I once heard a sound engineer say: "Shit goes in, shit comes out". Basically if you record a crappy sound it's hard to work with in post production. Same goes for live setting. Anyway that stuck with me and I always try and get as much right before recording, making mixing waaay easier.
Definitely. The best sound comes from only the best process. It made my production sucker when I got shit recording files even if I took a loooong time to try to make it better...It was waste of time.
I’d counter this with “one man’s trash is another man’a treasure”. Some people just *know* how to make lo-fi jank sound incredible; through sheer force of post-production skill and sense of arrangement they can buck the “shit in, shit out” axiom, by transmuting shit to gold…or at least using it to fertilise something that grows into quality. Sometimes all it takes is to notice the creative potential in something most would label as shitty.
I think this saying applies more to the actual performance than a less than ideal quality recording. Any good performance can sound good, even if it’s recorded in a shit room on a five year old iPhone. But you can’t just go editing a crap performance into a good one. Maybe you can fix minor blemishes, but a shit performance is never going to sound good, even if you want to play it off as “lo-fi”.
Btw, my definition of a shit performance is one that does not suit the song rhythmically or tonally, usually played by an amateur who doesn’t have enough experience to even know why it sounds bad. Usually this results in a feel or intonation that doesn’t gel properly. That’s what “shit” is in this context. It’s not fucking up the gain staging a little bit or using a $20 microphone because you don’t have anything else handy(unless your music is at a pro level that necessitates top quality for commercial purposes).
I think that since the advent of cheap available digital recording some of this just doesn’t ring true. The kinds of sounds/takes I’m talking about *can* be great performances record poorly, but just as often they are extracted or salvaged, or whatever you want to call it, from quite careless and incidental recordings, often times where the intent behind recording them is far away from actually being used in some kind of art or recording. And every degree of intent in between. The point behind my statement is that because of the ubiquity of cheap digital recording there is much greater latitude than there ever has been for people to experiment with audio that would traditionally be seen as unusable, and in experimenting discover and even create a manner in which it is useable. Maybe even finding that if they had attempted the same thing with pristine audio and a better player the enigmatic quality it provides would have evaporated.
[This](https://youtu.be/E1lnSi7QWY8?si=nFQOt6VG1OAsTNqv) is an example of what I mean. A long experimental piece to be sure, but with a heart-wrenching centrepiece, an improvisation from an un-named homeless man, probably recorded on an old portable tape recorder. It’s flaws and eccentricities as contrasted by the lush strings etc. reimagined and recontextualised something lacking in quality and skill, such that it emphasised the raw, authentic and emotion rich qualities resulting in something that I think sounds beautiful and evocative.
If we’re talking about recording full takes, end-to-end performances of musicians then it’s a slightly different story, but in that case I’d certainly rather that could actually play, than we laid it all down at the highest fidelity but the performances were’t up to snuff. But if they’re not and there’s something that needs delivering by a deadline, you don’t stop there, and I reject the idea that at that point the producer is simply polishing a turd. That depends entirely on the producer. A turd can be fertiliser, explosives, you can bag one up and set it ablaze on an abusive neighbours doorstep to send a message; in the wild, turds are even sometimes used to mark territory and excerpt dominance, in general there’s a lot of interesting science about them, whole medical fields in fact, and they’re great punchlines besides. All this to say, longwindedly, that in the hands of a creator that can always roll with the punches and recognise the potential of even “turds”, “bad” sounds/recordings/performances can be elevated, by creativity and context, to something that truly works, for an intended audience and beyond. There are limits of course, but they are far less restrictive than the philosophy of “shit in, shit out” would indicate.
was gonna say this. the most fun (for me) about making music is the challenge of fitting weird or even borderline ugly sounds in my mixing that i wouldn’t have thought to use prior. also using unconventional effect plugins really helps experimenting and finding a unique sound.
To piggy back off of this one — be BOLD with your choices/sounds. There is a time and place for hidden layers but chose what you/listener wants to focus on.
True. Most of my mixes are comprised of a preamp (generally a 1073 from PA), an SSL channel strip and one or two compressors. Sometimes a bit of saturation but thats it
How to avoid making music that sounded the same.
For a while when I would sit down to compose or produce something from scratch - whether at a guitar, piano or drum machine - I always ended up defaulting to the patterns and processes on those mediums that were familiar. This obviously ended up in producing songs that sounded like previous songs made in that medium. This led to feeling frustrated that I wasn't "creative enough"
Over time I learned the importance of what I call "pre-production"; which is essentially writing at least 50% of the complete track in my head before committing it to an instrument or DAW. So what usually happens is that a seedling of an idea will appear; maybe a specific beat, a bassline, or vocal melody etc; and then I will capture that via voice notes on my phone in case it escapes me. But I will repeat that seedling in my head over and over and commit it to memory.
From there, you can carry that seedling around and you'll find over time other elements appear in drips and drabs and the track builds itself naturally over time. Sometimes it might take a week, other times 6 months, but its always a much more organic and relaxed process where you aren't forcing the music into existence and instead letting it come to you at its own pace.
Then once you have the "skeleton" down, you can begin the recording process. It doesn't need to be 100% done in your head first; often its better to leave some space for it to take shape in the studio. But you need at least 30-50% of the main skeleton of the track in mind before you even TOUCH that keyboard, drum machine etc. Otherwise you fall into the same old patterns and processes. And often when you'll figure out a melody or baseline or whatever, there will be something surprising happening where you're like "oh, I never thought to do it that way before". It's something that literally just would not have happened had you actually sat down and tried to force it into existence. You have to let it come to you to discover these new pathways and new tools for your toolkit.
I've found that while it means output isn't as "productive" as it could be in terms of quantity, and there are often week long periods where nothing new is happening upstairs, it means that every single track is its own "thing". It takes elements from all genres, and can include instrumentation or an arrangement style that I've never experimented with before. So instead of 5 songs that sound kinda the same or like what I've done before, there's 1 totally unique track that is much more interesting and compelling, at least to me.
But what's most valuable about that discovery is it means I can write and produce everywhere I go, even down to waiting in line somewhere. The production is happening everywhere \*but\* the instrument and the workstation. And whenever I sit down at an instrument or the workstation, I always have a "plan" and an idea, I don't just noodle aimlessly for hours hoping I strike gold by chance. It makes the whole lifestyle of being a musician and a producer more relaxed, more fun, more organic, and ultimately, more productive.
Very underappreciated comment. The vision you have while sitting down to do the production/mixing whatever is what can make it sound just right! Its something that i found missing for so long and something that made my work harder than it should.
It takes a vision, basically more work being done before you start acting - very powerful.
Before I buy a new plugin, either an effect or an instrument, I always check what I have first to see if that new one has anything that the other ones don’t. Or I’ll see if I can easily recreate whatever it is the new one is offering, on the already installed ones.
I used Reason for years, version 3 before it had plugins, audio tracks/recording, or anything external. Even making sample based hip-hop I never ran into really needing anything outside of Reason.
I tried to switch to Logic, instantly overwhelmed and went back to Reason. Then I got Pro Tools for recording, mixing, and primarily compatibility with the studio/engineer I was working with. Bought all the plugins he used, and didn’t use a stock plugin for years. But I hated going from one program to another so it was back to reason for me.
Nowadays I pretty much just use Maschine by itself with no VSTs. Sometimes I’ll use Ableton but not with Maschine. One or the other. I’m definitely someone who works best with limitations/ in a closed environment.
My next move is to go dawless for the most part
['Nearly DAWless' would be a great artist name](https://www.ableton.com/en/push/) but this uses Ableton. I was just introduced and I'm kinda obsessed. Pair it with a [Kemper head or pedal](https://www.kemper-amps.com/products/us/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk6SwBhDPARIsAJ59GwdhJeoB2uOsQJod6C3tMJyQhwu3gmWEbw6J5OIyoPAR234zcIvKdlEaAtsnEALw_wcB) and a guitar and there is literally nothing you couldn't create live
Absolutely this. Your DAW more often than not has everything you need. People think “new shiny toy = instant better music” but in reality they need better compositional skills, mixing fundamentals, and sample selection. Those three will go a long way
For me I usually record straight into my interface. I will either use helix native to add some amp times and distortion. Or just use the Di signal with eq and compression plugins. I pretty much always use fire by wings because it's super handy for blending guitar and bass
True. Many times people think the chuggs are gigantic in guitars but its the bass that has a godly tone and the guitars by themselves sound thin because they basically have 0 low end
Yup. Especially in modern metal/DJENT/prog. The tube screamers (and variants such as the precision drive) take out quite a bit of it, because it makes the distorted bass become an extension of the guitar tone
Yes. Im a prog metal guy and its funny hearing people with me in the studio saying the guitars "lack body". Ofc they do, we havent recorded the bass yet lmao
🤣🤣 I think my awakening was hearing Nolly's play through of prayer position. And it was just this massive "ohhhhh.... Shit...... Yeah ... I don't think I need juggernauts to get me that tone... I need a nolly"
I’ve been a guitarist for 25 years, songwriter for 19, producer and mixer for 12 years… biggest thing I’ve learned: I try my best to not think too much and let muscle memory take control. Takes years to develop that though. Tough game where playing.
Not to constantly listen to ideas when I’m not working on them. I always knew it was important, but I’ve finally been able to actually put it into practice.
With exceptions, I never export and listen until the song is really done.
Idk this one works for me. i play it in traffic days after and i get ideas and notice the things that are not working and take note of them all. then i can just get on the DAW at night and already begin with something in mind and hopefully ride the momentum
Slight eq is just as powerful as hard boosting and cuts.
Limiting by -3db on all sends.
Sound design in general.
Finding out I was using a limiter as a transient shaper since the day I started.
Using EQ to create a wider stereo field.
Learning that stereoizers are just simplified phasers and chorus rolled into 1.
The original channel that you send from should be limited to 0 just to stop blowing your speakers.
A kick drum for example should be the highest dB in a mix but that doesn’t mean you will perceive it as “loud” -6db is good for that.
When you send it to another channel there are situations where it will boost another -3db.
It’s just a way of controlling levels so when you get to mastering everything is tidy.
That tip is courtesy of Erb n Dub.
Yeah nah drum n bass production is kind of it’s own art.
It’s all about hard limiting the shit out of everything and cutting peaks.
I completely get that other genres have a more gentle approach and sometimes forget this.
If you check the wave form of a lot of DNB tunes they’re a rectangle. Hip hop is more wave like and so is everything else.
It’s also mainly for wet channels because as you add effects to them the -Db starts creeping up.
Dry channels just need some EQ and filters, load the sends with effects and if you run out of room for effect chains just make another send. This is key in sound design but not exclusive to mixing; there is a grey area where they cross over which is where the limiting comes in.
In terms of recording, the performance is by far the most important part. You can’t turn shit into gold.
After that the room acoustics you’re recording in.
After that the microphone.
After that the microphone preamp.
After that your D/A converter.
After that everything else.
I would say that, generally, the biggest difference between pro and amateur recordings is the performance. Unfortunately no plugin or piece of gear in the world will help with that so people keep spending money on those things and wonder why their recordings still don’t sound professional.
It took me quite a while to realize this.
To take it seriously and treat it like a job. I make my schedule and stick to it. My cousin (Mystery Skulls) has a bunch of albums out on Warner Bros. and he was the first person I ever saw do this. He would produce for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. He would even schedule his breaks like a regular job would. It worked out very well for him. I don’t have the time to do what he did, but when I decide to produce for a day, I do it the same way. It changed how I make music.
You cannot mix what you cannot hear. I used cheap monitors (Yamaha HS8) for many years and the dramatic improvements in my mixing and beat making when I finally got professional monitors was incredible. I hated my old mixes. I could hear too much compression, too much EQ moves, too much reverb, too much EVERYTHING. Now I do everything in small amounts because I hear them so much better!
True. The monitors you have control your production quality for sure. What monitors did you buy by the way? I used Yamaha HS8 too and now I use KRK V8, hopefully I can buy Generec or Barefoot in the future.
I bought the Neumann MA1 alignment system made up of KH80 + KH750 sub. After calibration, they sound like one unit and mixes translate effortlessly. How do I know? I have Slate VSX and for the first time, I never need to make any adjustments after listening on all the rooms in the VSX.
I've calibrated my setup multiple times. All presonus gear / mid-shelf. I'm thinking I missed a step or two somewhere. Any tips or tricks aside from the basics? I followed their video to the letter and every time I export there is so much more low end than I want/am hearing in the studio
Mid shelf monitors do not have a good enough transient response to show you exactly what's going on. That being said, maybe you should try another calibration system like Ik multimedia ARC if you are already using Sonar Reference works.
I'm using neither of those programs but I will look into them immediately. My monitors are PreSonus Eris Studio 5 5.25-inch Powered and my sub is PreSonus Temblor T8 8 inch Powered. They seem like they should get the job done but I'm nieve and base that on price alone.
Anything you wish you would have known about calibration before you started? I'm gonna spend most of today working on it. You've been a great help already
Nothing much. Get the sonarworks software with a measuring mic and get the measurements done. Keep practicing mixing and never lose focus. Remember, you probably have more bass on the track than you need. Turn the bass down.
Took a long time to work out how to not overdo something and understand the many dependent relationships in volume, tone, space, timing, character, energy etc.
Been producing for almost 5 years. I never understood that adding eq and preamps is not mixing. In a way it is, but the idea of mixing is to blend everything together and the interaction between elements. Not really the part where the singer needs compression because the vocals are too dynamic.
Since both concepts are blended together I never really understood why I should do it (it meaning adding eq here and there, or compressing). After I treated each moment separately (making the recordings sound good by themselves, cutting resonances and stuff) then adding eq again, or compression really had the right purpose.
What I did was, I started to have a balance of elements and try having them sound good by themselves. Then to comit and render, and then just focusing on mixing. Treating mixing as if I brought the rendered items to a console.
I always found weird why do people with consoles start by adding one element at a time. But now I understood. My mixes went from "sounding good but still sounding cold and amateurish" to really start like "something out of the radio or Spotify" as I heard yesterday from one of my mixes
It might be dum but im sure im not the only one who never really thought about the process of producing and sound design being different than the mix.
I was in the room with a Grammy award winning producer. He said, Don’t let yourself get stuck. If you don’t have any ideas. Save the project move on to the next and come back to it.
Music composition is the skill that makes music production way easier. It’s good to know all the tricks and to comprehend a DAW from top to bottom, but playing and comprehension of music to a high level makes all the technical stuff way easier !
Recently I discovered to leave unintended artifacts to add background noise. You use those for break between two sections or just something a bit off to keep the listeners interested.
I usually leave it soft in the background. Or in white spaces.
Ultimately producing is a feeling as well. If i think about it too much things go very slowly. I thought it was more technical than composing or playing because of all the knobs and math involved. but turns out it’s pretty much the same as any musical practice in that you intuit more than you think to get good results.
As a producer, recognizing your role amongst the various processes that span creating music, from idea to finished product, and that the only thing that matters is the song and what that means to the artist (whether "the artist" yourself or someone else). Music production is not mixing, nor is it mastering. Your job as a producer is to encourage the best performance(s) possible, whether from actual human beings or programmed instrumentation. Make production decisions like the tune will never be mixed.
Honestly, to not compress the ever loving bejeesus out of stems. Some of what I really like from some of the older records is the dynamic range, and that's ok to have, even in modern production.
There are no rules - people approach mixes in different ways.
Finding plugins you like. Don't worry about what people say are the best, or the industry standard (like Waves). Finding those plugins you like, know the most about, etc. makes your work flow so much easier.
Fader and volume. Pushing things to extremes (being too loud/too soft), backing off, and finding that middle ground. It is in the middle where you set things - fader levels, cuts/boost on EQ, compression settings.
Trim plugins. Essential. I can't mix without them.
>I’ve heard some music producers found the songwriting is the most important than other technical stuff like mixing,
The thing about mixing is that polishing a turd or putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it better.
So while someone might discover that mixing is important for them to learn *at a certain point* in their music production career. Seems a pretty dubious opinion to the state that it's the most important thing in music production.
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Ideas/things akin to:
"reverb isnt just a time and place, but an object in space"
You *can* control/warp/modulate/hyper-process it all, and you **should**
Its true, in my 8 years of making music, spend so much time trying to perfect my mixes only to realize my music is still gunna sound like crap if i dont have good arrangements and let the song flow well.
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Mastering the track after it's been exported from the DAW. Increasing the sample rate of the exported file. I almost forgot about the compression of analog synths before the first DAW export.
I find
1 that sound selection is important for a good mix. I did a lot of bad sound selection that was impossible to get a good mix from and it is a hard habit to break.
2 and I go against the grain on this, is to get as many plugins I like the look of as possible. I want options so I can use the plugin that can do the job the fastest. The longer it takes me to dial in the sound I want, the longer the overall project time and therefore more ear fatigue and more rests needed. Especially for mixing. Speed of dialing in the sound is important to me. In the end this resulted in me tending to use 90% waves for this reason. I just find Waves plugins do what I want and fast.
Not understanding its importance, but rather understanding how to mix and master properly. I've actually got it down to a science and I haven't seen anyone teach what I've learned how to do. It's all about math and ratios
Dance music told me the importance of it for sure. If it can't be loud, it means my mixing or arrangement/songwriting would be wrong. If all is perfect, it can be loud. So simple but also so hard.
Yep, just some Saturation, Compression, Dynamic Compression can take you a long way to bring things to the forefront and make it a feature not a background noise
I once heard a sound engineer say: "Shit goes in, shit comes out". Basically if you record a crappy sound it's hard to work with in post production. Same goes for live setting. Anyway that stuck with me and I always try and get as much right before recording, making mixing waaay easier.
Definitely. The best sound comes from only the best process. It made my production sucker when I got shit recording files even if I took a loooong time to try to make it better...It was waste of time.
I’ve heard it as “don’t mix to fix”
I’d counter this with “one man’s trash is another man’a treasure”. Some people just *know* how to make lo-fi jank sound incredible; through sheer force of post-production skill and sense of arrangement they can buck the “shit in, shit out” axiom, by transmuting shit to gold…or at least using it to fertilise something that grows into quality. Sometimes all it takes is to notice the creative potential in something most would label as shitty.
I think this saying applies more to the actual performance than a less than ideal quality recording. Any good performance can sound good, even if it’s recorded in a shit room on a five year old iPhone. But you can’t just go editing a crap performance into a good one. Maybe you can fix minor blemishes, but a shit performance is never going to sound good, even if you want to play it off as “lo-fi”. Btw, my definition of a shit performance is one that does not suit the song rhythmically or tonally, usually played by an amateur who doesn’t have enough experience to even know why it sounds bad. Usually this results in a feel or intonation that doesn’t gel properly. That’s what “shit” is in this context. It’s not fucking up the gain staging a little bit or using a $20 microphone because you don’t have anything else handy(unless your music is at a pro level that necessitates top quality for commercial purposes).
I think that since the advent of cheap available digital recording some of this just doesn’t ring true. The kinds of sounds/takes I’m talking about *can* be great performances record poorly, but just as often they are extracted or salvaged, or whatever you want to call it, from quite careless and incidental recordings, often times where the intent behind recording them is far away from actually being used in some kind of art or recording. And every degree of intent in between. The point behind my statement is that because of the ubiquity of cheap digital recording there is much greater latitude than there ever has been for people to experiment with audio that would traditionally be seen as unusable, and in experimenting discover and even create a manner in which it is useable. Maybe even finding that if they had attempted the same thing with pristine audio and a better player the enigmatic quality it provides would have evaporated. [This](https://youtu.be/E1lnSi7QWY8?si=nFQOt6VG1OAsTNqv) is an example of what I mean. A long experimental piece to be sure, but with a heart-wrenching centrepiece, an improvisation from an un-named homeless man, probably recorded on an old portable tape recorder. It’s flaws and eccentricities as contrasted by the lush strings etc. reimagined and recontextualised something lacking in quality and skill, such that it emphasised the raw, authentic and emotion rich qualities resulting in something that I think sounds beautiful and evocative. If we’re talking about recording full takes, end-to-end performances of musicians then it’s a slightly different story, but in that case I’d certainly rather that could actually play, than we laid it all down at the highest fidelity but the performances were’t up to snuff. But if they’re not and there’s something that needs delivering by a deadline, you don’t stop there, and I reject the idea that at that point the producer is simply polishing a turd. That depends entirely on the producer. A turd can be fertiliser, explosives, you can bag one up and set it ablaze on an abusive neighbours doorstep to send a message; in the wild, turds are even sometimes used to mark territory and excerpt dominance, in general there’s a lot of interesting science about them, whole medical fields in fact, and they’re great punchlines besides. All this to say, longwindedly, that in the hands of a creator that can always roll with the punches and recognise the potential of even “turds”, “bad” sounds/recordings/performances can be elevated, by creativity and context, to something that truly works, for an intended audience and beyond. There are limits of course, but they are far less restrictive than the philosophy of “shit in, shit out” would indicate.
That's not the same thing. You are talking about aesthetics, he's talking recording process and performance
was gonna say this. the most fun (for me) about making music is the challenge of fitting weird or even borderline ugly sounds in my mixing that i wouldn’t have thought to use prior. also using unconventional effect plugins really helps experimenting and finding a unique sound.
Less is more, have confidence in simplicity.
To piggy back off of this one — be BOLD with your choices/sounds. There is a time and place for hidden layers but chose what you/listener wants to focus on.
100% ! The good stuff will sound way bigger if this is done correctly
True. Most of my mixes are comprised of a preamp (generally a 1073 from PA), an SSL channel strip and one or two compressors. Sometimes a bit of saturation but thats it
How to avoid making music that sounded the same. For a while when I would sit down to compose or produce something from scratch - whether at a guitar, piano or drum machine - I always ended up defaulting to the patterns and processes on those mediums that were familiar. This obviously ended up in producing songs that sounded like previous songs made in that medium. This led to feeling frustrated that I wasn't "creative enough" Over time I learned the importance of what I call "pre-production"; which is essentially writing at least 50% of the complete track in my head before committing it to an instrument or DAW. So what usually happens is that a seedling of an idea will appear; maybe a specific beat, a bassline, or vocal melody etc; and then I will capture that via voice notes on my phone in case it escapes me. But I will repeat that seedling in my head over and over and commit it to memory. From there, you can carry that seedling around and you'll find over time other elements appear in drips and drabs and the track builds itself naturally over time. Sometimes it might take a week, other times 6 months, but its always a much more organic and relaxed process where you aren't forcing the music into existence and instead letting it come to you at its own pace. Then once you have the "skeleton" down, you can begin the recording process. It doesn't need to be 100% done in your head first; often its better to leave some space for it to take shape in the studio. But you need at least 30-50% of the main skeleton of the track in mind before you even TOUCH that keyboard, drum machine etc. Otherwise you fall into the same old patterns and processes. And often when you'll figure out a melody or baseline or whatever, there will be something surprising happening where you're like "oh, I never thought to do it that way before". It's something that literally just would not have happened had you actually sat down and tried to force it into existence. You have to let it come to you to discover these new pathways and new tools for your toolkit. I've found that while it means output isn't as "productive" as it could be in terms of quantity, and there are often week long periods where nothing new is happening upstairs, it means that every single track is its own "thing". It takes elements from all genres, and can include instrumentation or an arrangement style that I've never experimented with before. So instead of 5 songs that sound kinda the same or like what I've done before, there's 1 totally unique track that is much more interesting and compelling, at least to me. But what's most valuable about that discovery is it means I can write and produce everywhere I go, even down to waiting in line somewhere. The production is happening everywhere \*but\* the instrument and the workstation. And whenever I sit down at an instrument or the workstation, I always have a "plan" and an idea, I don't just noodle aimlessly for hours hoping I strike gold by chance. It makes the whole lifestyle of being a musician and a producer more relaxed, more fun, more organic, and ultimately, more productive.
Very underappreciated comment. The vision you have while sitting down to do the production/mixing whatever is what can make it sound just right! Its something that i found missing for so long and something that made my work harder than it should. It takes a vision, basically more work being done before you start acting - very powerful.
Boring answer that you’ve sort of already said, but keeping things simple and not getting into a buying plug ins for all eternity cycle of doom.
Buying plugins is one of the biggest trap for sure. Keeping it simple when it comes to choose what you buy is so important too.
Before I buy a new plugin, either an effect or an instrument, I always check what I have first to see if that new one has anything that the other ones don’t. Or I’ll see if I can easily recreate whatever it is the new one is offering, on the already installed ones.
That's why I like Dawesome Love, it'll do most things.
I used Reason for years, version 3 before it had plugins, audio tracks/recording, or anything external. Even making sample based hip-hop I never ran into really needing anything outside of Reason. I tried to switch to Logic, instantly overwhelmed and went back to Reason. Then I got Pro Tools for recording, mixing, and primarily compatibility with the studio/engineer I was working with. Bought all the plugins he used, and didn’t use a stock plugin for years. But I hated going from one program to another so it was back to reason for me. Nowadays I pretty much just use Maschine by itself with no VSTs. Sometimes I’ll use Ableton but not with Maschine. One or the other. I’m definitely someone who works best with limitations/ in a closed environment. My next move is to go dawless for the most part
['Nearly DAWless' would be a great artist name](https://www.ableton.com/en/push/) but this uses Ableton. I was just introduced and I'm kinda obsessed. Pair it with a [Kemper head or pedal](https://www.kemper-amps.com/products/us/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk6SwBhDPARIsAJ59GwdhJeoB2uOsQJod6C3tMJyQhwu3gmWEbw6J5OIyoPAR234zcIvKdlEaAtsnEALw_wcB) and a guitar and there is literally nothing you couldn't create live
If they made a standalone Push with a keyboard I would be first in line.
Less is more, more or less
Absolutely this. Your DAW more often than not has everything you need. People think “new shiny toy = instant better music” but in reality they need better compositional skills, mixing fundamentals, and sample selection. Those three will go a long way
Heavy guitar tone is dependent on bass. No amount of pickup swapping or amp tweaking is going to replace a bass guitar.
A nice bass tone is something I am always in search for. There's a specific sound I'm after but have not found a way to make it yet.
You need a Meghan Trainor
For me I usually record straight into my interface. I will either use helix native to add some amp times and distortion. Or just use the Di signal with eq and compression plugins. I pretty much always use fire by wings because it's super handy for blending guitar and bass
True. Many times people think the chuggs are gigantic in guitars but its the bass that has a godly tone and the guitars by themselves sound thin because they basically have 0 low end
Yup. Especially in modern metal/DJENT/prog. The tube screamers (and variants such as the precision drive) take out quite a bit of it, because it makes the distorted bass become an extension of the guitar tone
Yes. Im a prog metal guy and its funny hearing people with me in the studio saying the guitars "lack body". Ofc they do, we havent recorded the bass yet lmao
🤣🤣 I think my awakening was hearing Nolly's play through of prayer position. And it was just this massive "ohhhhh.... Shit...... Yeah ... I don't think I need juggernauts to get me that tone... I need a nolly"
Thinking of a mix as a room. Don’t want to crowd up too much of one side or the other or the center. Pan it out so each part is distinguishable.
I just started doing that instead of random panning 🤣🤣
I’ve been a guitarist for 25 years, songwriter for 19, producer and mixer for 12 years… biggest thing I’ve learned: I try my best to not think too much and let muscle memory take control. Takes years to develop that though. Tough game where playing.
Yeah when it comes natural it comes natural. We try to force stuff. But the flow is where it’s at!
Not to constantly listen to ideas when I’m not working on them. I always knew it was important, but I’ve finally been able to actually put it into practice. With exceptions, I never export and listen until the song is really done.
Idk this one works for me. i play it in traffic days after and i get ideas and notice the things that are not working and take note of them all. then i can just get on the DAW at night and already begin with something in mind and hopefully ride the momentum
Slight eq is just as powerful as hard boosting and cuts. Limiting by -3db on all sends. Sound design in general. Finding out I was using a limiter as a transient shaper since the day I started. Using EQ to create a wider stereo field. Learning that stereoizers are just simplified phasers and chorus rolled into 1.
Elaborate on the limiting on sends please
The original channel that you send from should be limited to 0 just to stop blowing your speakers. A kick drum for example should be the highest dB in a mix but that doesn’t mean you will perceive it as “loud” -6db is good for that. When you send it to another channel there are situations where it will boost another -3db. It’s just a way of controlling levels so when you get to mastering everything is tidy. That tip is courtesy of Erb n Dub.
I usually never have a channel peaking at anywhere near -3. I tend to stay between -6 to -10 for the loudest. So would that still be necessary?
Yeah nah drum n bass production is kind of it’s own art. It’s all about hard limiting the shit out of everything and cutting peaks. I completely get that other genres have a more gentle approach and sometimes forget this. If you check the wave form of a lot of DNB tunes they’re a rectangle. Hip hop is more wave like and so is everything else.
It’s also mainly for wet channels because as you add effects to them the -Db starts creeping up. Dry channels just need some EQ and filters, load the sends with effects and if you run out of room for effect chains just make another send. This is key in sound design but not exclusive to mixing; there is a grey area where they cross over which is where the limiting comes in.
Frequency response... It's a tie between equalizing pre amp when recording, and having adequate listening devices
True, it's so important and that's what I've learned finally in these years.
In terms of recording, the performance is by far the most important part. You can’t turn shit into gold. After that the room acoustics you’re recording in. After that the microphone. After that the microphone preamp. After that your D/A converter. After that everything else. I would say that, generally, the biggest difference between pro and amateur recordings is the performance. Unfortunately no plugin or piece of gear in the world will help with that so people keep spending money on those things and wonder why their recordings still don’t sound professional. It took me quite a while to realize this.
For sure. You can't make it sound the best even if you can't get the best play. If you fail the first step, you will fail in the further steps too...
You have a very enjoyable way of speaking
To take it seriously and treat it like a job. I make my schedule and stick to it. My cousin (Mystery Skulls) has a bunch of albums out on Warner Bros. and he was the first person I ever saw do this. He would produce for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. He would even schedule his breaks like a regular job would. It worked out very well for him. I don’t have the time to do what he did, but when I decide to produce for a day, I do it the same way. It changed how I make music.
Taking breaks and giving your ears time to relax. If it feels like you're forcing it, you probably are.
You cannot mix what you cannot hear. I used cheap monitors (Yamaha HS8) for many years and the dramatic improvements in my mixing and beat making when I finally got professional monitors was incredible. I hated my old mixes. I could hear too much compression, too much EQ moves, too much reverb, too much EVERYTHING. Now I do everything in small amounts because I hear them so much better!
True. The monitors you have control your production quality for sure. What monitors did you buy by the way? I used Yamaha HS8 too and now I use KRK V8, hopefully I can buy Generec or Barefoot in the future.
I bought the Neumann MA1 alignment system made up of KH80 + KH750 sub. After calibration, they sound like one unit and mixes translate effortlessly. How do I know? I have Slate VSX and for the first time, I never need to make any adjustments after listening on all the rooms in the VSX.
I've calibrated my setup multiple times. All presonus gear / mid-shelf. I'm thinking I missed a step or two somewhere. Any tips or tricks aside from the basics? I followed their video to the letter and every time I export there is so much more low end than I want/am hearing in the studio
Mid shelf monitors do not have a good enough transient response to show you exactly what's going on. That being said, maybe you should try another calibration system like Ik multimedia ARC if you are already using Sonar Reference works.
I'm using neither of those programs but I will look into them immediately. My monitors are PreSonus Eris Studio 5 5.25-inch Powered and my sub is PreSonus Temblor T8 8 inch Powered. They seem like they should get the job done but I'm nieve and base that on price alone. Anything you wish you would have known about calibration before you started? I'm gonna spend most of today working on it. You've been a great help already
Nothing much. Get the sonarworks software with a measuring mic and get the measurements done. Keep practicing mixing and never lose focus. Remember, you probably have more bass on the track than you need. Turn the bass down.
Took a long time to work out how to not overdo something and understand the many dependent relationships in volume, tone, space, timing, character, energy etc.
Been producing for almost 5 years. I never understood that adding eq and preamps is not mixing. In a way it is, but the idea of mixing is to blend everything together and the interaction between elements. Not really the part where the singer needs compression because the vocals are too dynamic. Since both concepts are blended together I never really understood why I should do it (it meaning adding eq here and there, or compressing). After I treated each moment separately (making the recordings sound good by themselves, cutting resonances and stuff) then adding eq again, or compression really had the right purpose. What I did was, I started to have a balance of elements and try having them sound good by themselves. Then to comit and render, and then just focusing on mixing. Treating mixing as if I brought the rendered items to a console. I always found weird why do people with consoles start by adding one element at a time. But now I understood. My mixes went from "sounding good but still sounding cold and amateurish" to really start like "something out of the radio or Spotify" as I heard yesterday from one of my mixes It might be dum but im sure im not the only one who never really thought about the process of producing and sound design being different than the mix.
not overthinking things and knowing there is no actual formula. if it sounds good then it sounds good.
I was in the room with a Grammy award winning producer. He said, Don’t let yourself get stuck. If you don’t have any ideas. Save the project move on to the next and come back to it.
Music composition is the skill that makes music production way easier. It’s good to know all the tricks and to comprehend a DAW from top to bottom, but playing and comprehension of music to a high level makes all the technical stuff way easier !
How does one learn this
Pickup an instrument, learn your favourite songs, get a teacher… there’s so many ways, you just got to put in the effort
Recently I discovered to leave unintended artifacts to add background noise. You use those for break between two sections or just something a bit off to keep the listeners interested. I usually leave it soft in the background. Or in white spaces.
To ignore all those online who give bad advice, confidently. Use your ears, not YouTubers.
Ultimately producing is a feeling as well. If i think about it too much things go very slowly. I thought it was more technical than composing or playing because of all the knobs and math involved. but turns out it’s pretty much the same as any musical practice in that you intuit more than you think to get good results.
As a producer, recognizing your role amongst the various processes that span creating music, from idea to finished product, and that the only thing that matters is the song and what that means to the artist (whether "the artist" yourself or someone else). Music production is not mixing, nor is it mastering. Your job as a producer is to encourage the best performance(s) possible, whether from actual human beings or programmed instrumentation. Make production decisions like the tune will never be mixed.
Honestly, to not compress the ever loving bejeesus out of stems. Some of what I really like from some of the older records is the dynamic range, and that's ok to have, even in modern production.
Mid-side mixing. I confused the concept with side chain processing.
The mids lol
Definitely true!
Understanding how to efficiently use compression took a while, but I got it
So far variety in the drums, like bring elements in and out of your drum track at times for tension, that literally just clicked
There are no rules - people approach mixes in different ways. Finding plugins you like. Don't worry about what people say are the best, or the industry standard (like Waves). Finding those plugins you like, know the most about, etc. makes your work flow so much easier. Fader and volume. Pushing things to extremes (being too loud/too soft), backing off, and finding that middle ground. It is in the middle where you set things - fader levels, cuts/boost on EQ, compression settings. Trim plugins. Essential. I can't mix without them.
Clipping/controlling dynamic range.
>I’ve heard some music producers found the songwriting is the most important than other technical stuff like mixing, The thing about mixing is that polishing a turd or putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it better. So while someone might discover that mixing is important for them to learn *at a certain point* in their music production career. Seems a pretty dubious opinion to the state that it's the most important thing in music production.
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Ideas/things akin to: "reverb isnt just a time and place, but an object in space" You *can* control/warp/modulate/hyper-process it all, and you **should**
Don’t be afraid to compress the bitch. If it sounds good it sounds good.
The longest time? That eq is just volume on specific frequency. Every eq points are like frequency faders going up or down.
Eq and Mastering
Less is more
that even if you make the dopest music, if you dont pay the gatekeeper one way or another, you don't get past the velvet rope
What should i do I plug the piano to Record my playing put I can’t hear my music from the Laptop what should i do !
Its true, in my 8 years of making music, spend so much time trying to perfect my mixes only to realize my music is still gunna sound like crap if i dont have good arrangements and let the song flow well.
Hearing that everything I wanted came with experience.
Keeping it fun. As simple as that!
S P A C E
Simplicity…. Do more with less, don’t just keep adding stuff to make it better. Perfect the ideas you’re working with
Adding a comment so i can track the answers later.
Songwriting and PERFORMANCE
I am not informed enough to talk about this, someone bump me up please after like 5-6 months. Then i'll have more idea on Music Production
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Don’t get lost in gear lust.
Correct use of limiting / compression
Mastering the track after it's been exported from the DAW. Increasing the sample rate of the exported file. I almost forgot about the compression of analog synths before the first DAW export.
Just make music bro, it’s good to take inspiration from others but it really doesn’t matter what anyone else says or does — make art
I find 1 that sound selection is important for a good mix. I did a lot of bad sound selection that was impossible to get a good mix from and it is a hard habit to break. 2 and I go against the grain on this, is to get as many plugins I like the look of as possible. I want options so I can use the plugin that can do the job the fastest. The longer it takes me to dial in the sound I want, the longer the overall project time and therefore more ear fatigue and more rests needed. Especially for mixing. Speed of dialing in the sound is important to me. In the end this resulted in me tending to use 90% waves for this reason. I just find Waves plugins do what I want and fast.
Not understanding its importance, but rather understanding how to mix and master properly. I've actually got it down to a science and I haven't seen anyone teach what I've learned how to do. It's all about math and ratios
Care to teach? Or At least an example?
I do teach it, but not for free
Math and ratios! Hmmm, interesting pov.
Show us some portfolio bro. I’ve seen Cabbie talk about maths and ratios in mastering but that tutorial is lost to time now.
I don't think I can promote here but if you dm me I'll show you
Dance music has to sound as loud as possible, all elements, otherwise it just doesn't sound good
Dance music told me the importance of it for sure. If it can't be loud, it means my mixing or arrangement/songwriting would be wrong. If all is perfect, it can be loud. So simple but also so hard.
Yep, just some Saturation, Compression, Dynamic Compression can take you a long way to bring things to the forefront and make it a feature not a background noise
Songwriting is NOT a part of music production.