Do you want to be world class like Rick Rubin or Manny Marroquin? Or just good enough to release your music?
I understand your goals are unique; they’re different and that’s great! It’s what makes you one of a kind and makes you stand out.
But it’s rare to chat with a musician and find out they’re completely happy with everything to do with the way their music sounds. Even after an artist releases a piece of music, a song can still evolve and grow during live performances over the years. Sometimes the live version is very much different to what was originally recorded.
That’s because the artist’s taste and style have changed over the years. They’ve committed to the one thing that helps us improve as musicians, producers and mixers…
Consistent progress
There are multiple success stories out there from all walks of life about how so many people succeeded because they continued to work hard despite all setbacks and eventually succeeded. This also applies to your music.
It doesn’t really matter how talented you are. You might be naturally blessed with an incredible ear and rely on that to inform all of your music-making decisions. I’m happy that you’ve been blessed with such a gift, but somewhere out there, there’s someone else training their ears to get better and they’ll eventually overtake you if you don’t work hard.
So, I want to give you two incredibly important and effective tips you can use when it comes to making consistent progress. Not only that, but I want to show you how you can use them to learn over 100 new techniques!
Here they are:
- You need your method. If you don’t have a systematic approach to every mix, it actually removes your ability to be in any way creative. How can you make progress in your development as a producer or mixer when you’re trying to skip ahead and work on delay effects when you haven’t set your gain stage? Take that as a micro example of what can happen to your overall development. If you’re trying to skip levels (and skipping levels is possible) without a rock solid foundation, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Develop your method, be systematic and you will be rewarded with better, more creative mixes.
- Experiment. This ties in with the first point. If you’ve got a rock solid method and you know your general approach is nailed down, then you’re free to experiment in the final stages of the mix. Once you’ve got that solid method together, I strongly encourage you to try one new thing on each mix. That means that over time, you’re consolidating your method and adding new, innovative techniques to it. If you do 1 new mix a week, that’s one new skill you learn every week. That’s over 50 new tricks up your sleeve every year and an ever-improving system you’ve built by developing your method. If you get so good that you can do 2 new things every mix, then that’s over 100 new techniques a year! And that’s only based on 1 mix per week… Not bad, eh?
Now I hear what you’re saying… “It’s going to take me a year to learn over 100 new mixing techniques?!“
Well, yes. It might sound simple, but think of it this way…
Did you learn over 100 new mixing techniques last year? Did you learn 50? Did you even learn 20? Even if you aim to learn 50 new mixing tips in a year, you’ll at least learn 10-20. That’s better than 0.
So, let’s be realistic (even though I generally hate being realistic). If you’re only working on 1 track a month, you shouldn’t set a goal to learn 100 new mixing techniques a year. You’ll stress yourself out and your mixes will actually suffer. A target of 10-20 would be much better.
But if you’re working on a new track every week, then you could easily hit 100.
Remember… it all boils down to the quality of your method. So make sure you have that nailed down first. If you’ve got a great method and know how you want things to flow from start to finish, you can’t help but try new things.
More importantly – keep having fun making great music!
Now, I’d love to know…
What’s the most important tip you’ve learned recently?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
The most important tip I’ve learned in the last months is the importance of “oversampling” and “dithering”, because the artifacts produced by aliasing and truncation are what people hate from digital audio.
These two problems introduce some extra stuff that isn’t there in analog (letting aside saturation and analog color) and it’s not usually musical, so it makes the tracks and mixes sound muddier and/or harsher than they should.
Dithering takes away the truncation distortion problem and should be used in the master channel to cover everything, even when rendering. In the case of aliasing it affects more some kind of processes than others, mostly dynamic processing like compressors and limiters so it’s up to you what plugins with oversampling you use.
For very good oversampling I recommend the Tokyo Dawn Labs plugins, though they don’t cover all the basics, as they lack plugins for things like Reverb and Delay.
For dithering IMO there’s only one chooice and that’s NotJustAnotherDither from Airwindows (free btw). It even makes lossy files sound better.
Some good tips. Do you apply dither even when mixing? I’ve learned recently that it can be really valuable to apply dither to final mixes even before the mastering stage.
Yeah, I put the dither plugin in the master channel so everything goes through it. Also, if I’m gonna render the mix I leave this plugin ON, and I’m gonna render a single track (a guitar track with amp sims for example) then I put the dither plugin at the end of that track and render.
Sounds good!
Sympathetic EQ – if you boost a particular range or bandwidth of freqs to bring out the most distinctive or prominent tones, then a reciprocal EQ should be done on any adjacent tracks to carve out space. This is not as important if the two tracks are panned opposite, but if they share the same stereo position, then this is how each instrument can claim it’s own real estate and not be overlapped or masked. This works great in mono, when separation is dialed in correctly. The most important track gets to be first, and then the others are EQ’d to fit around the dominant track.
Great tip Pat!
The most important tips I have learned in the last months is producing in Ableton and mixing in Pro Tools. First of all because when you have your frozen tracks is much more difficult to fall in temptation of modifying the sound, second because you hear your track in a different way. In my opinion if you produce in Ableton and you mix in Pro Tools you can have a strong approach.
Cheers! And thank you for every great tip!
Hello Mattia. Sorry for the question, but don`t know if I understand the idea…
Before I become adicted to Ableton 9, my previous DAWs were SONAR LE (the first one) and SONAR Artist (don`t know Pro Tools, but I guess it`s pretty much the same). I must confess that never took full advantage of any of them and when I discovered Ableton and how to use it (about a year ago) my approach made a 180º turn!
Today it feels so much more practical to use one single DAW and make everything “inside the box” that I almost forget any other choices (although I know there are).
So your comment lead me to re-think my approach(es) and that`s great! (Thank you!) Still, could you explain a little better what does it mean “fall in temptation of modifying the sound”? Because for me if I think / feel that the sound is going well without any effect (even in Ableton), I simply leave it that way, no modulation at all. (and believe me: I love doing the most crazyest experiments, both in analog and digital)
Greathings from Portugal! Paulo
Hey Paulo – I don’t want to speak for Mattia but I think he means that he will compose/write everything in Ableton Live and then bounce out his stems, import them to Pro Tools and mix in there.
He’s removing the temptation of going back and tweaking with individual settings on his VSTs by taking this approach.
I tend to do the same thing but all within my DAW. Once I’m happy with my sound, I’ll bounce the instrument tracks out to audio tracks and mix them that way.
Hope that helps!
Yes, it helps. Makes sense. And if one day I start recording entire bands (?), maybe I`ll use SONAR / Music Creator (unlimited tracks!!!) to capture the sound and then make the production inside Ableton…
(good “old” Aleton 🙂 )
Thanks for the comment Mattia! If that workflow works for you, it works for you. I used to switch between DAWs but, personally, I prefer to do everything in Pro Tools these days.
I feel silly admitting this, considering that I have been making music for several decades now, but proper gain staging at the very beginning of the mix routine and making sure that I keep levels in the sweet spot throughout the process has helped me tremendously in achieving better sounding mixes. Headroom is vital when you want to preserve dynamics within a song. Thanks for all the knowledge you share with us.
I agree totally Daniel. Gain Staging is so important to getting a great end result. I also create sub-mixes along the way to see how it’s all coming together.
Thanks for your comment Daniel. Nothing silly about it… proper gain staging is truly as important as you’ve highlighted. Without it, we fight a losing battle right from the start. Great advice!
Stephen
Hi Always look forward to reading your thoughts and help. Totally agree with your core thought. Recently came to realise that structure and spontaneity (a partner to experiment?) are NOT in contradiction – they work in harmony (or at least I try to make them) Latest tip I learned was – really really get to know your stock plugins. I “came-a-cropper” recently because I had no idea what a particular control did on a plugin which I have used very very often – I’d just ignored that control completely – WRONG. On a particular mix, started hearing unwanted artefacts and eventually traced it to not using that control.DOH! My tip might seem dull but to me, it was an eye-opener. Many thanks, George
Glad you look forward to reading the articles, George. I hope I can continue to help you for many years to come.
That’s certainly not a dull tip. About a year ago, I noticed the same thing when using a premium plugin.
It’s all a learning experience and I think this is a sign that your ears are becoming more and more fine-tuned with each mix.
Keep going!
Hi Stephen:
I believe the most important tip I`ve learned recently is this one right here, in your article: if someone want`s to evolve (no matter what skills he or she alveady has) the only way is to experiment! Period. Yes, it takes some extra time, but it`s the best way not to risk making all songs / albums sound the same and create something “new” each time we`re working on a track. Plus, it`s more likely not to get bored after several sessions in a row (at least I think so – says the one who`s not working on music production more than 2-2,5 days a week…)
Another good article. Thanks!
Glad you liked it Paulo!
My latest tricked “learned” ( more like tried a couple of times and still have a lot of questions…..but definitely tried and added to my potential arsenal) would be ‘parallel compression’. Very cool trick indeed for adding punch and clarity without giving up dynamics…..I like it a lot.
I try to incorporate new things all the time, My preferred method is to immerse in the technique by using it on everything for a while…..this tests the boundrys, keeps the hook ups in my head so I don’t forget how to set it up and shows me where it’s appropriate and where it doesn’t work so well…..oh yeah, and don’t forget, how far you can push something to actually get a ‘new’ sound that might be useful.
This has been an incredibly strange year, so far, for me. I’m still spinning and looping on some weird shit that’s gone down, but, writing, mixing and collaborating has kept things real for me…..I love mixing!!
Hello again! (Oh, no…)
Just came to my mind: speaking of experiment(al) music…
I`ve recently created a Youtube chanel where I will put periodically what I call my “Small Mixtakes”. In this series, my goal is to make mixes (and experiment along the way) with the current limitation: 8 track most inside my DAW and using nothing but some pre-recorded samples and stock plugins.
If someone ever feel curious enouth to take a look (and put some really nasty critics in the “comments below” :-/ ), here`s the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY_gin8yR7H48h3sHCTJhbA
Best regards from Portugal!
Great work Paulo! Also a good way for someone to learn Portuguese while they’re at it 🙂
Oh!? You already have checked this chanel!?.. Thank you!
Hey nice… I really like your blog. Very useful information. Thanks.
Hi Stephen! Just wanna say it`s good to see you`re back.
Just keep going with your good work, helping everyone to make better music!..
Yours, Paulo