Hello everyone! It’s been a pretty long time since I have posted anything here on the Nall In The Mix blog, and I apologize for that. Between home, my band, and the studio, I got pretty sidetracked and let NITM slip. And just recently, I had the honor of winning the 2018 Lexington Music Award for Best Engineer/Producer! Having said all that, I will try my best to do better by you from here on out, and to this end, I am starting a multipart series where I am going to give you tips on how I get my mixes to sound as professional and radio ready as possible. Some things will seem basic, while others are more involved. We are not going to take very in-depth looks into these techniques, however, as we have several things to go over and each installment in the series would be VERY long! Ready? Ok, let’s get started!
SETTING LISTENING LEVELS
So you have gotten a song ready to mix. The first thing you need to do is pull up the faders and get a good balance between the tracks so you can hear it in its most raw form and really hear what you are dealing with. Don’t worry about volume adjustments at this point, compression and automation will fix this later on down the line. Right now you just want to hear how things sit together and how their natural EQ affects each other. Does the guitar sound muffled in the mix? Is the bass guitar low end overpowering the kick drum? Are the vocals harsh and painful in the high mids? These are the type of things you should be listening for at this early stage of the mix so you can get your game plan together.
KNOW YOUR EQ FREQUENCIES!
The first real key to getting a professional sounding mix is the ability to use EQ and compression correctly and effectively. I know this sounds like a “duh” moment, but hear me out. Boosting or cutting the wrong frequencies can severely harm the sound of your mix. If you cut all your guitars (bass included) at 400hz because they INDIVIDUALLY sound better that way, there’s going to be a big, hollow hole in your sound. There has to be something in that area. If you add 8Khz to all your vocals, it’s probably going to be pretty harsh when combined in the mix. If your kick, snare, bass, and guitar all have 100hz boosted, your low end is going to be muddy and confused. You get the idea. Knowing your frequencies and their ranges will help you immensely! Just knowing that the kick low end is in the 60-80hz area, the bass in the 100hz, the snare in the 125-250hz range, and the guitars in the 200hz range will help you distribute the low end across the low frequency spectrum so that every instrument has its own low end but nothing seems muddy or stepping on each other in the mix. The same idea goes for your mids and highs. LEARN YOUR FREQUENCIES!
SOLO MODE - FRIEND OR FOE?
I want to stop here and talk a bit about the SOLO button. It is, of course, the way that you can single out a track from the rest to hear it individually. To do all your EQ work in solo is going to really slow you down and hamper your workflow considerably. You don’t need to constantly be going in and out of solo on a track to make it sound good. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Here’s my technique and my suggestion to you when it comes to soloing. Only solo ONCE. Also, I only have the tracks that I have completed EQ and compression-wise in the mix, everything else is muted. I bring in the next track to be worked on and listen to it IN CONTEXT with the tracks I have already worked on. That gives me an idea about what to do to make it sit well in the mix. Once I have my game plan, I solo the track and look for the offending frequencies. I then put it BACK into the mix and give it a listen. If it needs more adjustment (and it almost always does!), I will make the changes with the rest of the completed tracks still being heard. This way you really hear what your tweaks to your track are doing IN CONTEXT with the rest of your mix. If you keep going back into solo mode, you have no reference as to how your changes are affecting the rest of the mix. There are some engineers that NEVER use the solo button and do everything in full song mode! Of course, you should always revisit your finished tracks EQ’s as you progress and make tweaks as the mix develops. One example I give students is that if you think you can’t hear your kick, mute it out. If something goes away, you CAN hear the kick, just not the frequencies you are looking for! If you just turn up the fader, now you have boosted what you need, but you have also boosted what you could still hear without the volume boost. Brightening up your high mid attack will bring out the “smack” of the kick without making the low end crazy loud and suddenly you can hear the kick again! It’s magic!
USE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED
And while we’re on the subject, remember that you don’t have to use all the frequency bands in your EQ! A crazy idea, I know, but it’s true. You only need to make the track sound good with the mix. If it only needs a little bit of a high boost, then do it! You don’t have to go crazy with a bunch of mid cuts or low boosting if the track only needs a little adjustment to sit right in the song. There are times that I only pull up a ONE band EQ instead of a 4 or 6 band, because I only have to do ONE THING. It’s also good to note here that sometimes you don’t need to EQ at all! Usually DI keyboard sounds don’t need any extra help. The company that created the keyboard has spent countless hours perfecting the sounds and they will almost always sound great just by turning them up. Don’t make your job more difficult than it has to be and MIX SMART!
THE DIGITAL EQ TRAP
Now a word on digital EQ. Most DAW EQs come with a graph window that shows you where your frequency lies on the spectrum, the Q curve of the frequency cut or boost, and the amount of cut or boost. In my mind, the first two things are great, the last, not so much. In my experience at LSRA, some people become “slaves” to the graph. By this I mean that they will be boosting the kick, for example, at 80hz with a 8db boost. It will sound great, but they will turn it down to a 3db boost because it “looks” wrong in comparison to the other boosts on the EQ. I keep trying to tell people that if it sounds good, then it is good. Don’t worry about what the graph shows you. I use mostly “after market” plug-ins. Most are simulations of analog gear that are only knobs. I have no graph to get in my way and I turn the knobs til it sounds like the sound I have in my head. Sometimes the boosts or cuts are HUGE. Sometimes they aren’t. But I just keep turning them until it SOUNDS right, not LOOKS right. I have been known to add a SECOND EQ to keep boosting because if I did it all on one plug-in, I would overload the plug-in! But in the end it’s how it sounds that matters, not how it looks. Don’t get caught up in that trap.
USING YOUR COMPRESSOR
The second most important element to a professional mix (in my opinion) is compression. If you don’t know how to set your attack and release times correctly, your mix will suffer and not come out like you hear it in your head. If you set fast attack times, your transient will be blunted and the instrument will become “rounded” and sit a little back into the mix. A slower attack time will give you a more aggressive front end and make your instrument stand out more in the mix. Vocals will sound more “mean” and the consonants will almost come spitting out of the track in a more urgent manner. A longer release time will give a more even signal and sustain the notes more, while a shorter release will keep the instrument or vocal more upfront and focused for the listener.
For rock songs, I find that my compression setting for drums and vocals are set with a relatively slow attack and a fairly fast release. This guarantees that those elements will be focal points in my mix.
Many times, my bass guitar has a faster attack, but also a fast release. This is because I want to grab the transient immediately, but I also want to let it go almost as fast to keep it even but up front in the mix. The biggest problem with bass guitar is the volume and tone differences between the lower, thicker strings and the higher, thinner ones. By compressing with a 4:1 ratio and hitting the loudest sections with around 10db of reduction, I basically give myself an extremely even bass track. Sometimes I will either add some saturation directly to the track to “clip” the transient some more, or duplicate the track, add the saturation to the duplicate, and then buss them both to a group bass track and blend them to get the sound I need.
Well, we have come to the end of part one of How To Create A More Professional Mix. Next time, I will delve into the world of DI guitars, Re-cab plug-ins, using samples to either replace or to support your drum sounds, and the use of quantizing, or griding, on your drum kit.
Don't forget that you are welcome to stop by and tour our facilities here at LIRCo and LSRA anytime. Just give us a call at 859-335-8440 (if you're local) or TOLL FREE at 877-335-8440 to set it up, so we can give you the ultimate LIRCo experience. See ya next time!!!
Steve Nall
Head Engineer, LIRS
