Mixing-With-5-Plug-ins-eBook.pdf

www.audio-issues www. audio-issues.com .com

1

Contents 1. EQ ........................................................3 2. Compression ......................................6 3. Reverb ................................................8 4. Delay (And When To Use It?) ..........10 5. Saturation .........................................11

www.audio-issues.com

2

If you’re having trouble with getting better mixes, please don’t think they’ll magically improve with the next plug-in you’ll buy. You already have the plug-ins you need for a great mix. Let me tell you what they are:

1. EQ You use EQ to give each instrument their space in the frequency spectrum. You carve out pockets for each instrument, and depending how much you’ve got going on in your mix you’ll need to be more or less heavy-handed on the EQ.

Know your frequencies Now, this might be a little confusing but here’s what I mean. Take these two plug-ins: CLA Vocals and a normal channel EQ, and compare the EQ settings on them. Now, the CLA line isn ’t just an EQ but it HAS an EQ. But the thing is that it doesn’t have is frequencies. It just has names like “bite” and “top” which aren ’t very helpful when you’re trying to understand where specific frequencies are. So if you’re still trying to figure out where boominess, boxiness and all those areas are I recommend using an actual EQ and not a fancy plug-in li ke this. It’ll teach you where to look when you just need to add or subtract a little EQ in any of your session. Think about it this way, it ’s great to save time and order someone else to make you your fancy coffee drink, but knowing how to make coffee yourself i s a valuable skill to have. OK, on to the next one.

Get rid of annoying sounds Take boxiness for instance, because that seems to be a common problem with multiple instruments but none so much as the kick drum.


3

Boxiness can be reeled in by cutting in the mids around 3-400 Hz and sometimes in the 600 Hz region. You can do this with either two narrow cuts or one big one. Sometimes it depends on the genre which method works better. If you’re looking for different annoying frequencies the same technique applies of just boosting around until you pinpoint the frequency you want to cut, then simply bring your EQ cut down until it’s gone.

Make your instruments mask the vocal to help you get a clean vocal sound This sounds backwards but you can find where any instrument is clashing with another by simply finding the frequency range where it starts masking the other instrument. For example, I can easily make the acoustic guitar mask the vocals by boosting around the frequency spectrum and listening to when the vocal starts feeling cluttered. That’s when you know that ’s the frequency range you need to cut in order to bring the vocal out in the mix without necessarily adding a bunch of boosts to the vocal track.

Filter, Cut & Boost should be your mantra Filter, cut and boost is the only mantra you need to live by for effective EQ ’ing. Let’s use the example of an acoustic guitar. Start by filtering up the lows to get rid of the boominess from the mic being too close to the instrument. Then cut the jangly mids in about 6-800 Hz to smooth the guitar out a little bit. Then boost in the 250 Hz range for warmth and then maybe a little bit at 500 Hz and/or 8 khz for brilliance.

Boost harmonics to get things to cut through The bass guitar is a low-end instrument and needs to carry weight down there. But you shouldn ’t neglect the higher harmonics of the bass guitar to get it to cut through the mix. Say one of the fundamental note of a bass is around 100 Hz. Then you can boost at multiples of that harmonic, such as 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz etc…


4

Many small boosts at regular intervals (some argue that even numbered harmonics sound better) can help add richness to the guitar. So in this case boosting at 100 Hz, then again at 200 Hz (the second interval), and then at 400 Hz and 800 Hz can give some additional higher harmonics to help it cut through. The same will work with other instruments. Try it on keyboards to get them to cut through in the mids without needing to boost them where it clashes with the vocal for instance.

Use your training wheels EQ ’ing needs practice and it’s not always easy to figure out where a specific problem lies. That’s where you can use your analyzer to help you spot an unnatural buildup of frequencies. I use the Voxengo Span analyzer on my master bus and then I always keep the analyzer on the EQ plugin for whenever I run into problems I can’t find.

Finally, Don’t Engineye, enginear! I know using visual EQ can be hard because eventually the “oh no, that EQ curve looks real weird” mentality rears its head. But the thing is, nobody is going to watch your mix so unless it actually sounds terrible it should be just fine to have a weird EQ curve. As long as you’ve referenced your mix to other commercial recordings and what you’re hearing out of your mix isn’t that much different than what the general public is used to hearing you should be fine. So let that be the last word on this EQ Checklist. I hope that gives you some ideas to help you with your next mix.


5

2. Compression Compression tightens up your mix, makes the elements sound “glued” together and adds an overall punchiness to everything you need. Using the various compression models you’ll achieve different sounds depending on whether you’re adding Opto, FET or VCA compression. It’s not only important to know how to tweak the attack/release, threshold and ratio. You also need to know which compressor model brings out the most flattering character of any of your tracks. Compression is what makes your mix breathe. It can also squash your mix and choke out the naturalness of it. Depending on the genre, instrument and other considerations, the approach to compression varies. We could decide to completely squash down a room microphone for a punchier drum sound, but we would never compress a beautiful vocal to such an extreme. For a simple vocal compression trick that tightens up the vocal without really pushing it too hard try using just a low 2:1 ratio with a really low threshold so it’s always compressing a tiny bit. That compresses the vocal at all times while still allowing it to breathe and be dynamic. In general, not just for vocals but for any of the tracks, if you want to use compression in a subtle way that doesn’t squash your song, here ’s a good way to do it:

Step 1 – Mix the LOUDEST part of the song You’ve probably read about the importance of getting a great static mix before. Find the loudest part of the song, loop it and go to town on it. Mix that part until it makes you cry it’s so good. Use all your compressors and limiters to get that part really really rocking. Once you’ve got that part of the song sounding really great you can go back to the beginning and mix the rest of the song.


6

Step 2 – Leave your compressors and limiters ALONE Mix the rest of the song without touching your compressors or limiters. If all your hard hitting compression is pumping along nicely during the loudest parts of the song then don ’t add more compression in the quieter parts. This method gives your quiet parts a nice dynamic range while giving your loud parts the punch they need. If you add more compression to the vocal during the calm verse then it’ll sound squashed and overly compressed in the choruses.

Step 3 – Automate, DON’T compress Don’t think that your instruments need more compression in the verses just because they’re quieter. Just automate the phrases that need a little more volume. Of course, there are multiple ways to approach compression, this is just the conservative way of doing it. Your particular approach to compression is a big factor in how your mix will end up.

Top Ten Uses For Compression on Specific Tracks 1. Tame Drums – If the drums are getting in your way, careful attack and release timing can tame some of those pesky transients to make for easier-sounding drums in the background. 2. Explode Drums – On the other hand, if you want them to explode, parallel compression can make your drums big and juicy. 3. Take care of lousy bass players – Inexperienced bass players can be all over the place. Using the threshold and ratio to control their dynamics so that their notes don ’t pop out all over the place is a great way to use compression. 4. Make the rhythm guitar pop – Compression on tight and strummy rhythmic guitars can fatten up the guitar tracks and make it pop. 5. Smooth out lead guitar dynamics – If you have long lead lines soloing in the background, long releases can make your solos sustain even longer. You might even go grab a cup of tea and it ’ll be like “wheeee” when you come back. If you didn’t get that reference go watch Spinal Tap. 6. Side-chain compress for automatic dynamics – Side-chaining the bass to the kick drum can give both of them space in the mix. The same goes for the vocal and a busy guitar part. 7. Make the room sound bigger and punchier – Compressing room mics can make your drum sound even more explosive. This, combined with parallel compression can make your drum sound real fat.


7

8. Bring out the intricacies of the vocal – A juicy valve compressor, even just an emulator, can bring out the little intricacies and nuances of the vocal. Compressing to retain dynamics while bringing out the emotion is the key to a well compressed vocal. 9. Thicken up toms – If your toms aren’t compressed, you’re losing out on a punchier drum sound. Scoop the EQ a little bit and add some heavy compression and your thick toms will sound like they’re straight out of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” 10. Keep the reverb at bay – Since compression is sort of an automatic volume leveler, using compression on effects such as reverb can really help.

3. Reverb If you’ve created a really nicely EQ ’d mix full of punchiness and tight dynamics you’ll be most of your way there. However, you ’ll end up with a fairly two-dimensional mix if you don’t add any space to it. That’s where reverb and delay come in. Use delay to add a sense of depth without creating huge reverb tails that clutter up your mix. Conversely, use big reverbs to add huge sounds to your instrument. Want to make you home-recorded guitar sound like it’s in a cathedral because of that one part in the song where everything drops out? No problem! Just add reverb. Reverb and delay add so much character to a mix. You can give the same song to two different mixers and just their use of reverb can make each mix sound drastically different. Using reverb can get pretty challenging. Not too much and it’ll sound dry and unpolished. Too much and it’ll be a cluttered mess.

Reverb For Contrast You can use reverb for contrast between verse and chorus as well as how you can use reverb to create two completely different mixes for the same song.


8

In one of my songs I basically mixed two different songs within the same session. The verse drums had a completely different sound: Heavy reverb, floaty, crisp with the cymbals. The chorus was tight: Parallel compression, small drum rooms, punchy. The same went with the bass. In the verses I used the same plug-ins: Amp simulator, EQ, Rbass, but with totally different settings to suit the sound I was after. The guitars were even more extreme. I used sparse processing on the verses because it already sounded pretty good. Just some EQ and compression along with some tape saturation. And best of all the Kramer tape plug-in has a built-in echo/delay effect so I just dialed in a little bit of delay to put the solo guitars in its space and voilá. But the chorus guitars were routed, subgrouped, saturated and parallel distorted. It was edgy while still keeping it within the type of sound I was looking for. The guitars just sounded a bit too clean overall and to create that drastic contrast it ’s always good to resort to some saturation.

Reverb For Style You can also use reverb to create different feels to the song. Because, the arrangement is a fun one to play with because it has both acoustic guitar, pianos, pads and strings. And depending on your perspective, you can take the song in multiple directions. If you want to emphasize the singer/songwriter style of the song you can accent the acoustic guitar and create a “folkier” mix. But if you want to create a big, orchestral arrangement you can really bring the pads, violins and piano to the forefront to create something much bigger. But it’s not just pulling the faders of the instruments up that create a mix. You have to create spaces around these instruments that make sense. You can’t have big string pads and violins sounding like they ’re being played in a garage. And you can ’t throw a cathedral style reverb on a rhythm acoustic guitar. It’ll just clutter up the mix. So I went through some ways you can use reverb and spaces (in addition to balancing the faders) to create different mix styles.


9

Just by emphasizing different aspects of the mix and using different reverbs (or delays instead!) you end up with two completely different sounding mixes

4. Delay

(And When To Use It?) I had a conversation a while ago with a fellow mixing engineer and we started talking about some live sound tips. We talked about the various techniques we use when mixing live sound when we started talking about vocal processing. I told him how I like to use a short plate reverb on vocals, especially live but also in the studio, and he told me how he ’d much rather use delay instead of reverb. That got me thinking: When should you rather use delay instead of reverb? Is there any specific situation where reverb works better? Or can you use delay interchangeably instead of reverb?

The Difference Between Delay and Reverb The difference between delay and reverb is simple. Delay takes your source sound and repeats it. How much depends on your feedback and parameters. Meanwhile, reverb takes your source and repeats it in an artificial space, creating reflections and ambience that’s not possible to do with simple delays. Reverbs are usually more complex and include all sorts of different parameters and buttons to control and mold the sound.

So When Do You Use Which? Delay is used for simpler purposes, when you want to create depth without necessarily creating a new space in your mix. It’s very easy to use delays to enhance and thicken vocals, guitars and keyboards. Settings with a delay that ’s less than 100 milliseconds and only one or two repeats will result in a thicker sound. Using longer delays can create a sense of space without cluttering up the mix like you might experience with long reverb trails.


10

Long, lush reverbs are great for slower songs, especially if the arrangement is sparse. You can also use short room or plate reverbs if you want to create a specific ambience, since each reverb “mode” has their own characteristic. Like I said, reverbs – and especially the longer ones – can add a lot to an arrangement or mix. But it can also add noise and clutter if you use too much of it. Delays might be easier to manage – since they’re simpler – but you also have to be careful with the delay and feedback times. Too much feedback with a short delay results in metallic noise. The same goes for too much feedback with a long delay; it’ll continue long after the phrase has finished, repeating at the wrong times.

Mix and match Maybe you want to use a shorter delay to double the vocal but you still need to add some space around it. Mixing delays with reverbs is very common, and using them on different auxiliary sends means you can dial in the perfect amount of both processors.

Pick What The Situation Calls for In the end, my friend and I were just discussing different approaches to the same thing. He liked to use delay to enhance the vocal, especially in a faster rock track, and I liked using short plate reverbs. That’s not to say one of us knew the right answer. Both approaches were 100% correct, we just used different methods. So in the end pick the processor that works for you and grooves with the track you ’re mixing. Maybe a medium delay is all you need, but maybe a long hall reverb is the order of the day.

5. Saturation Now, we get to the final ingredient of a great mix. The popularity of saturation and tape emulation plug-ins has surged in recent years because of the convincing sounds these plug-ins make. You don’t have to own a reel-to-reel machine to create that tape feel. You don’t even need fancy premium plug-ins either. Just google “free saturation plug-ins” and you’ll be on your way to adding some analog warmth to your tracks. Saturation is kind of like a “secret sauce.” You can never tell what kind of character it’ll give your instruments without trying it and I’ve found that I always get something different when I ’m playing along with the plug-ins.


11

But usually, what I get is some nice dimension to my tracks, with the saturation bringing out some added character via the harmonic content it brings to the mix. That’s really the most concise and valuable tip I can give you for saturation. Just try it out, tweak the amount of saturation and make sure you have proper gain staging in place. If you just want tape warmth then don ’t overload the input to accidentally give the track a distorted feel. You want warmth! Not a fire!

5 Plug-ins to a Great Mix That’s all you need for a great mix. As long as you use these five plug-ins effectively you’ll be cranking out killer mixes in no time. Of course, I’m not advocating you don ’t use any other plug-ins. I’m saying that as long as you master these five everything else will become easier. So let help you get started by giving you a bunch of ideas on how to use these plug-ins in the next few emails. Keep an eye on your inbox for all the handy tips that will be coming your way! Until then, Björgvin | Audio Issues


12

Mixing-With-5-Plug-ins-eBook.pdf

Recommend Documents