Mixing 99%

 

THE 99% MIXING AND  MASTERING EBOOK  ProdbyJack & MG  Written by MG 

 

         

 

INTRODUCTION  Mixing can be so fun, yeah right, right? Mixing and fun don't belong  in the same sentence for some. So let this book guide you to get that  sorted. Im explaining it in my own words as a hip hop  producer/engineer and beatmaker to other hip hop producers and  engineers. This guide will break down the important sides of the mix  and how you can quickly adopt a mixing workflow that will make you  a better mixer and a quicker mixer working smarter to keep making  beats rather than mixing them. There isn't a one size fits all for all  mixing techniques so it's time to break some down so you can really  begin to learn exactly what it is you're doing. Mixing isn't a race. Take  your time and give your ears plenty of rest. Everything will fall in  place after implementing some good practices. This Ebook is designed  to pave that for you and place you on the road which seemed foggier  before.                        1   

EQ  EQ is one of the most integral components of a good mix . Many  sounds and sound sources we use in production have unnecessary  frequencies within them which create overlaps, phase issues and a  host of other problems that if not correct, will ultimately cause issues  further in the mix when applying other effects and processing. The  foundation of most good mixing is EQ. I would always advise  someone to start with a reductive approach to their EQ , just cutting  out frequencies that are if no relevance or importance to a sound .  For example, a piano will have present frequencies over wide range a  cutting out overly apparent bass and high end with simple low cut  and hi cuts will balance out the mix to start with. I would stress that  each of the mixer channels start with an Eq, even if it only has a very  simple reduction occurring , so long as we priorities cleaning up the  mix first , the rest of the process will feel a lot easier. Mixing with Eq  is particular to each sound and there isn’t really a recipe so to speak  that works perfectly. It isn’t a one size fits all process but there are a  few general pointers that will really help to improve the tidiness if a  mix.   Reductive EQ  In any Eq that has the ability to isolate the frequencies we affect, we  can carve out unwanted mud or piercing top end. Take pro q2 for  example - by pressing the headphone icon on a frequency band it  allows us to listen to the target frequency we’re cutting. It usually is a  low boomy sound in the bottom or a hissy incoherent noise in the top  end. I would suggest you don’t get too used to boost and sweep  methods because they can really annoy the ear , highlight a specific  frequency that is annoying by itself at a high volume but is sometimes  an actual characteristic of an instrument. Reductive Eq should be  simple   

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Most of the time if the sounds we are using are initially produced  well. You shouldn’t need to dip 500hZ on the snare drastically or take  out too much high end with tight bell shaped Eq unless the noise is  obviously harsh and annoying . listening to an isolated channel  without the rest of the mix to actually provide a reference point is  equally detrimental at times . Spending 30 mins on a snare by itself  then unsoloing it to find it’s gone missing and lacks punch etc isn't  exactly a great thing for your morale!      Mid/Side EQ  Eq on the face of it, as we mostly know it, loads up and you get a few  things to play around with, moving the bands about, the shape of  them etc. but one powerful tool often overlooked is splitting your eq  channel between mid and side. Unlike the conventional eq curves we  mainly use, mid and side EQ allows us to effectively look at our  speaker and divide frequencies between the areas we prefer. For  example, removing the side of a bass or low element equates to you  narrowing its stereo field and bypasses you from including bass end  in stereo end of your mix.in the high end, it is useful to roll of some  frequencies at times front the mid and side channels just you you get  more high end into the tweeter side of your speaker, which is  responsible for producing most of the high end. Here is an example to  set your mind at ease when reading this for the first time  Look at the mode section of the stock ableton 10 eq, M/S is what you  need to find on your eq 

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  Here is a screenshot of me taking out some low and his from a chord  leads of the mid channel 

  And one of me taking out the bass from the side and boosting a touch  of high end. 

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Sometimes if you can't find a way to make that top end sparkle and  just keep adding more and more eq curves and volume to a top end  sound without the desired effect, try this! This will really help you cut  back on wasted frequency spectrum if you’re finding it hard to  position things in the mix in general.     Mid and side is so good in mastering because it can really help you to  select exactly what portion of the speakers you're affecting. In the  master section , i'll go through my mastering chain i use and how you  can adopt those methods for yourself     Great third party eqs to add to your arsenal, amazing for reductive eq  and generally too    Fabfilter PRO Q2​ - literally the only one i use for reductive stuff  Fabfilter PRO Q3​ -upgrade of 2 that i haven't found too much  love for, 2 just seems like the one for me but there is a handy  brick wall eq for really hard cuts if a sound is really bothering  you   Your Stock DAW eq​ - you can get by with this. You actually  don't need anything else most of the time. This thing will low cut  and hi cut like everything else. Try not to use this to add  anything though , like boosting with one of these often makes  the sound a little less satisfying.  Sonible Smart EQ2​ - if you're starting out this one here can help  to teach you different eq curves. Its algorithm based and works  via an A.I to get the most out of a sound  Waves REQ 2-6​ - T ​ his series of eqs are so simple and classically  designed and work great on vocals. They are a bit trickier  because they don't display the pre and post analyzer but sound  great. So anyone intermediate/experienced with access to this  start using asap 

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Waves F6​ - ​F6 is particularly unique because it has an inbuilt  compressor into it. Which makes it powerful for squeezing out  the sections of the sound you need to have more prominence. I  use this on the kick top end a lot to give a greater impact  anywhere in between 2-5kHz      Additive EQ  Signal chain​ ​wise itd go after compression and tidying up the sound  but before reverb or any effects amazing eqs for this are:    Waves PuigTec EQP1A and MEQ5  Any Waves API unit  SSL G Channel, SSL EQ, SSL Channel    Additive eq is about the character. Most of these are modelled on  vintage equipment to bring back that gritty saturation or presence of  an original hardware unit.     I use additive eq separate to reductive eq because i mostly Compress  directly after reductive eq, meaning when I add something to it wth  the listed analog units, it can help accentuate the clean and  compressed signal, rather than the muddy un treated signal. what I'll  do is I'll load up one of my favourite EQs which I've listed to basically  amplify the sound further or bring out a certain characteristic of it  that I like. I use the waves API units most of the time for mostly each  element in the mix because it just has a really nice sound. The Pultec  EQs which are the PuigTec EQs in Waves are really powerful because  they have what's called the ability to make a resonant band. A  resonant band is where you increase the volume of a frequency then  decrease it simultaneously bringing about a presence and width to an  element, which can be really useful for the bass. Using the PuigTec  EQP1A on an 808 boosting 60hz by one on the boost section and  6   

attenuating 1 in the attenuation section it will actually create this  resonant layer in between the boost and cut and achieves this thick  sounds that a lot of us try to achieve. Creating a big bass with just a  couple of steps    Equally proficient on hi end information. You can actually use it to  affect spectrums with really wide band EQ bringing out a total  character of the high end information on a lead or snare without  relying on an analyser like you see on a stock EQ with the graph  showing you all the frequencies. You can really train your ears to  ‘hear’ using this. In this way your ears become more trained to  calculating what you are hearing and what you need to add and take  from am mix instead of relying on your eyes seeing the eq  graph/analyser change. It adds a level of excitement to your eqing and  can bring about some really great results going in blind like that.  Separating the additive EQ section like this really helps your  workflow because you can go back to the compressor and reductive  eq separately without having to affect something in the chain by  changing it . What I Mean is, when you boost after compression, you  bring in new elements into the sound with your new clean signal. You  won't lose all these boost but would have if you included all your  EQing in one plug in.                        7   

Compression    With modern day kits we use in our production etc, a lot of the  sounds are either heavily compressed already or have limiting  applied to them to finalise the sound. For us that basically means that  there isn't too much of a dynamic presence in the sound to start with.  Meaning that if we continue to add more compression, we lose the  character and body of the sound and the natural texture , and we end  up having a block of sound that overall isnt too good sounding.  Basic Compression Principles  Now compression can be useful and is a very powerful tool that can  help elements in a mix stand out, I mainly use it on leads and vocals  that have a lower volume and need some oomph. Compressors  basically bridge the gap between the loudest point of a sound and the  quietest. Without any auto gain or make up gain on a compressor, the  sound becomes a lot lot quieter. Take for example a soft piano sound  that intensifies. Let's say the quiet bit of the piano is -12dB and the  loudest point is -3db, what compression will do is bring down the -3dB  level closer to the -12dB level based on what we out into the  compressor. The ratio is really important in maintaining a dynamic  sound. Briefly, a 1:2 dB ratio means for every 1dB you put into the  compressor, you take of -2dB. So if we have a kick with a compression  ratio of 1:2 then we actually lose 2 decibels per 1 we put into the  compressor. This would suck if we couldn't amplify the signal again.  But here is the question. If the kick is sounding good, why compress it  further. It'll just reduce the energy it had. The threshold is the next  important area of the compressor which determines when the  compressor acts. For example your compression threshold is 0 and  your sound doesn't get louder than -5db, you aren't gonna reduce  practically anything. Some compressors, especially vintage model  ones have some character boost when you just put them on the sound  8   

without touching anything but a bog standard DAW compressor will  do mainly nothing to the sound until you take down the threshold so  the compressor can actually have a sound to act on, reducing the  threshold here therefore will get the compressor to start acting. Now  let's say your -5db sound is playing, you put your compression  threshold down to -9db, it'll be active and reducing enough gain to  even out the sound. Let's pick up the example of our piano again, let's  say we take our compressor and put it on the piano and take the  threshold down so it takes of -6db of gain reduction, you'll see this  occur in the meter section of the compressor. Now the loudest and  softest point will have a smaller gap between their dynamic range.  Retaining this in a modern mix is really important but evening out  the sound is equally beneficial, you'll now never lose the piano in the  overall beat.    Here is an example using fabfilter pro c-2. I'll show you a lead here  which has a quiet and loud point and how we can even it out so it  overall has a lower dynamic range but better presence.  

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  Here is the sound. As you can see, the start is quiet and it gets louder,  considerably, about 12db. Now let's grab a compressor and i'll show  you how it acts.    

  You can see roughly the same shape in the compressor as you can in  the waveform , basically no reduction is happening, nothing much  going on. But with the metre over the threshold dial, you can see the  peak of the sound and how much threshold to roughly apply here it is  at the quietest point.   

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  So if we set our threshold to around 10 o'clock , we can even out this  sound quite nicely   

   

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You can see from the diagram that the new waveform is a lot closer  together, and in the background , in dark grey you can see the  original , so this signal is now compressed and quite close together,  losing the difference between the loudest an qualitest is spot. Now the  attack time here is quite quick. The attack time in a compressor  basically tells it how fast to act, so you more or less instantly duck the  sound as soon as the compressor hears it. If you set this higher, the  compressor will take longer to act, for leads and synths this can be  quite nice because it'll allow the instrument to breath and you won't  choke out all the dynamics, plus when gain is applied and you're not  just reducing it with compression, you'll see why it's important, it'll  appear more natural and steady rather than abruptly killing the  quality of the sound    

  Here i moved the attack longer. The release longer and added  lookahead. OMG what are all of these aadhgpojlketlkjbd!     

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Attack and release settings are very subjective and are really a  preference of the engineer. It depends how harsh you want the  compression to be. Here are the basics of all the parametres.  Threshold we've been through, ratio we have covered.    Attack​ how long it takes for the compressor to start compression,  quick attack settings are more useful for drums to lock in the punch,  sowere ones retain the dynamic information so are great for leads  and synths etc.     Release​ When the compressor turns off, how long it takes for it to  stop compressing. If it's a pluck sound you'll want it to be shorter, just  so it isn't holding any empty rumbly sounds or hissssss .For pads and  pianos and evolving sounds, you might want to slightly longer, to  enhance a portion of the tail of the sound to bring it out more if it has  a unique character    Lookahead​ will let you compressor check what it's compressing  before the signal hit, it'll check what and when to compress, way  more taxing on the cpu but it'll help to really retain character of  drums etc.     How do i know what settings to use. Use your eyes and ears really. If  the sound start sounding stupid or dull and you've done a crazy  compression on it, you can see why, take the threshold and move it  close to 0 so it's not so active; is your ratio on 1:infinity? try aim for 2  or 3 to 1 or in between there for most sounds, you want to retain as  smooth a sound as the original.    Are there any other compressions about?    

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Well multi band compression is a similar beast to compression but it's  mostly more useful for overall sound enhancement, like the complete  mix.  

  This is pro MB over a complete song. What it aims to do is be a level of  mastering before mastering. Like a pre master. This specific  compressor looks at each individual segments and helps to compress  and meld areas together. If you look at each crossover section it  carries a certain piece of the frequency spectrum, the pink part  corresponding to the bass end, the green mostly to the kick and low  mid area and so forth. Multi-band is a great finalisation technique but  equally but needs to be fairly soft or you destroy the mix.    Side chain is important in compression because it can really help you  kick and 808 to sit together better. Now it isn't the only method of side  chain, like you can side chain anything to anything but it's mostly  common on kick and 808, it's becoming less and less used because you  14   

can achieve the same effect with an eq etc but if you want to, it's still a  great way of making room for the kick. The compressor basically  takes the kick and says to the 808, everyone this thing hits, you lose  this amount of dB. Because the kick and 808 have so many similar  frequencies, they mostly clash otherwise. It is a great beginners tactic  on improving the relationship between the two, hell even a great  technique to use in advanced ways as a seasoned engineer. I still use  it , softly, but i do.     I load my kick and 808, eq them etc, level them up etc and then send  the kick in to the sidechain section of the compressor. I use a ratio of  around 1:1.5 - 2 and a threshold of around -7 to -12 depending on how  much kick i want, attack on 0.2 and auto release. Not much more than  that is really necessary, depends how heavy you want the side chain  to be.     Compressors i love are  Fabfilter Pro-C2    And that's it... I use the stock one and C2. it has everything I need  from a cleaning up the mix standpoint.     Additive compression     Now this might be a bit weird but some compressors have a lovely  character and are hard to overlook. I rarely use these on the beat side  of things but sometimes slap them on a lead or 2 to make them get  that oomph, but on vocals they are amazing.    JST GR   is the best thing since sliced bread. It's a crazy aggressive gain  reducer, super heavy compressor that hits like no other. It can take  the sound and amplify it like mad, leaving the sound super  15   

compressed but very even. Using it lightly is sick because it means  you can really get that gritty slap out of it. But again, I use this on  vocals mostly so i'll cover out there but experiment with it equally  rewarding.    660/670 fairchild  The mono and stereo version of an old analog unit i use is the waves  Fairchild 660/670 to give the sound more character. It's a great  compressor for vocals again but if you're looking to finalise one of  your sounds this one is sick.    Any SSL comp, channel rack etc  These things are modelled off of the big desk so speak for themselves.  You aren't losing out too much if you can't get your hands on the plug  ins but they are really intuitive and if you use them, they can really  help your mixes.     Smart Comp   Just like smart eq, it's an a.i. based comp which can help set you up as  the best compression for your individual elements. It Can help teach  you all you need about certain instrument even to carry over to other  compressors when you learn enough to do it manually.    CLA 2a, 3a, 76   These are waves plugins but equivalents exist . they don't do too  much more than your regular compressor and you can achieve a pro  mix without them but these are generally better sounding and analog  modelled which pack a punch for your drums and are really effective  for gain reduction .    Learn the difference between the type of compression you're doing.  It's useful to know about gain reduction and compression. Take a  compressor with a VU meter, if the needle slams down hard and  16   

doesn't really move, that's gain reduction, if the needle is moving and  wavering about, that's compression.       Gain Staging and Leveling  Levelling and gain staging become way more simple with clear cut  positions in the frequency spectrum for each sound. It opens the  ability to have a well placed and balanced mix , even if done quite  quickly. Here are a few pointers and what to look for.     I love these two components because they can literally make or break  a mix. I went through years of shoddy levelling and gain staging to get  to the position I’m in now which is pretty good. The hell of deciding  how damn loud my snare should be and where i'd put the kick etc. All  in all , in bassey music, we all get high on the driving 808 and  knocking kick but often over egg them. Here is literally the most  simple levelling tutorial you'll ever get in an ebook that you can come  back and refer to however many times you want to and go out and  adapt it to your own workflow.    Without even touching on gain staging, you can get your mix  sounding 50 times better with a little bit of levelling. Here are a few  methods to this in production. Our kick is the life of the beat so we  level everything off that.    Kick: 0dB  Snare: -3dB  Perc: -7/5db ish   808: -6dB  Hats: 11/9dB  Instruments and synths, varies but -14 to -9 dB    17   

This will get your beat sounding sweet. Slap a limiter on the master  and you've got your working mix in order. You and your people can  enjoy it sounding crisp and bassey. Now to save time you could  literally just take another 6dB off those levels and have your levels  literally sorted. So kick at -6dB, sanre -9dB etc etc. That'll give you the  levels you need before adding your own touches to make it how you  want. The important thing here is that that is a rough guide, if you  think your kick is lacking, find a way to give it some extra punch. EQ  it, saturate it; all of that good stuff and that might get you to where  you need to be,     Now it's all well and good mixing at those levels but let's say you want  that extra professional touch. Most mix engineers will decide to  actually gain stage the music before starting on the levels. So strap in  and lets go.     Set everything to zero/unity . take off all your mixing etc apart from if  maybe you halftimed something for the entire track, leave that on  because that's what we’ll be mixing but, generally take everything off,  and set the mixer meter back to default. Don't press play because  you'll break your eardrums. Take the master level and decrease it  significantly like -12/-19 or whatever so that we don't kill our ears.  Here is my kick from the example.    

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  Looking at it it's averagely what we see when we see our kicks wave  form. Looks beefy but to get this properly gain staged we need to take  out some volume . This is what the kick peaks out without me  touching it. Literally what the meter reads when i drop it into ableton   

  it doesn't really take a genius to figure out why this isn't ideal. We are  losing so much headroom it's untrue! It peaks at +4.91 dB. That's over  our production level mix and is superrrr hot. Even if you just turn  down the fader the original sound is already too loud so… get into the  sound source and turn that down until we see that meter at -12dB.  That's right , for every instrument , effect perc etc. get it to -12dB  without the fader being touched . Keep the fader on unity and turn  down the original sampel like so, here i took off 17db. And here's the  new meter.  19   

 

     

    -12.1, working with a little more room than minus 12.  

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follow the same step for every sound until everything is at -12. This  will give us that head room and we can start to get our mix done turn  your master to +6, just max it out basically and nothing should clip  over the top because its all quiet etc. From here, with -12 as the start  position of the kick, we can take the 808 and level it -6dB approx.  from the kick. Just use the initial mix guide above to get everything  sitting tidy. No sound will be clipping from the get go like our kick  was initially, and everything might sound a bit quiet at first but  adding that extra 6db to the master should help. Once that's all done  your mix is fully levelled and gain staged. Thats it really. This will  double the quality of your masters and don't forget to take your  master level back down to 0.    BUSS and Sends+Returns    Mix is done right? everything sounding good? levelled nicely crisp etc.  Not necessarily done though! In come buss effects and sends and  returns, holy grails of cpu saving and holy grails of mixing in turn  too! Why? Simple, they utilise the same plug in for multiple channels  and her is how!    This will save you bags of time if you try to include this method in  your mix. Instead of loading your reverb on every channel under the  sun taking up resources, and you practically load the same sound into  every channel. Then pop it on a send and the job is done, exactly the  same as buss routing. We've all heard of NY compression or parallel  compression tech quest and if you haven't then crawl out from under  the rock you've been living under because it can be one of the most  useful tools you'll get. Instead of loading up a compressor on each  channel , load a ridiculously heavy compression on a buss and send  bits of signal to it that you want compressed. For example, all your  drums could rout over to a compression buss which could glue them  all together and have them sit nice and tightly together, this one buss  21   

could have some crisp saturation on there and a very short reverb  where you could send you claps, snares hats etc to get them more full  in a mix .    Here are compression setting i use on 2 different buss channels which  help beef up my stuff. Generally speaking i send the bits of signal that  i feel lack punch into it and they come out monstrous.   

  A simple h comp like this can get those drums knocking like crazy,  and because you're only blending the compressed signal into the  orignal, they stack on top of each other and make for a really clean  hard hitting piece of percussion. I love this one on the kick because it  can get the pio out of it more and bring that knocking sound into it .  Really and truly you can adapt all of these busses to be whatever you  want them to. For instance, if you have a compressor like this maybe  set to 50% wet and then add a saturator afterwards, it could compress  then saturate whatever signal you run through it. This is quite  powerful because you'd be able to experience the benefit of both  plugins on multiple different channels, which means ultimately that  22   

although all of your instrument and drums are separated, if they all  fed into this and came out the other end together you'd create a  really nicely blended layer that would help to gel the mix through  together. The way you can do this on ableton on a send and return  like i explained or on a track group. Now I know pro tools has track  grouping as well and i'm sure FL Studio and Logic Pro do too or you  may have to adapt a method of doing it but this is an example which  works slightly differently to send and return which could equally help  your mix out. Say you group all the tracks of the drums together, you  have them all levelled and hitting hard af, you can affect them all a  stage before a send and return merging the sound more to make it  more wholesome and fuller.    This is the example, I threw some drums out to a chopped loop, and  you can see highlighted in light blue the group of drums. On this  group is the solid state logic meter acting as the glue for the drums.  The settings are simple, super slow attack, super fast release , no  threshold and a touch of make up gain. This combines all the drums  together and sounds super rewarding to the ear. It is literally  discernible instantly that it is active. From this stage I can parallel  compress further using the method described earlier if im doing it for  a certain characteristic. The important thing here is not too much  compression!! Just gentle touches here and there will bring out some  life and character.  

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    Everything described here can equally be applied with different  plugins. let's say you seperate the kick and 808 out to a different  group because you want your claps and hats to get the same reverb  and delay settings. Here's how it would look. The overall group with  the ssl would stay the same and a new group within that group would  be created with just the high end percussion and drums   

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  As you can see 3 new plugins are affecting just the hi percussion  group and the kick and 808 have gone into their own low group  within the overall drum group. So the initial SSL is still working on  top of all the new processing.                                 25   

Signal chain   Once the sound is cleaned, up any post processing things like effects  saturation ete come in to play. The signal chain is very important  here because depending on where you put certain plugins affects the  sound.    For example, saturation before reverb means that the sound is  initially saturated then reverberated which may appear cleaner.  Saturating after the reverb: you're saturating the reverberated signal  meaning there is more chance for it to have phase issues etc or you  may have actually created a more desired sound. The sound is  consequently ;altered and differs from ​sat>rev vs. rev>sat  Once you have the sound the way you want it it's time to re-level it  against your original sound. For example, if you had your snare  levelled to -9dB and it sat well in the mix at that volume, then now  with all your effects the snare grows to -2db, take of around 6db again  to put it back in the same place as you had it before for it to not cut  too sharply in the mix    This is my processing chain, and how I do it varies at times but this is  how it goes    EQ​>​SATURATION​>​COMPRESSION​>​ADDITIVE EQ​>​EFFECTS​ -  HALFTIME, PORTAL, CHORUS, RC20, REVERB+DELAY LAST> ​FINAL  EQ ​(USUALLY LOW CUT)     Signal chain is effectively like a jigsaw puzzle which you can put  together in multiple ways and the way you put it together is how  pretty it comes out (ie what plug in follows the other). It can be really  effective to put different effects plugins in different orders and  experiment with the sound that comes out but you'll generally want  to do all your tidying up work, EQ and compression first, and time  26   

based effects like delay and reverb at the end. It's quite subjective but  at times its better to compress a sound first and then eq it if the sound  of it is extremely low or has really wavering dynamics.     What you won’t want to do is calen up a sound , add reverb and  saturate it, add portal and halftime because effectively you start to  half time the mushy spread out widened reverb layer too, not just the  instrument or drum. It may be helpful to you if you struggle with mud  in the mix to do this.     Anything you do to your instruments think of the clarity and the  purpose of it first. It might not even need any effects and you're just  adding them because you think that's what needs to be done.     Once you have your sound cleaned up, think of it like this.     What kind of sound is this?​ Bass Element, percussion, main lead,  small recurring melody.     Does it need to be wider or spacier?​ if yes, reverb and delay along  with chorus are great, stereo width plugins like ​matthew lane stereo  delta​ or ​JST Sidewidener, echoboy, panman, timless2. ​Panning  really helps with this too and is mostly used on leads and percs.    Does the sound need to be thicker?​ if yes, compressor, clipper,  saturation, overdrive, ​oneknob pumper, decapitator    Does the sound needs to be clearer?​ maybe a volume thing or try a  boost in hi’s or low’s, alternatively scoop out some mid>maybe it's just  some left over mud- best thing is nothing is set in stone so go back and  change it if you don't like it.   

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Is the sound clashing with another element in my mix?​ Grab  another EQ, put it last and take out some bass or eq out some hi’s.      Harmonics  Saturation: adds frequencies above present frequencies in the sound,  helps to intensify and crisp the sound,    T Racks soft clipper,  Soundtoys saturator  Kush ubk-1  Waves Apex     Sometimes initially saturating a sound before eq and anything else  can enhance the natural character of it without being detrimental to  the mix. Sometimes saturation after initial eq can help to bring out  the character of the sounds you kept. It is quite subjective but try  making the decision whilst your mixing, what do you prefer the  sound of. What sounds closest to the record you like to listen to ?     harmonic processing is effectively doubling frequencies at the octaves  or depending on the algorithm at different frequencies. It makes the  sound harmonically richer increasing the character of the sound  whilst retaining good dynamics. Effectively, the sound gets louder  through harmonics but often it doesn't have an overall effect on the  meter so the sound only appears to be louder to the ear. This can save  us masses of headroom.     The best plug in for this is sound toys decapitator. It has an auto gain  reduction feature which depends on how hard you push up the drive  of the plug in. All the settings on decapitator are based on the old  school desks and you have 5 profiles to choose from. The E setting is  28   

especially good on drums really bringing out the knock of the drums  and making them very well rounded but punchy. The A setting is very  well balanced and coupled with the light and dark tone switch, it can  really help to shape your sound. If you want a duller sound, go for  dark, and something a bit higher and sharp go for bright to crisp up  that high end. It’ll give that extra Edge and sharpness that it might  lack otherwise. It acts as an alternative for just boosting with eq or  making a sound louder with a fader. With this plug in, or most  saturation in general, you don't really lose the original sound too  much and don't have to mess around with your mix too much more  levels wise.     This can really be effective in Buss routing or group effects. You can  apply saturation to the drums overall or the leads overall and have  them gel together alternatively to compression. The sound will go  through the decapitator and saturate together blending the  harmonics nicely. If you're missing the blend on two seperate  elements, try it, it's saved me hours faffing with EQ and compression.  Effects    Some of the best effects that you can use are effectrix, portal, halftime  gross beat and I'll mention some great chorus, delays and Reverbs.     Halftime​ and ​Gross Beat ​are 2 powerful units which can provide a  variety and a natural ebb and flow in a mix. The way a mix works  really is to have the ability to continually engage the listener . If  elements in the mix are changing and morphing tastefully then  ultimately it makes a beat or track more interesting. It’s purpose is to  guide the listener through the track and adding a variety of darkness  or glitchiness to a certain layer in the beat really achieves that;  modulating the music in a way that enhances elements of the mix and  effectively makes it way more appealing to the ear. Think of mixing  29   

as a creative element rather than just cleaning up the sounds. Sure of  course you want to get it all sharp and punchy but sharp and punchy  all the way through becomes really boring after a while.     Try grab a halftime and throw it on hi hats for a bar with the mix at  10%. Mess around with Gross Beat the same way, use the complex  section of the presets and really trip up the main lead.     SugarBytes ​Effectrix​ is another staple to add to the arsenal. It is  essentially a multi effects processor that enables you to use certain  effects and trigger them to start or stop with in a period of time in the  beat. Now you can do this with multiple effects to get some real crazy  and unique sounding stuff. Automating when it turns on and off can  really help you to achieve a contrast in your music you haven't  reached before and using this subtly would be insane on your  productions. Think about the arrangement of the beat and ask  yourself, is this instrument doing the same for too long?; is there  something i can do to vary it up slightly?; I even used gross beat on  vocals to chop and screw them like crazy for like a mega effect section  which is a thing I would say experiment with. You may surprise  yourself with the things you find and might make a little signature out  of it!    GrossBeat + Halftime- incredible tools but side note;​ eq after  pleaseeeee. When you halftime the sound, it gets bassier, look at an eq  graph after you apply a halftime on to it . Take those lows back out,  don't let it crap your kick and 808 up. 

Automation  This is one of my most underused techniques really but is so so  powerful. You can mostly automate all parameters in a DAW so to  create further contrast in an instrumental, you can take the mix dial  30   

on a halftime plug in for example and automate it to go from 0-100%  in a transition section, or automate the drive on an overdrive to  intensify over time. Think of a static effect you love. Lets say its delay.  Imagine the delay feedback increasing or the intensity of the delay  increasing at the end of each bar on a pluck or synth. This would add  a colourful texture to your stereo field and be way more captivating  and creative than just using it standardly. You can even couple this  with buss effects for some crazy results, like have the whole mix drop  into a lofi section or filter it out the top end with an EQ. Just those  little nuances would kick your mix into life.    Here are some of my favourite PlugIns you could start using that you  may have not heard of just yet.    Effectrix  Portal  RC 20  Air Music Technology - effects pack. Sound broad but these are so  wide use and so sick. They have the OVO 40 lofi unit, some neat  chorusses , reverbs , padmakers  JST pixalator, ridiculous bit reducer/ lo-fi maker. Sounds so sick    Reverb  For me there is only one reverb company and that's Valhalla DSP.  These guys will take your mix from good to great. Just using its simple  interface makes it so rewarding to use, and flicking through the  presets and adjusting the mix dial to taste can really spark some creat  creative results. Try short wide reverbs on snares, Thick reverb on  vocals or play around with experimenting with reverb on a bass  element. Sounds crazy i know but with the valhalla plugins you can  take out the bass end so you only affect the top end stuff that can be  reverbed and stereo. Sometimes it provides some eerie sounding stuff  or helps gets some width into areas that would feel otherwise flatter.  31   

Obviuosly dint throqw a reverb on the basss and think why does this  sound stupid but you can experiment with some stuff just to see how  it sounds. You might find a use for it other than using it as a bass. It  may become more useful as an effect etc etc. Just some things to think  about really to help you spruce up your workflow and get used to  using more creatively . Valhalla make a few different reverbs but:    Vintage Verb  Plate   Room     Are the ones that you’ll find so much love for.    Couple of honorable mentions are  UberMod  Shimmer  Delay   

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Mixing the ...  I wanted the mixing the ...Part of the book to be kind of the lowdown  on how Mix the big power players in our beats that people often ask  about.  808  Mixing the 808 is one of the most important things in a hip hop or  production track. You want it to be thick and bassey but not  overpowering as such. How do you achieve that? Initially you’ll want  to prep the sound with some EQ, low cutting anything under 25-30Hz  being a general sweet spot. Not a lot of speakers can actually  reproduce that sound very well and therefore it isn't necessary in the  mix. Plus in bigger speakers this can get really boomy and  overbearing so not really a characteristic of a bass that you weren't.  It’ll sound like it's making your mix more shallow and like it  swallowing all of the available are for everything to breath.  

My favorite additive EQ to use on this would be the aforementioned  EQP1-A. Once again , boost and attenuate by 1 at 60hz to get that  resonant band which appears fuller and wider across all speakers  and headphones. This trick you can really feel and hear. Sadly it only  really works with this specific EQ unit because of the way its coded to  match the original hardware but you can achieve similar effects with  33   

a standard eq and a little saturation. use one EQ to dip out 60hz by 0.5  of a dB ish and one to raise it by the same and apply a little  saturation.    One of the best 808 tools ive used is RBass from waves. You get this  really simple interface and really clean big bodied intensity from the  bass which enriches its harmonics and blends it into the orignal 8080  signal. It's like a slight compressor, touch of saturation and  expansion. It's an amazing tools to boost out that bass and make it  feel super fat. Once again, it can equally be achieved by saturation  but the fact that this is specifically built with bass in mind gives it that  edge in class for me. 

  An amazing way to heighten the stereo effect of your 808 whilst  maintaining the bass in mono is to duplicate the channel. High Cut  everything on the main 808 that goes past 350-500 hz (find that sweet  spot for you) and low cut everything on the new duplicate to the same  frequency. On the duplicated channel with the low cut on it, take a  stereoizer plugin like​ matthew lane delta​ and crank up the dry wet  34   

for that element and literally hear it grow. It’ll evenly spread nicely a  little bit wider and in turn create this sound of an overall thicker bass. 

Now this doesn't work for all 808s but its amazing for R&B ones and  really good on anything that has a little growl in it . It helps the  harmonics and more melodic areas of the 808 to break through the  mix a little better and will help to make it become more audible on  crappy speakers, in turn enhancing the quality of the bass on big and  good speakers. This effect is significantly more noticeable in  headphones!    I don't tend to compress a lot on an 808 because mostly, it is already  compressed sound when out of the box. The only time I would would  be on more of a pierre/zaytoven type 808 where it has that unique  character at the start of the 808 sound. Now i'll set the attack really  high so that it doesn't affect this area but has an affect on the  remainder of the tail end of the 808 making it fuller and tiger. Keep  the release time relatively short too and the jobs a good`n. You get a  bit more 808 out of it and it feels a good bit more basey and mean.         35   

Kick    When You're ear identifies a kick, especially in an instrumental it  looks for certain characters within the sound.. Many of us think that  just by boosting bass ends, we’ll achieve what we want from the kick  but often it gets lost in the mix. TRY THIS! Take a slight EQ curve and  boost somewhere around 2.5khz to 5kHz. This will simulate the skin  on a real life kick drum being hit by the beater when a drum player  presses the pedal. The slight tap sound there can really help your kick  jump out in the mix and be more present ever you feel it lacks that  little bit of character but you've boosted crazy amounts of bass  already and the mixing the kick is just driving you insane.    The SoundToys decapitator i mentioned in the saturation section is  amazing on kicks. Any saturation is really done correctly. Just gentle  touches of saturation can amplify the boom and hit of the kick, that  coupled with some tone control so you don't saturate too many low  frequencies and too many high ones really helps us get that extra  volume out of it.    Depending on the kick, may sure you low cut enough room to allow  the 808 to carry thoise sub and low frequencies. Getting a tighter kick  is really eq choices and cutting from around 50 Hz to 70 Hz will help  you get that slappy nature in the kick and it’ll have less overlapping  frequencies with the 808, the less frequencies they share, the better  you’ll hear each individual element. That's why sidechain became  very popular, because it literally let the kick move the 808 out of the  way for a brief amount of time to get it that punch. With some good  EQing and practice, you’ll find needing to rely on sidechain will be  made more obsolete and you’ll be finding ways to use it more  creatively than as a saving grace in your mix. If we can make the  room in the frequency spectrum ourselves, why rely on the computer  to automatically do it, it isn't always as accurate as it seems.   36   

  Ultimately, don’t do too much. Keep it simple and sounding clean.    Snares and Claps    Snares and claps can be stressed a little more with processing. They  can have reverb delay etc. applied on to them with less effect on the  overall phase correlation of the instrumental meaning that the mix  will stay clean and correct even when you manipulate the snare  around. I like to use both hi cut and lo cut in the snare to make room  for the hi hats and stop it from overlapping the bass and hogging the  middle of the mix. Try Mixing in mono to get this right , it’ll stop you  from hearing the stereo and help your ears to discern the frequencies  better. Because the snare is usually placed mono with the kick and  bass, it'll help you find the pocket of sound to put it into .    Saturation can help make the snare a lot more dramatic. It'll crisp up  the top end further and amplify the role of the clap or snare. Once  again you won't rely on a volume fader and can get a little more juice  out of the snare.    I love a short wide reverb on the snare . Valhalla obviously amazing  for it , there is a really smooth preset which’ll just add some width  and polish to the sound without sounding like a huge reverb  smothering the snares sound. It’ll be really short and snappy, just as  you want to keep it.  

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  I often use transient shapers like izotope neutron on a snare to get a  little less tail and a little more snap into the sound. It can be done  manually by turning down the tail end of the sound 

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Hi Hats    hi-hats EQ is really simple, take out a lot of the bass.  I compress them with a higher ratio this time just because I want  more of the tail of the hi hat.  I often use​ Kush ubk-1 ​because it has a compressor already built into  a saturator and has the ability to bring up the Punch and the  snappiness of the hi-hats simultaneously. You can use the density dial  to get the sound feel as if it has a little more pressure. 

Halftime or Grossbeat with the ½ speed setting and the mix really low  can add and enhance your triplet hi hats and hi hat runs. Keeping the  mix really low will darken them and add a layer underneath that’ll  help bolster the variety hearing new sounds the listener haven't  heard yet. It's Just a little piece of ear candy.    A key to getting hi hats right is panning. I always separate hi hat  channels in to multiple, and pan them slightly differently, the main hi  hats staying close to the centre and any runs or triplets panned a bit  more slightly left or right.               39   

Panning    Panning can be a fantastic way to create space in the mix and it is  mostly under utilized it can really help ensure each element of the  beat has its own pocket to sit in and helps to disperse the energy  across the instrumental. One thing to note that when you incorporate  panning into a mix, you often will need to relevel certain things  because they will begin to appear audibly louder against their  original volume and position as they no longer coincide with other  frequency shared by other elements, for example, snare and hi hats,  snares and instruments etc. Panning is a versatile tool which can add  the extra clarity and dimension you may lack in your mix today. You  can use some plugins like the Sennheiser Orbit and Boz digital poan  knob as an alternative to using your DAW pan knob. 

   

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The inbuilt pan in the DAW is fine to use but these plug ins are a little  more diverse and more accurate at pocketing the sound properly . For  instance, the Sennheiser Orbit plugin is a 360 panning VST that can  create and further dimension in the mix. You can use in line with  automation to get a lot of movement into the mix and have elements  swap place to create more interest. You can use it on 808 glides when  the 808 is high and playing more of a melodic note, panning each  slight left and slight right to give some direction and highlight the  sound out to the listener.       One main point is to keep the bass in the middle, don't pan out the  kick and bass or snare for that matter to muo much. That's the heart  really of the beat and otherwise you can risk the mix sounding a bit  too hollow. Or empty. Panning i find quite fun to experiment with. I  love adding different directions to percussion sounds and changing  where they appear as the beat progresses. It catches the listener out  in a good way and elevates the feeling of progression, protecting you  from having a beat sounding too samey.                               41   

      Vocals   

This is a working mix which helps you hear a finalised sound without  touching too much  Whenever I work with an artist I literally just use the ​JST GR and  Antares Auto-Tune 5​ vocals and a couple of reverbs and delays and  stuff like that really gives complete sound. GR gives such a clear tone  that I use it even in my final mixes. It's very  versatile but quite aggressive. Sometimes  using the deluxe version instead with the  dry wet mix dial really helps so you can tone  down the aggression and just get that clarity  out of the plug in.    I  have  a  few  different  approaches  to  mixing  vocals.  It  differs  based  on  the  vocal  but  I  usually  start  with  a  Vocal  Rider  plugin  to  even  out  dynamics  without  compression.  Basically  it's  a  plug  in  with  a  fader  that  auto  42   

levels  the performance of the vocals boosting super quiet sections and  taming  the  louder  parts to an overall smaller range in vocals. Because  rap  vocals  often  need  to  stay  in  one  consistent  stream,  this  tool  work  fantastically  to  even  things  out  and  gives  you  a  foundation  to  build  upon.     EQ  is  the  first  most  important  step  in  mixing  a  vocal,  removing  out  low  end  that's  unnecessary  depends  on  the  voice  but  look  out for any  boomy  areas  in  the  low  end  and  anything  super  high  up  like  18khz  which  is  not  friendly  on  your  ears.  Don't  do  any  boosting  just  yet  or  keep  it  really  really  slight.  The  main  goal  here  is  to  correct  some  of  the  things  that  bother  you  in  the  vocal.  The  next  stage  is  really  compression.  Your  first  point  of  evening  out  any  dynamics  that  jump  over  the  volume  threshold.  So  the  first compressor is to control. Use a  heavier  threshold  to  keep  any  spikes  in  check.  Follow  it with a longer  attack  higher  release  time,  shorter  threshold  compressor.  Like  the 

Pro  C2  has  a  great  vocal  setting  where  it  autos the ratio so you just do  everything  through  the  threshold  dial.  This  should  get  the  vocal  sounding polished and clean. So Far we have EQ>COMP>COMP lightly    The  next  step  here  would  be  to  de-ess  the  vocals,  removing  any  sibilant  sound,  the  sss  out  of  the  vocals.  I  often  follow  up  with  a  lighter  ds  afterwards  after  processing  considering  a lot of additive EQ  and  othe  [processing  can  add  this  back  in  to  the  vocals.  This  really  43   

tames  the  vocas  and  keeps  the  sound  of  them  under  control  for  the  whole song.   The  next  step  is  really  a  case  of  taste.  I  like  the  Boz  digital  EQ  on  vocals  and  the  fairchi;le  660/670  but  you  can  use  an  API/SSL,  MAAG  EQ4,  or  any  of  the  Puig  Tec  Waves  EQs.  API  also  has  a  compressor  which  has  real  nice  vocal  settings.  You  don't  really want to  slam  the  vocals  in  this  case  because  you've  tamed  the  dynamics  before  but  its  just  as  an  extra  character  giver.  A  little  bit  extra  pop  and fullness within  the  sound.  Directly  after  this,  you  can  start  to  add  more  character  effects  like  saturation,  parallel  compression,  reverbs,  delays  and  all  that  jazz.  Anything  to  enhance  the  vocal  sound  and  that's  totally  discernible  by  you.  I  usually do all the character processing on channels on Buss/Sends and  Returns    Scheps  have  a  really  good  plugin  called  parallel  particles  which  is  perfect  for  on  grouped  vocals.  It  has  4  different  parameters  which  you  can  use  to  process  the  totality  of  the  vocals  for  a  rougher  mix  or  use  it  more  lightly  on  a  final  mix.  It’s  a  really  complete  tool  that’ll  help  you  understand  how  to  describe what your vocal need  more  of  or  lack  and  help  you  44   

think about certain sounds in a way that's a slight bit more visual.    A  lot  of  the  vocal  is  in  the  initial  recording.  You  need  to  make  sure  you  don't  get  any  clipping  within  the  recording  so  that  you  have  enough  room  for all your effects. It's better for the vocal to come out a  bit  quiet  and  quality  rather  than  super  load  with  a  load  of  audible  issues like distortion.         Mastering     Basic Mastering  A basic master is simply achieved with a bit of limiting or multi band  compression once the mix is done and complete. It can be done with  an all in one solution like the izotope ozone vsts (which I'll mention  below) or with a couple of limiters and a bit of dynamic processing.  The easiest way to master a beat is eq out any left over bass, add a bit  of top sheen with a high shelf and low end beef with a low boost ( just  a touch on both) and let the limiter or multi band do the work of  increasing the volume. You want to leave an ample amount of  headroom in your mix so that you can achieve a better master all in  all. Somewhere between -9dB to -6db of headroom is usually good  enough but the more room the merrier. You have a lot more freedom  to use those dynamic plugins and can even try a bit of tape saturation  or a touch of standard saturation to softly energise the beat a little  more.    The Ozone Mastering Suites are really cool tools that can analyze your  audio with an A.I. to help you master it. The best thing would be to  learn how the parameters work and do it yourself yet it's a very  powerful tool for learning how to master better . You'll learn the ins  and out of all the plugins involved in the master chain , even by  45   

loading up a simple preset . it’ll walk you through all the components  you could use to master a beat. Once again, the simpler the better.  You wouldn't want to drive things too hard and destroy the dynamics  in the beat but you wouldn't want it to lack in volume in comparison  to other beats or songs out in the world on the market or in the  charts.    Waves TG Mastering  This  plug  in  is  amazing  for  pre  mastering.  It has  a  couple  of  different  levels  to  it  but  it offers a  really  clean  and  customisable pre master  sound.  Similar  to  just  applying  a  multi  band  compressor  on  the  mix,  this  plug  in  can  get  you  a  really  polished  sound  and  if  you  have access to it, I recommend you try it out. You can use it  to  complete  your  master  or  use  it  as  i  do  and  add  gentle  adjustments  to  the sound. It lets you split mid and side channels like the m/s EQ we  went  through  but  on  a  grand  scale.  Really  it’s  just  an  extra  touch,  nothing  make  or  break about it (you won't have a worse master if you  don't  use  it)  but  it  has  a  couple  of  parametres  like  inbuilt  eq,  saturation,  compression,  stereo  widening.  To  learn  how  to  use  this  one  is a little trickier but load up any Lu Diaz preset and you’ll be able  to pick apart what's going on.     Mastering with Clippers  T racks soft clipper can add an edge to your mix. Using it instead of  alimiter gives a louder sounding mix which you could choose to  couple with limiting but for simple hard hitting master, any soft  46   

clipper will do . A little touch of drive , (hell even crank it hard and  dial it back down) will get you the elevation you need in a quick  master that’ll give you the volume and body if you need to send out  beats quickly but ready sounding.     Mastering with Limiters  Limiting is a dangerous thing if not done properly. You need to  achieve a target threshold. Youtube spotify and apple music have  made this easy for us. The basic figure here is , get your mix to -12 lufs  (approx) in the master. This will ensure your master stays consistent  across every digital and non digital platform. What is LUFS? LUFS is  basically another word for dBs but has a slightly different algorithms.  It is true that losing 1 lufs in loudness is the same as taking off a  decibel of sound with a meter but lufs (loudness units full scale) have  become the across the board way to measure and adjust the volume  of sound. With the target LUFS in mind, you can use your limiter to  reach that unit. You can use any of the metres underneath in the  metering section to check the overall loudness of a track. If its going  too high say -8/-9 lufs then your elosing dynamic quality and all major  streaming platforms will turn down the master to match their  threshold. So getting your audio closer to that target, sounding crisp  and punchy is ideal. It was introduced to stop people's music  sounding too loud or much louder than another track, and if you  think about it, everytime you hear a good master on a track, you often  hear it at a very similar volume across the board from track to track.  It was a way to standardise how loud things hgo and to stop them  from being squashed littles square looking waveforms here is the  example. Take your master, master it to -12 lufs, and take the same  master and master it to -6 lufs. -6 lufs will lose quality but appear  louder to you at first. As soon as spotify or youtube recognises it it  turns the master down by about 6-8 luf ( effectively dB) and for the  -12 lufs counterpart, it keeps it at the same level. You’ll have  maintained a lot more dynamics using the -12 method and overall get  47   

a better sound out of it and keep in check all the work you've done in  mixing, not sorting all those tiny intricacies you spent so hard  working on.     Mastering is the final step to get the volume up and accentuate all the  good work, mixing is the bread and butter heavy changes you need to  make to get it to sound better louder. Mastering won't just fix a  crappy sounding mix, it'll make any problems more and more  obvious. With the ‘loudness wars’ having been over the last few years  if not more, music is being mastered more dynamically with less onus  on turning music up as loud as possible.     Metering solutions     Here are my favourite master metres to make sure everything is a  good level and balance.    Mastering the mix Levels​ -​ Solid plug in that’ll help you to  understand everything about modern mastering, and it really helps  checking your mix too  HOFA 4U Master Meter  Nugen Mastercheck/ Pro​ -​ allows you to hear how audio would  sound when uploaded to a streaming platform.  You Lean Meter​ - ​Checks the LUFS of a track, really simple plug in  Waves WLM LOUDNESS PLUS​ - ​simple metre that has a loot of  inbuilt and accurate detection of loudness and volume  Waves Dorough​ - ​has a great classic interface but does the same  thing basically             48   

Referencing    Referencing can help to show you how your mix sounds against  another track. You can load a reference track into the vst and a/B it  with your master to make sure everything is up to scratch. Mastering  the miox reference can help to show you where you're mix lacks in  comparison to another but most plugins, (any referencing plugin can  really help you learn how to get your sound more like the pros)    Advanced Masting    Here is my master chain i use on most of my  tracks when I'm finishing them off. I apply some  of the premastering stuff i went through if i find  it necessary but here is my chain i use that i've  tried and tested over time. It gets real nice rsluts  and is easy to set up.     SSL Compressor​ - ​really simple, just like the  buss compression I mentioned earlier, this just  ods the same thing but overall . does not do a lot,  high attack quick release, lowest threshold so  the needle just moves a tiny bit and no make up  gain.          M/S EQ  I use this to cut out any unwanted  frequencies in the speakers. I split it  into mid side to control the tone of  what comes through which section of  49   

the speaker. Nothing drastic here just a few simple cuts          Tape/General Saturation  Little bit of saturation. I really  just love the tape sounding  one but any hint of soft clip or  decapitator will add that  harmonic inch to the mix.  Don't want to drive it too  hard, you want it to sit on the  master and not do a whole lot  apart from a bit of analog  warmth.    Double Additive EQ  Nothing  cray  here,  just  used  some  analog  modeled  EQ  to  pick  out  little  frequencies  i  like  or  that  are  lacking.  You  can  do  this  with  in  izotope  ozone  or  the  TG  mastering  Suite  but  i  like  to  touch  it  up  slightly  separately.  Literally  just  to  taste  but it can add that missing sparkle in  the hi’s and the missing weight in the bass.      50   

    Mastering the Mix  Animate    Really simple here, just a  character booster. I use  this very softly on select  frequencies just to give the  extra dramatism to the  master. It has dry wet for  each parameter and is very  detailed and explains what  every parameter does. It's  basically an expander (which increases the dynamic range) a bit of a  compressor and saturation and a touch of steroization.      A few limiters     I  like  each  of  these  differently  for  their  different  sounds.  I  generally  gently  limit  on  each  to  capitalize  on  the  different  way  they process the audio.  It  sometimes  sounds  so  forced  if  i'm  limiting heavy because  of  lots  of  headroom  so  i  like  to  use  different  limiters  to  create  retain  those  transient  hitting  sounds  and  keep  these  dynamics  in  check.  I  won't  usually  go  51   

overboard  on  all  of  them  but  just  using  a  few  limiters can just end up  sounding  a  little  more  natural  and  you  can  get  a  little  bit  better  preservation  of  all  your  hard  work  in  the  mix  (about  2db  on  each  if  i'm  trying  to  reach  an  overall  of  -6db  etc.  evenly  distribute  gain  reduction across them for best results ive found)        Answering some questions.     I hate mixing because it is time consuming and boring, how can i  make it more fun?    I hope I've shared enough of my fun tis in the book to help you with  this. Mixing is really about results and getting better than you were  before. Think of it like gaining xp in a game. You get stronger the  more you try , the better you get the harder it is to beat yourself but  all the little hours you put into it come back rewarding . getting that  quality quality mix after a little bit of self study and practice will be so  good for your morale. Like being able to complete a mix in 20 mins  flat and get it uploaded and out there, or ready to send to friends after  just getting familiar with some of the tips I've shown will surely help.  Using a variety of plugins and experimenting with the tools in the  DAW i would say are great ways of making it fun . Get the levels right  then just play around , make things sounds like they didn't originally,  morph them into something you love. Rob Papaen reverse is a great  plugin you can put on a lead reverse the signal and play it back after  the original forward signal so you could just throw that on some hints  for a bit of variety . that's a simple example to just get you to try  things out! /use something you haven't used before! Have a guitar  synth or lead? Put some chorus on it , make it all washed out and  psychedelic sounding. Don't just do what you here in everyone else's  production because it's ‘right ‘ or the ‘best’ way to do it.   52   

Incorporate the mix into your workflow to speed it up and literally  just experiment. Maybe you like your snare louder, put it louder.  Maybe you like ping pong delay on the hiu hats. Pout it on there. See  how it sounds. You’ll develop. Keep it up and get some studying done.  Think how bad your first few beats were. Now think how much  you've improved, smae with mixing.     How do i make my mix loud without clipping?     Gain stage, level, correct  mastering. Read thoise bits  in the book and you should  be well on the way to a good  master. Grab a n invisible  limiter plug in like A.O.M or  T racks and listen to the mix  would sound if limited. Thes  can really point out to you if  you've added too much  sauce on your drums and they start rattling the speakers in a bad  way. The E book should have you up to scratch on how to retain your  volume without clipping things like crazy.    How do I get the mix sounding as good in the speakers as it does  in my headphones?     What you have to appreciate here that speakers and headphones  reproduce the sound differently. It's good to swap between them  because speakers can highlight obvious flaws in the mix. A lot of the  time headphones are nor bassy enough and don't reproduce the bass  well so a speaker will then replay the same bass to you and it'll be  stupidly loud. Don't get comfortable using one medium to check you  mix . try using both, chopping and changing, maybe your speakers  53   

actually accurately produce the sound better but you’re listening to  the voice in your head telling you that the headphones are crazy, user  those. Learn how they sound and how they are different and use it to  your advantage. Everything I find is a bit more obvious ins speaker .  However, they do have some drawbacks. Headphones are usually the  best way to check your mix for stereo field issues or stereo effects,  they will sound better generally because they are close to the ear so  reverb will sound fuller, delay would be a bit more prominent etc.  But most of us don't have sound treated rooms so lack the ability to  use speakers in the same way. That being said, i find headphones way  better or checking all of my time based and modulating effects  because it's a lot clearer to the ears what's going on.                                            54   

Glossary    EQ​ - Equalization, basically analyses the frequencies in a sound and  allows you determine what to remove and what to add. They come in  lots of shapes and sizes a VSTs but roughly do mostly the same stuff.  All a workflow and preference thing.   Reductive EQ​ - The act of using the EQ to remove the frequencies for  a sound  Frequencies​ - ​non scientifically, it's all the pitches within a sound  that make up the totality of it.   Mud​ ​- Low end stuff that clashes together when piled up and makes a  lot of mess in the mix. Danger spots are around 125Hz, 250Hz  Hz​ - ​the unit of measurement when describing frequencies or a sound  area (250hz-500hz) and probably some other sciency stuff.  Mid/Side EQ​ - ​The act of splitting the EQ into independent channels so  you can effect the side and middle frequencies separately  Stereo Field​ - ​The field in which all sounds exist. Your headphones  reproduce this really well and it can be made really obvious with  panning something left or right. It stops being down the centre and  appears more angled in the speaker or headphones.  Tweeter​ - ​The part of the speaker responsible for producing hi end.  Mastering / Mastering chain​ - ​The final step to touch up the mix and  get it finalised and higher in overall volume/ mastering chain is the  order of plugins in the master that help you achieve this.  Brick wall​ - ​the act of stopping a sound entirely at a certain point.  Like closing a gate.   Post analyzer​ - ​the analyzer on a plugin that shows you how the  frequencies look after you've done something to them   Compressor​ - ​A Dynamic VST used for reducing or evening out  changes in loudness  Signal chain​ - ​the order of plugins on a channel or master  Additive EQ​ - ​The process of adding to a sound with an equaliser   55   

Saturation​ - ​The act of creating harmonic frequencies within an  original sound to raise the character and dramatism with in it.  Hardware​ - ​Original real life versions of VST’s that were used in old  school or new modern studios.  dB​ - ​Decibels, the unit of measurement corresponding to what we  know as volume  DAW​ - ​Digital Audio Workstation. FL, Ableton, Pro Tools, Logic,  Reaper etc.  Dynamic range​ - ​the difference between the loudest and quietest  points in the beat  Waveform​ - ​The way the original sound looks when you view it in the  DAW. Think of an audio clip and how it looks.  Sidechain-​ ​the process of routing one piece of audio to another to  create a ducking effect  Mono (not stereo)​ ​Everything down the middle of the speaker. Kick  and bass galore  Levelling​ - ​the process of making sure each volume of each  instrument or drum appears correct to standards set in the music  world.  Limiter​ - ​An aggressive compressor used to finalise a mix.                            56   

Outro    Hope you guys have enjoyed the ebook and have learned something  new whilst reading it. Or if not, hopefully you managed to become  more efficient in making mixing decisions and have bettered your  musical career. I tried to make everything as simple as possible to  understand and tried to give you a rationale as to why I do the things  I do in my mixes.     This book can definitely help alleviate some of the pressure you feel  when getting to the mixing portion of production and will get you up  to speed and on the right track to bettering your sound, creatively and  professionally.     MG       

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