What is your latest mixing tip?

[garybrun]

What is the latest mixing or mastering tip you have recently learnt?
 

Sing your main vocal...  then do it again but whisper it.. then blend in.

Edited February 14, 2022 by garybrun

[Bapu]

Disclaimer: I mostly mix "metal/hard rock". So...

Make everything louder than everything else.

Then go back and try it again, only louder.

? 

 

 

[Esteban Villanova]

Use bitcrusher on EVERYTHING.

[John Bradley]

There was a video from Kush where he showed how he sends a drum bus to 4 different parallel compressors doing different things ("tight", "punch", "smooth", "crush").

Interesting and useful.

[craigb]

But only use if you want to make Gold Records! ?

[InstrEd]

37 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Disclaimer: I mostly mix "metal/hard rock". So...

Make everything louder than everything else.

Then go back and try it again, only louder.

? 

 

 

Me thinks you have to do that old man because you can't hear   ?   but also isn't louder better

[InstrEd]

1 hour ago, garybrun said:

What is the latest mixing or mastering tip you have recently learnt?
 

Sing your main vocal...  the do it again but whisper it.. then blend in.

Sounds like that new Apple commercial with the mom going down the basement stairs

[David Baay]

Sing your main vocal...  then do it again but whisper it.. then delete both tracks and load up a synth to carry the melody.

[paulo]

17 hours ago, garybrun said:

What is the latest mixing or mastering tip you have recently learnt?
 

Sing your main vocal...  then do it again but whisper it.. then blend in.

I do that, sometimes a lower octave version too or even a somehow heavily mangled copy of the track. Basically anything to make it not sound so much like me.

The main thing I've learnt about mixing is........I should have paid more attention years ago when I thought that our mixing guy was just a nerd with no actual musical ideas that just sat twiddling knobs for no apparent reason. I always figured that we mostly just kept him because he had a van and didn't mind being the driver. If I'd given his craft more credit, I might have been halfway good at it by now.

Then again, he did seem to spend an awful lot of time twiddling knobs that made no apparent difference to anything.

 

[garybrun]

Ive recently been trying with pinknoise... it works ok to get you in the ball park.

[RobertWS]

More cowbell!

[craigb]

2 hours ago, garybrun said:

Ive recently been trying with pinknoise... it works ok to get you in the ball park.

One of my John Cage 4'33" covers is done purely using black noise... 

 

 

 

?

[craigb]

The concept that helped me the most for mixing was to think about everything in 3D (no, not using hallucinogens though those did help! ?).

From the perspective of looking at the "players" directly in front of you; you have panning left to right, frequency up and down, and volume front to back.  Making sure that you keep things in their own areas with a good balance kept the mix clean and interesting.

I was right in the middle of getting oscilloscope software calibrated to my gear and learning how to take a mono input source (like a guitar) and make multiple copies for panning when I lost my studio.  I really wanted to make that "wall of guitar" sound!  Oh well... ?

[Shane_B.]

20 hours ago, garybrun said:

Sing your main vocal...  then do it again but whisper it.. then blend in.

The Stones do that in Angie. There's actually two very different vocal tracks going at the same time in that song. With your headphones turned way up you can hear the different vocal tracks throughout the song. It almost sounds like bleed through on the acoustic track on the left then they redid the vocals and couldn't fix the bleed? I don't know. But there's clearly 2 vocal tracks going through the entire song and whispering during some of it after the 3:40 mark.

[garybrun]

The whispering just catches the listeners attention and draws them in.

[garybrun]

50% of your snare sound should come from overheads and room mics.

[garybrun]

Add saturation to background vocals...

[garybrun]

Mic upright pianos from behind... Al Smidt tip.

[garybrun]

Adding 800hz to the bass gets it in the pocket.

[Tim Smith]

Don't do everything they tell us to do and we might learn something new.