I have the feeling that a Virus or Moog find harder place in the mix compared say to a Nord Lead or a Digitone.
I know that it is a lot about how you make the sound, still, I tend to have a harder time putting in a mix to sit well synths like the ones mentioned above.
Is there some truth in that or is just my sound sculpting skills?
Thanks!
Roland drum machines are famous for sitting good in a mix. I think itās how Roland designed the sounds and how balanced the kits are. With synths, I think this phenomenon also exists. I might be a combination of the synth engine itself and the interface that might favour working with sounds in a specific way, but Iām not really sure how this worksā¦
Maybe it has also to do with how music in the past and the gear used has shaped our perception and understanding of what a good mix is.
Which mix?
Itās really hard to say anything without any context. A live setup with music boxes, a splice challenge, live bands?
Moogs are often used as lead synths as they have a bit more character. Depending whether you want a lead or a āharmonizingā sound or a bass, will suggest which is the right synth for you in a mix.
All my Korg stuff cuts through the mix like a chainsaw and dominates all the other gear like itās asking for their lunch money.
Itās annoying.
Moog takes up a lot of space form some reason.
Nord Lead always sounded full but very well fitting in a mix without the need for crazy eq curves.
Virus I find kinda in the middle, can be easy to add but also sometimes a bit dominant.
Any mix. Some gear makes it supposedly easier to fit in a mix while other gear domimates the whole spectrum and is harder to mix.
Some gear can seemingly cut through other elements without overpowering everything else.
A more fundamental question is: What does it mean to āsitā (or not sit) in the mix? A sound engineer might be able to explain this. I have my own half-baked ideas. They may be totally wrong. A sound that sits well in the mix may exist in the mid frequencies, not too tubby in the lows, not too many or too strong higher overtones. Compression built into the sound. The aural equivalent of a movie extra, contributing to the setting of a scene, but without drawing attention to itself. Or a bland ingredient that can be mixed arbitrarily with other bland ingredients without ruining the resulting, bland recipe.
A lot of synth presets seem to be drowning in reverb and/or designed to demonstrate the extremes of sound design. These types of sounds, IMO, donāt sit well in the mix. I would not judge a synth by its presets. A good synth should allow you to sit in the mix, or jump out of the mix, right?
Unscientifically, I think sounds that are combined into a mix need to have enough character to be distinguished from other soundsā¦but not so much character that the sounds start relating to each other in a zero-sum fashion. Combining sounds should be preformed with a concern for the product of the parts, rather than the sum of the parts.
One of the reasons I value the Elektron stuff I own highly is due to the digi boxes having base eq filters as well as their multimode, and the AK having two filters as well. The more music I make, the more I value being able to isolate the frequencies of the sounds I use to ensure I leave space where space is needed.
I have heard the phrase itās a truism, just looking for some nuance.
You running them through a dimed HM-2?
*makes Swedish death metal joke, grabs coat and exits the synth conversation
I guess it comes down to the question how much do I have to tweak (and process) a synth or drum machine etc. to make it sound balanced and not stand out too much or overpower other elements.
Of course there are so many variables, itās hard to narrow it down, but I think there probably is some truth to it.
Frequency spectrum: For example, the Analog Rytm generally has a lot of low end and with all those parameters to tweak, itās easy to get lost in the process whereas a 909 or 808 has a pretty narrow range, but the kit itself is very nicely balanced making it much easier to have it sit well in a mix. Also 909s and 808s have shaped electronic music so much, hence itāll sound familiar.
Same factors apply to synths.
User interface: If you have a nice big cutoff knob on a synth, youāll naturally gravitate to it whereas in comparison a big red knob that scans through wavetables will favour a different approach to sound design.
Iām sure presets also play a huge role.
Iām pretty sure thereās also a lot of psychological factors at play, but if you load up a 909 kit, a 101 and maybe a Juno plugin, Iām sure youāll notice how balanced everything sounds.
Outside of synths, I guess we could compare this to how instruments naturally occupy their own frequency pockets. You can pick up a guitar, have someone play drums, another one picks up their trumpet and maybe let someone else play the piano and the sound will naturally come together.
I really suck at mixing and try to do as little EQ und as possible, which leads me to the following uninformed opinions based on my humble
experience:
The 808 and 808 probably sit well in the mix because they shaped so many styles of music but here is more to it. A synth that repeats a waveform in quick cycles will overshadow an acoustic tone that has a timbre that changes over time and therefore is less noticeable. Some synths sound weak but lots of great music is made with instruments I have scoffed at so Iām not winning.
Moogs sound great imo. Never felt any issue with the so called fit in a mix. Itās like saying itās an issue that it sounds fat. Imo itās much easier to subtract than to add in a mix. I donāt get why a little EQ on an instrument would be a bad thing
Iāve heard people say that something sits in a mix well, where something else doesnāt and like, I donāt think that makes any sense unless youāre just talking about presets. And even then it would vary preset to preset and mix to mix. What sits well in a techno mix isnāt necessarily fit well with extreme metal.
I could see that, for example, one keyboard really fits well with a particular drum machine, but even then if you change the patch, itās gonna be different.
At the end of the day, it seems like this comes down to EQ and not drowning things in effects
I find digital easier to mix than analogue.
Iāve said this before but Jomox Alpha Base is phenomenal on this front. Sits in a mix with basically zero effort nearly every time. Itās pretty remarkable tbh.
This is what I feel tooā¦ right or wrong.
The way I hear people talk about it, itās not about good or bad, itās an observation that some synths are easier to mix for them while others are harder to mix and the patterns that emerge when many people share their experience.
It really does depend on context by definition.
If you have a very full mix and want to add a lead sound then a thin sound is going to be āeasierā to fit in as it will not overlap with other elements.
In a very minimal mix a thick sound might work to fill the empty space.
Every instrument can be made to sound thicker or thinner. And some are a bit better at the thinner than thicker and vice versa.
If someone says it is hard to fit an instrument in the mix, that actually means either the mix is wrong or the patch is not made to fit within the mix.
So praising a synth for fitting in the mix is a strange thing to say.
Given context, I also make deliberate choices about what instrument might dit best. However I could make any instrument fit, especially using some oost production mixing tools.
Also, everyone has preferences for certain types of music. And when that involves busy mixed it would be logical if that person states that some thinner sounding instrument is fitting better in the mix. What he actually means is that that instrument fits better in his music and that it isnt a general truth by definition