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Hi folks and welcome to the new kinda-not-really-competition, this time for mixing! There's no real competition here, the goal is to do your best, have fun, and learn. So what actually is this thing? The premise is simple: People upload stems of a track (more on this below), you give a crack at mixing it and then you upload for others to enjoy! An important part is that we'd like you to explain what you did and why. The reason for this is if someone else hears some element or thing you did and they really dig it they can learn how to do it, 'cause you're a good teacher. Sounds good, what do I do? Grab your favourite DAW (Reaper is a good one for cheap/free-ish if you want a suggestion), download the stems and go nuts. There's no rules or real requirements, save your final mix should be rendered down into something usable by most people, say a high quality .MP3 or .OGG, or .WAV or whatever. Something real people use and not some esoteric and obscure format. I don't squat about mixing but I'd like to participate! No problem! The friendly folks here would gladly talk about tricks and tips (I'm assuming anyway) and if not there's always the super handy Home Recording Megathread. Those goons know what they're doing, so feel free to bug them with any and every question you might need answered. The important thing is we're opening this jam to everyone and anyone, regardless of experience. Whether you have more albums than Steve Albini or whether you had to look up what a DAW was in the last section you're more than welcome. I don't really want to mix anything but I am an artist with stems. Awesome! It's really hard to mix something that doesn't exist, so we're gonna need content. I'll update this section when we have a solid place to upload your track(s) but for now just pop in and say you'd like to contribute and maybe give us a sample of the raw track. For uploading there's only gonna be a few requirements. First is that the stems are prepped for mixing. Having thirteen .wav files for a single guitar track might work for you when you know what you're looking at in the arranged DAW view, but for us we're going to need each track to be rendered down into a single file. This also means blank space if some tracks start later. Second, is have your track in a mixable form. There's not much sense throwing use a track that was recording with one mic in the middle of the room picking up a full band at rehearsal. We've set the entry level fairly low, so throw us something we can actually work with. Third, have the track as complete as possible in terms of recording. It'd be a bit pointless for us to try mixing a track that has half of the instruments missing because you'll add them later. That's basically it! Submission of Mixes So here's where it gets neat. Basically, once you're done with a mix (or in the middle but want to share something cool) submit the final render and write us a piece on what you did and why you did it. It'd be helpful if you broke it down into parts and really go into the details. I don't think anyone here will complain about too much information. A format like this would be good: Instrument: Vocals/Guitar/Whatever Plugins used (if any): A brief list of plugins and their type. If you used ReaEQ then say that and let us know it's an EQ but tagging it like: ReaEQ (EQ) Method: Talk about what you did with the part(s) and why you did it. If you bumped the guitars up at 800Hz for a fatter sound, tell us! Spill the beans, we're not hiding our secret sauces here. Screenshots of settings/plugins are also very welcome if you think it'd help. If you think how you organise the tracks ("I always put vocals at the top because blah") would help you can even include that! There's no holds-barred for what you want to discuss. Communication While it's super cool to submit mixes and give us a rundown this is a forum, so back and forth with any questions you have for others, or anything you notice about a song is totally cool to discuss. I'll be linking the posts with rundowns when people submit them in this OP, so don't worry about flooding the thread; all the main posts will be contained here. Stems When we get stems they'll go here! Translunar by sebmojo (Post) Electronic Rosebush - Crowbar Vigilantes by CaptainViolence (Post) Indie Rock Everybody Hates Greg - Soviet Fourth Grader by CaptainViolence (Post) Punk All Along by JohnnySmitch (Post) Alternative Finished Mixes When we have somewhere to upload it'll go here! Resources Home Recording Megathread syntaxfunction fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Oct 14, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 11:13
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 01:30 |
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I'm excited for this thread, it sounds like a blast! I'm more interested in doing some mixing myself, but I'll get us started with a couple of sets of stems. These are from two different musical projects, just to give us a little variety. All the stems are labelled and completely dry, but for the electric guitars I also included versions run through an amp simulator. I'm not married to the distortion I used, but if you don't want to bother dialing something in I figured you could use mine. Rosebush - Crowbar Vigilantes (indie rock, 130bpm) Rosebush is a song I wrote with a friend four or five years ago. It's part of an album I've been chipping away at recording for almost as long, so I haven't yet sat down to do a full mix for this one and I'm excited to see what people might do with it. I included a (very) rough mix in there for reference as to how I imagine I'll eventually mix it. Everybody Hates Greg - Soviet Fourth Grader (punk, 300bpm) Everybody Hates Greg got released a few months ago in response to the "Montana congressman body slams a reporter" thing. It was a super-quick turnaround—I think from idea to release, it was 48 hours—so I didn't get to take as much time mixing as I normally would have. Given that, I'm mostly happy with the way it turned out but I'm sure there's room for improvement. I included both the final mix and the final master in with this one so you can hear how it was released if you want a reference. CaptainViolence fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Sep 23, 2017 |
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Sep 23, 2017 16:02
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Here's a track called Translunar, which is hilariously overstuffed and probably very badly mixed because I'm a child who likes making everything very loud. I'd love to hear what someone else would make of it. It's got a farrago of reverb and eq on most tracks (largely the reaper standards) and i think some ATKSD1 distortion on the cello.
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Sep 23, 2017 16:10
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Awesome, thanks guys! I've added the tracks to the OP. Hopefully this starts the ball rolling.
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Sep 24, 2017 02:35
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This is a great idea, and I think I might have a track to submit for people to mix 
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Sep 24, 2017 02:39
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Greggster that'd be cool. Also note that I have been downloading and verifying the stems as people submit them so there shouldn't be anything broken or anything. I think we could use a few more stems and then maybe we'll set a date for final mix submissions?
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Sep 27, 2017 03:54
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Ughh, been meaning to get some in but my day job's had me distracted.
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Sep 27, 2017 04:44
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I just finished up a pretty quick mix over my lunch break of the "Rosebush" track posted (cool song by the way!). https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wkcevil0u9fu1u/Rosebush_mix1.mp3?dl=0 I'm at work, so I didn't have ANY of my plugins/modellers/etc, which I actually kinda liked as a challenge - everything was done in REAPER with its stock plugins. I went for kind of a Florence and the Machine kinda vibe, and spent some time giving the vocals lots of space and color. VOCALS: My main weapon was a slap echo with some eq carving send that I put both the main and backup vocals through, along with sending a little of everything to a short and long reverb. I also popped in a fuzz/lo-fi EQ send in the 3rd chorus to make it pop and sound a little megaphone-y. Guitars: I kept these pretty simple (especially since I don't have any of my amp/cab/effects models handy), and mostly just played around with panning everything around (I stuck with hard L-C-R panning) and gave them different amounts of reverb through the short and long sends, along with some subtle complimentary EQ on the two main electric guitar parts. I threw the two "solo" bits through a simple tremolo, set at two different speeds (one of them half the speed of the other) and panned them hard L and R. Bass: just some compression and verb Drums: A couple layers of parallel compression to make them pop, but not too much. I'd honestly like to spend more time on the drums to make them a little more present, but I kinda ran into a wall with them without all my normal VST crutches. Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?
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Sep 27, 2017 19:39
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JohnnySmitch posted:I just finished up a pretty quick mix over my lunch break of the "Rosebush" track posted (cool song by the way!). Dude that's a pretty cool idea to try and mix with only stock plugins! I like this mix a lot, especially the vocals. They sit very nicely. Two things I noticed though. The drums seem really hard panned at times and I was wondering if that was a stylistic choice. The second is I feel like when the guitars crunch up at the end it loses a little oomph and everyone seems to get smaller from the large sound for most of the song.
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Sep 30, 2017 03:45
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syntaxfunction posted:Dude that's a pretty cool idea to try and mix with only stock plugins! I totally agree with both your observations! The hard-panned drums were part stylistic, part laziness - it was a quick way to get them out of the way of the crunchy guitars. The guitars in question need some more eq love too to keep them from overpowering the rest of the tracks; maybe some more compression or doubling or something on the vocals to get them to stay out front too... So.... is anyone else working on anything? I'd like to hopefully share some stems myself for mixing too so I can see where people take my tracks.
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Oct 3, 2017 22:34
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I am totally working on a couple of them and will hopefully have a preliminary mix up in a few days. It's fun mixing other people's stuff!
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Oct 4, 2017 01:48
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I put sebmojo's track into a project, but his style of music is so far out of my wheelhouse that I've been pretty lost. I'm excited for more stems to roll in, though!
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Oct 4, 2017 04:33
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So just to update ya'll I hope to have a preliminary mix of Rosebush and EHG in the next few days! We need more stems guys! I'm going to try and incorporate some stuff from Johnny for Rosebush. Hopefully it works out. Not that I hate Translunar but I'm starting with more familiar territory.
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Oct 7, 2017 09:46
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Throwing my completely clueless hat into the ring. Here's my stab at Rosebush: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5goTnajm3jEYXpSYXdyYmtVNUU I intentionally didn't listen to the rough mix provided (nor anyone else's) because I didn't A) want to be influenced, and B) be intimidated and not do it. This is my first time mixing anything other than a simple recording of myself with one guitar and a Logic combined drummer track. Sort of overwhelming, but that's why I'm doing this! Great song, by the way!!
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Oct 8, 2017 01:27
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C'mon guys - let's get this thread moving! Here are the stems to an old track of mine to play around with: All Along [alternative] https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ik0zdbsbdbx1m8h/AADtXVyHZi6HUxznQxomk68xa?dl=0 My own rough mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvc6nu7wurjs40m/AllAlong_roughMix.mp3?dl=0 Notes on my rough mix: Main vocals - did a bunch of thickening/doubling with short delays panned around BG vocals - abused the SoundToys Crystalizer plugin to give them a weird ambient vibe Uke - just hard panned the 2 mics left and right and tweaked in a little complimentary EQ Guitar - EQ Bass - simple compression Drums - series compression + a touch of SoundToys Devil-Loc crusher to give them some grit and girth I'm not super happy with my mix, but that's where it is at the moment. Feel free to approach it totally differently!
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Oct 13, 2017 19:39
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Lumpy posted:Throwing my completely clueless hat into the ring. Here's my stab at Rosebush: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5goTnajm3jEYXpSYXdyYmtVNUU I like the raw/intimate qualities of your mix - it feels like a very up-close and personal perfomance in your take. It adds emphasis to 3rd section of the song when the distorted guitars come in. I would've liked to hear this leaned into even more; the guitars come in heavy but a little too mushy and stifled (against the very clean vocals). With it mixed pretty bare/raw (no added effects), I would've liked a bit more EQ sculpting on the acoustic guitar and bass too - they sound a little rubber-bandy as is. I tend to be more aggressive with EQ shaping sometimes though, so maybe it's just me. One more thing - the tracks could all use a little reverb to glue them together; the drums sound really far away because they are the only instrument with reverb on them (from the original recording), so the vocals and other instruments could use some added to push them into the same space as the drums a bit more.
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Oct 13, 2017 19:49
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First, working on Rosebush and I have really gotten some serious Jefferson Aeroplane vibes from it. Anyway. I have a few mixes I'm working on, specifically Rosebush, Greg and All Along. I'm focusing on those three, and man mixing is hard when you have no control over the composition! Lumpy, I like your mix but as much as I hate it I agree with Johnny about the reverb. Not cause Johnny but because I generally avoid reverb when possible. But for that song it definitely works as a good glue. I also feel that blending the vocals a little more with the rest of the song wouldn't go astray. It sounds nice but the vocals are very front forward and you don't really get a chance to focus on the other elements with vocals being so centre stage. Otherwise I dig! Also Johnny I added your stems to the OP. Sebmojo, I do want to give a crack at Translunar but man mixing electronic stuff is way out of my comfort zone. Given you created it do you have any suggestions to help me/us along?
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Oct 14, 2017 07:23
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Haha sorry guys, its kind of a mess. All i can suggest is stripping it right back and seeing what grabs you. Dont feel you need all the tracks or the full ten min or w/e, pull a few tracks out and see what sounds interesting.
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Oct 14, 2017 07:25
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JohnnySmitch posted:C'mon guys - let's get this thread moving! https://www.dropbox.com/s/3u84h5juy6dvf16/all%20along.wav?dl=0 Did a headphone mix of this (hope it doesn't fall apart on monitors), tried to keep it natural feeling but tried to fill it out as well. Used a lot of Klanghelm and Waves VST, EQs and Comps, a little verb, nothing too wild though, if you have questions on details, ask away! Thanks for making this thread, it's a great idea, and a great way to learn. I've been doing a lot of mixing of my own stuff, but mixing other people's material is a totally different ballgame. Sometime this weekend I'll put up some stems of my own.
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Oct 14, 2017 08:34
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I'll throw a few stems into the ring, my mixing skills have never been ableto get the tracks to a place I'm hapy with, so hoping this thread will help me refine those skills. A Catfish Learns To Dance - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-svd-zIYmQ1NEJNMDEybVhnWmc?usp=sharing - Quite a short, simple set here, just two stems, vocals and acoustic guitar. Got a friend on vocals who's much better at singing than me =P. Tshirt Weather - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-svd-zIYmQ1T1hnTmViRDI1RHc?usp=sharing - My attempt at approaching the ska-ish spectrum of music, everything apart from the vocals is synths generated from midi. Apologies for the quality of my singing, the track is quite old now and I was even more of a newbie with singing back then, I'm still pretty amateur =D I have a couple more songs that I could throw on here, but I haven't got around to stemming them yet.
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Oct 14, 2017 20:58
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Thank you both for the input! Much appreciated. JohnnySmitch, I think I see (hear?) what you mean about "rubber bandy" in my mix: what would I do to lessen / improve on it? When adding reverb, should I do that on the master so everything gets the same, or does each track need special attention so it all "sounds the same"? Or both? Thanks again for your comments.
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Oct 14, 2017 22:06
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Lumpy posted:Thank you both for the input! Much appreciated. JohnnySmitch, I think I see (hear?) what you mean about "rubber bandy" in my mix: what would I do to lessen / improve on it? For the "rubber bandy-ness", it really just comes down to EQ carving. When I have a track that's sounding funky or not sitting right, I usually just sweep through the EQ bands with a notch or narrow band filter until I find the frequencies that are getting in the way/sounding bad/etc. When I've honed in on the frequency I wanna carve, I start playing around with the Q control and cut it more subtly (usually no more than 6db or so) to carve it out. Usually have to repeat this a few times to find the trouble spots. As for reverb, I like to set up 2 different reverbs as send effects (a short and a long), and then send varying amounts of each track to them as needed - I like to use the shorter reverb as a 'thinckening' reverb, and the longer reverb to add space. It sometimes works fine on the master too, but then it becomes an "all or nothing" kind of effect where every track is going to get the same amount, so if the tracks weren't sitting well together to begin with, they're probably gonna still not sit together well but now with echoes. Master fader reverb seems to work better if all the instruments were originally recorded in the same space though (if they were mic'd and recorded well to begin with).
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Oct 14, 2017 23:28
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ricecult posted:https://www.dropbox.com/s/3u84h5juy6dvf16/all%20along.wav?dl=0 I like this mix! You really got the bass and the drums pumping really well together - I definitely wanna try to match what you did with the rhythm tracks when I do the final mix for this! Any specifics you can tell me about what you did here? The only thing I wasn't loving was how right-side heavy this mix was; the overdriven guitar being mixed way right (which I think I did in my original mix too) kinda throws off the balance a bit; probably mostly my fault though, since I didn't double track that part. I kinda want to go back and track a clean version of that part to blend left now...
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Oct 14, 2017 23:37
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JohnnySmitch posted:I like this mix! You really got the bass and the drums pumping really well together - I definitely wanna try to match what you did with the rhythm tracks when I do the final mix for this! Any specifics you can tell me about what you did here? Glad you dig it! For the drums, it was mostly a matter of finding the right balance between the mics, they capture a lot of the room sound, which is great, but definitely requires finding the right leveling, particularly for the room mics. I gated the snare mics a bit, slammed the kick a 1176 style comp (stillwell rocket, fast attack) and pulled the room mics back a bit for the middle section to tighten it up. Aside from that, I found that applying small amounts of compression (usually a somewhat open attack and a quicker release) at varying stages went a long way, which I find generally works with drums. The bass was mostly compression and pulling back around 100, I also threw the Waves' REDD 37-51 on there, which I found brought more evenness to the distortion on the track, giving it it's own character to distinguish from the toms. It's funny you say it was right heavy, the only reason I threw the guitar to the right was because I thought it was left heavy! I've suspected my headphones (maybe just the cable?) have been having starting to go, this furthers my suspicions... Personally, I've grown to like more obvious panning over time, I suppose it somewhat comes down to taste, but there is definitely a consideration for an overall stereo evenness to be had.
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Oct 15, 2017 00:25
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I can't wait to take a crack at this and thank you so much for making this awesome thread.
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Nov 8, 2017 22:05
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Kicking some life back into this thing! I actually lost all the mixes I had started so I'm starting again. I'm working on a mix of EHG right now and wanted to show the process I'm going through. So here's my workspace to start (warning: big rear end image).  And the mix as it stands. Couple things. First, ignore the evaluation license bit. I am bad person but I am going to buy it (I've just been poor as poo poo). Sorry Cockos! Second you'll notice I use Directsound. This is because I like mixing using my headphones (I don't own speakers let alone monitors) through my computer because I feel like it's a more likely scenario than through a dedicated interface/amplifier. I usually bounce between the two. Third, I actually mix fairly quietly. Not sure what dB range but my interface output sits at like 2 and my headphones usually sit at 20-40% of the output volume. My theory is that if I can get it sounding good at a low volume then it'll sound better cranked. Anyway, let's talk about things. Workflow I just wanted to touch on this first. As you can tell, I like things colour coded and organised. Guitars are always blue, bass purple, drums brown and vocals green and yellow. I also stack tracks the way you see, with vocals up top and drums at bottom. I don't know why, but this just makes sense to me. I also have a second monitor which affords me the ability to have all my tracks and controls easily viewable at once. Also, busses, people! Current State I've only begun setting things up, so at the moment I've basically panned, used faders and a bit of compression for the most part. More on that later. Basically, this is a pre-mix. I set up the mix to hit approximately the right levels and pan things around a bit, then I start work on EQ's, effects, etc. The Mix Instrument: Vocals Plugins used (if any): ReaComp on the background vocal bus. Method: After panning around a bit I slapped ReaComp on the vocal bus. -15dB threshold, with a 3:1 ratio. No make up gain. Why? I wanted to pull down the loud part at the end without affecting the volume throughout. At it does the trick nicely. I haven't touched the main vocals as of yet, I just adjusted the bus fader to bring things a bit more in line. Instrument: Guitar Plugins used (if any): ModernAnaloguer and ReaEQ on the Distortion bus. Method: This actually has a few things happening. First, GTR1 and GTR2 and panned hard left and right, and 3/4 panned 50% either way. I really like hard panning main guitars and then sitting other guitars panned but not too crazy. I find it really makes the guitars seem bigger, and if you mono it they don't disappear because it's not all hard left/right. ReaEQ is doing the most basic job. Low pass at 7k (which is fairly low I know) to kill that tiny bit of fizz, and a high pass at 50Hz to clean up the bottom end. I do this pretty much automatically with guitars that have any sort of gain on them. ModernAnaloguer is a weird one. I only use it occasionally because it does tend to darken the sound quite drastically, but it also beefs things up and makes them a bit fatter sounding. I don't really know why or how it does that (I think it's meant to emulate tape?) but in the right context it works really well. Settings are here. It just saturates nicely so I can get behind that. Instrument: Bass Plugins used (if any): ReaComp yet again. Method: Bass is pretty straight forward. 3:1 ratio on the compressor, makeup gain, -25dB threshold. Just makes it consistently punchy, although the bass itself was even in the raw. Instrument: Drums Plugins used (if any): ReaComp everywhere with no rhyme or reason. Method: Okay so here's the rub. I have no real idea how to mix drums. I slapped on a couple compressors and I guess they're helping? Honestly, my usual method of drums is a MIDI track, some drum plugin and a limiter and just smash the hell out of it. I would love advice on how people have or would approach this mix with the drums. I'm sort of in the same boat with vocals but I have a bit more of an idea with them. Where To? So I have my foundations down. But I really would like some advice on mixing drums properly as well as general thoughts. I should also say I will set up send busses for reverb etc, and actually mix the thing I intend to update again when I have a new/better mix, but for now this is what I got.Also are there any mixes that have been posted people consider done? Cause if so I'll chuck them in the OP. syntaxfunction fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Dec 1, 2017 |
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Dec 1, 2017 02:01
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Awesome thread. I'd love to get in on this. I'll have to remember when i get home.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:31
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