faster I apply tips like these the faster the mixing process goes, and, the better my mixes sound.
Gain Staging
Because I found myself wasting time on gain staging a track from 2016 (!) that I had in a remix, I stopped to remind myself of what really matters while checking the volume of my tracks before mixing. Rob Mayzes 6 gain staging mistakes is a great one on that subject. Thanks Rob.
1. When recording, shoot for - 18d, and, your levels should not peak higher than -6dB
2. When you start mixing, look for channels that are too hot and bring them down with the help of a gain plugin. Install a gain plugin on these (in the beginning of the volume flow) and bring these down so that they are no hotter than -18 dB at their highest.
3. If the stereo output is still clipping put a stereo gain plugin there and bring it down to a good level. (He uses -6dB)
4. Does - 18dB matter? Rob Mayzes makes a distinction between using analog type and/or saturation plugins on the one hand and simple compression/EQ type plugins on the other. He says use -18 dB as a guideline not a rule. After all we are working in a digital environment.
5. Don't obsess over gain staging. (I have wasted my life on this one. But now I am going to stop doing this!!!)
6. Don't let the sound clip on any mix busses either! Add a gain plugin and reduce it if you
7. And, every time you add a plugin, you ant to make sure that the output after that plugin is about the same as when it came in. (Gain compensation).
8, Check to see that all your tracks are close to the 0 dB mark on the volume faders after gain staging. If one track is set to a very low volume because it is too hot in the mix, cut it with a gain plugin and bring it up to around zero before doing the mix.
After adjusting the volumes, compression is the next strep.
Album update: still working on Rising. Still no word from the mastering studio. Still believing.
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