Hi guys! I hope it's been a great and productive year for everybody.
It's Fanu from Finland here. Mixing and mastering (in addition to producing music of my own) is my day job, and I wanted to give you all a few useful mixing tips because, in all honesty, I love helping people out to have them enjoy music as much as I always have.
If mixing is your thing and you are interested in 50+ free pages of more tips like these, google "fanu crash course in mixing" and that'll take you to my site, and by following the links, you can grab it for free that way. But I'll leave that up to you.
Here we go :)
[apologies for all funny characters etc; it's because I've copied this from the published PDF]
• MONO MIXING •
Always make sure to check how your mixes work when played back in mono. Why? Many musical reproduction systems out there are mono or not very wide in stereo: many club sound systems, public PA’s, many systems in public spaces, public transportation, etc. And many less than ideal loudspeakers at home and cheap earbuds that are very popular today do not necessarily boast with the greatest stereo reproduction capabilities any- ways. That is why it is extremely good practice to ensure a good mono mix: you cannot be sure that your music will be heard through a very good system that is faithful to your stereo content.
You can use this by using on the master of your DAW or audio editor a plugin that sets the mix width to 0%. Most DAWs allow for this, but if your does not, grab the free bx_solo by Brainworx. It lets you quickly hear your mix in mono, hear its side (or stereo) content in isolation as well as lis- ten to left or right channel only. You can also try listening to your mix from one speaker only every once in awhile – just mute the other one.
But stereo sounds nice, you might say. Yes, we all like to spread sounds in the mix, but there are some wideners out there that are not “mono compatible”, which means that even though they make the sound nice, loud, and wide in stereo mix, the sound may drop drastically in level when played back in mono. Also, in many sample packs there are sounds that are super wide for the sake of instant “wow factor”, but not all of them sound that strong in mono. Make sure to check them out in mono, too. Same applies for many sounds in movies, for example, as they are mostly made for stereo sys- tems, so if you sample movies (I’m not saying you should...), give them a mono check.
So, how to approach mono mixing in all its simplicity? A good and trusted mixing tip is to get lev- els right when mixing in mono, so simply set your master channel to mono as described above, and then get all levels right. This means that now everything that has to come loud and nice should be heard loud and well – applies speci cally to main elements such as drums, bass, lead sounds, vocal, strings etc.
When you have done that, click the master back to stereo. If some sounds appear too wide at this point, no problem: just reduce their individual width to taste. If you wish to widen some sounds that are “too mono”, just set the stereo width of individual tracks to taste using a widener; at this point you already have them loud enough in mono, so now is a good moment to give them some width. By doing this, you make sure that playing it back in mono does not make your song and its elements weaker. This is especially important for drums and bass, which are the backbone of most rhythm-based music out there. There are plenty of drums out there in sample packs that collapse and lose a lot of their volume and presence in mono. Same goes for so many “impressive” synth sounds, vocal samples etc. Every now and then I do receive songs for mastering where the main melody almost disappears when I play it back in mono, and in that case I always ask the producer to x his mono power (this is easier to x in stem mastering), because that will be hard to correct; it can be addressed by EQing, for example, but not completely xed. It’s good to remember that trying to EQ that area up will bring other sounds up, too, and if the other sounds in the mix are already playing at good vol- ume, the balance of the elements will become uneven. And heavy EQ boosting does not always sound that good or natural anyways. So always make sure you have mono in check.
• POOR MONITORING CHECK •
Relating to mono mixing in a way, checking your mix from a pretty poor pair of speakers is al- ways a good mixing technique. Why? If your mix sounds halfway decent and listenable from poor speakers, chances are its levels are OK at least – it can be a great tool that will also give you an idea how your music may sound to many other listeners (hearing it from iPhone earbuds, for example).
I often play my mixes and masters from my iMac speaker(s) (to be honest, I’m still not even sure if it’s stereo or not!), which I detest in any sort of enjoyable listening attempts, but what I do is play my tune among trusted reference songs from the iMac, pay attention to the balance of the sounds – how loud the snare usually hits, how I perceive the kick, how loud the vocal or synths seem to come through – and do a bit of comparing. It’s also great because you won’t even be paying attention to the lowest lows or highest highs because, coming from those speakers, they proba- bly are not there, but hey, your good reference tunes probably sound quite OK from those poor speakers, so make sure yours does, too.
From poor speakers, it will be impossible to determine if the sub bass is heavy enough, for exam- ple, but then again, this is a great general bassline test: do you hear the harmonics of the bass? Can you make out the notes the bassline is playing, or is it too distant, messy, or hard to hear? This may mean you have to go back to work with the bassline and give it some upper harmonic content by saturation or distortion.
• QUIET/LOUD MONITORING CHECK •
As for quiet monitoring: it is very simple: you only are to play your song at a very quiet volume – play it too quiet to be regular, enjoyable listening. Ridiculously quiet works, too! Pay attention to the sound: do you hear all the main elements that make your song what it is and convey the emotion to your ear? Can you still hear the kick? Even the hihats? Is the vocal clear enough? That bass again – did it disappear or can you still hear its notes? Can you still hear the melody in your mix while frying bacon and eggs and shotgunning beers in the kitchen? Chances are, if your mix sounds clear enough at a quiet volume from crappy monitors while you do that, it may be a great, balanced mix, and you may be an absolute mixing lord not to be messed with! Balance is what we’re aiming for, and speaking of which, let me slip in my favorite Dave Pensado quote: “Balance, balance, balance. You don’t want spaghetti sauce that just tastes all garlicky. It’s gotta be balanced.”
The complete opposite of this is loud monitoring (almost too loud), great with reference songs. Play a trusted reference song, and keep raising the volume of your playback system slowly until you start to nd a level that starts to feel slightly uncomfortable. When you start getting the “This is too loud and I don’t like music this loud” feeling (this doesn’t mean anything ridiculously loud; most of us like listening to music at relatively moderate levels, which I highly recommend any- ways), you know you have reached the level useful for this method. Listen to a well-balanced ref- erence song or a few for around 20–30 seconds or so in total ( rst making sure they’ll be playing at a level comparable to your own song/project), then switch to your song. It is often through this method that you can very easily realize if it sounds too bright or “annoying”. If it sounds harsh, it is often somewhere around 4–8 KHz that a little dip with an EQ may work wonders. At this volume, it becomes very easy to hear such things.
Word of common sense here: do not destroy your ears or harass your neighbors with this (but if you do, make sure the mix and music are dope and tight so they’ll enjoy it too!).
If that was something that resonates in you and you want more, just google "Fanu crash course in mixing" (not saying you have to!) and you can get 50+ pages of similar stuff for no charge.
Submitted December 16, 2016 at 07:46PM by FanuBreaks https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/5ir93s/a_few_mixing_tips_feat_mono_mixing_etc/?utm_source=ifttt