Archive for the ‘Mixing’ Category
Mixing with Headphones: Avoiding Disaster
March 26, 2012 Headphones, MixingIf you absolutely must mix with headphones, here are some tips to help avoid the biggest mistakes people make.
Read More »
The Importance of a Great Mixdown Before Mastering.
December 15, 2011 Mastering, MixingIn an ideal world once music has been mixed it would simply be committed to cd or uploaded ready for distribution. In some rare occasions this does happen, though it is fairly uncommon.
Read More »
Hammond B3 and Leslie Recording Techniques
September 16, 2011 Hammond B3, Leslie Speakers, Mixing, TrackingOne of the most challenging and unique contemporary instruments that you’ll encounter working in professional studios is the Hammond B3 Organ and Lesie Cabinet combination. A prolific, immediately recognizable sound that is very difficult to reproduce without the real deal, the warm tone bars of the Hammond combine with the tube saturation and modulation effects [...]
Read More »
How to Group Tracks to Save DAW CPU
March 8, 2008 DAWs, MixingThis post focuses on how to group tracks to save CPU or DSP processing. When I first started mixing using a computer, I would throw up inserts on everything. Everything was processed independently. As you might imagine, my mixes were insanely CPU intensive and hard to manage. Soon I realized that many of the tracks [...]
Read More »
How to Create Depth in a Mix
March 6, 2008 MixingThis post focuses on the topic of creating a sense of depth in mixes. It’s not too hard to make things sound big. It’s not too hard to make things sound wide. But it is very hard to do both while also creating a sense of depth. There are a myriad of tools available to [...]
Read More »
Monitoring Diversity for Better Mixes
February 25, 2008 Mixing, SpeakersThis post focuses on how monitoring with different kinds of speakers will help you achieve better mixes. One of the things that sets professional studios apart from hobbyist studios is their collection of monitors. Most studios have at least a couple pairs of monitors, from nearfields to farfields. Many have boomboxes and ‘hi-fi’ stereos to [...]
Read More »
Taming Rock Cymbals with… a DeEsser!?
February 13, 2008 DeEssers, Drums, MixingThis post. focuses on the secret rock mixing practice of using a DeEsser on overheads. Rock overhead tracks are downright scary. Many rock drummers constantly wash out their cymbals and play in the studio with ‘live’ cymbals that have too much presence, designed to cut through stage noise. EQing the cymbals leaves you with mush [...]
Read More »Adding Real Ambience After-the-Fact
February 7, 2008 Mixing, TrackingThis post focuses on capturing ambience by playing back and re-recording sounds in acoustic spaces. The idea of piping sounds into a space and retracking it isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. Before the advent of reverb processors it was common practice to route audio to speakers in reverb chambers to achieve ambient [...]
Read More »Increasing Attack with Gates
February 6, 2008 Gates, MixingThis post focuses on the trick of increasing the attack of sounds using gates. Most people reach for EQ or compression when they want to add punch to their sounds. But I’ve found another way to accomplish a very specific kind of attack transient using gates. I sometimes use this trick to add attack kick [...]
Read More »
