How to get a good mix?

[5COPY]

So this have been bugging me so much lately. I know the basics of mixing and EQing and balancing. But really when I listen to professionals it still makes me want to kill myself because of my own mixdowns.

So could some of you like, I don't know give some tips on mixing and EQing? like to the specifics. Different types of synths, percussions and other instruments needs different approaches. It's bugging me so much that I don't know how to approach all of them when I'm experimenting or am about to finish something, yet I can hear something is wrong in the mix but I just can't figure out what it is.

[Artimeus]

Man, this is gonna be a tough one. First, I'd like to direct you to a couple of tutorials which, in all honesty, have assisted me greatly with mixing.

http://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/mix ... -reference
And
http://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/cou ... onic-music

That second one should answer a couple of questions of how to mix specific instruments and sections.

Now, I know this has been asked a lot, and I am just an amateur/hobbyist. Getting that 'perfect mix' just takes so much finesse, I rarely set my bar that high and shoot for 'what sounds good'. Frankly, I just drop an equalizer into every slot, sometimes more than one, and do what I can to kill frequencies I don't need and boost those I do. Then I'll drop in a compressor or filter or whatever, dependent on what I'm trying to do.

Personally, I try to do as much mixing as possible with the individual elements so I don't have to screw around with the final mix, outside of light normalization and equalization. In the end, I think it just takes a lot of practice. I'm steadily getting better at identifying and fixing 'impurities' in my mix the longer I play around with EQs and filters and such.

[Artimeus]

OH MAN. Almost forgot... this right here is invaluable for neutralizing sounds you don't want. EQ sweeping.

[Versilaryan]

The first thing you want to focus on when EQing is cutting out the bass. Unless it's a sub bass, you want zero bass sounds in that sound. And even things that sound fuller with a bit of the bass range, cut out the bass to make room for the actual bassline holding it down there. Especially with things like snare and cymbals. Depending on the snare, you probably want to keep things ~250Hz, especially if you like that low snare that's becoming popular in dubstep, but with cymbals, you can cut and cut and cut and nobody will notice. Same goes with a lot of lead synths -- especially with the buzzier ones, you can even get away with killing the fundamental, and the listener's mind will fill in the blank without them ever realizing it.

When you're cutting lows, make sure you're listening to the full track and not just the one sound solo'd. You can actually cut a lot more than you think you can. Something might sound REALLY thin by itself, but in context of everything else, sounds perfectly fine.

If you find frequencies that a sound doesn't need, cut them.. Be careful, though, because cutting highs and mids will change the sound much more than cutting basses. With most basses, kicks, etc., you should sculpt away the mids and the extreme highs, leaving the moderate highs mostly intact. It's the highs that you ears will actually notice, and unless you want an indistinct bassline just filling in the low end, you need those highs there for the ear to follow. That goes especially with kicks -- you want to keep the lows for the umph, and the lower mids for the crunch, and keep the highs there for the attack so you can actually hear it.

The only other big thing you should do with EQ is cut out frequencies in sounds that don't really need them to make room for more important sounds. If you've got background stuff with a foreground, melodic synth, first figure out what frequency range the melody is most prominently heard. (With vocals, it's usually ~1kHz.) Then, in most everything that's not the melody, EQ that part out just a little bit. Now that your melody's no longer fighting for dominance in that frequency range, it'll pop out a lot more without you having to make it really loud.

Also, use a spectral analyzer, especially on the master, to help you figure out what to do. Making sure everything has its sonic space is really important, especially when you add more and more instruments. And if there's a buildup in any given frequency range, a spectral analyzer on the master will tell you that. Just look for any large peaks, and then figure out what's causing them. Then you can either lower the volume on that, or you can cut those frequencies in other sounds that don't need them as much.

I can't give you frequency ranges or anything, because it really depends on the sound you're EQing. So just experiment, figure out what sounds good.

Note that sometimes, you're going to have to automate EQ (or just have separate EQ plugins turning on and off). You might have a section without a bass, so you want some other sound to have those bass frequencies so it doesn't sound flat. Or maybe some of your background synths come to the foreground in a section.

Also, look up sidechain compression. If you have two things competing for the same sonic space, and there's no way to EQ your way around it, sidechaining's the way to go. I almost always sidechain my bass to my kick, so that the bass ducks out when the kick comes in, and I usually end up sidechaining my cymbals to my snare so that the snare's highs pop out a little more.

[Captain Ironhelm]

During the composing stage, use a visual EQ to see where you have space in your frequencies to put in different things. This also helps you to carve your sounds so they don't mud up each other.
Generally you want your most important sounds to be the "big"-full of harmonics-incredible sounds. These will stand out in the foreground. Other less important sounds can be less complex, making a cleaner mix.

Doing what you can before the mixing stage can make it easier, just as doing what you can before mastering can make your mastering easier.

[colortwelve]

My method:

1. Route your drums to a submix, and put a compressor on that submix.
1b. Layer two kicks - one all sub-bass, one with mids and highs to give it that punch.
1c. Layer at least three snares - one low-mid, one mid, one high-mid/maybe a little treble.
2. All the actual bass is played through a simple sinewave sub-bass generator, put a bandstop filter on any other synth sound with sub-bass to cancel that out and keep the mix from getting muddy.
2b. Sidechain the sub generator to your sub-bass kick sample to give the kick room.
3. When EQing synths, start with a bandpass filter to find the most essential frequencies, and keep those the most prominent in the EQ. If you need to, you can automate nonessential frequencies for buildups, etc.
3b. Don't have more than two synths in the same frequency range playing at once, that's an easy way to muddy up a mix.
4. Do not put compressors/maximizers/anything of the sort on your master channel.
4b. Turn the master volume down so you don't clip.
4c. Use Wavelab or what have you to master the .wav you export from your DAW. This is where you can put compressors and the like on the whole song, but try to avoid clipping and dynamic range compression (you want the quiet parts to be quiet, so a waveform that looks like a brick wall of sound is a very bad thing).

5. Follow all of this advice myself.