My house track - could anyone give me mixing help?

Elektronauts Our Music
21

Just had a listen…

Nice track! The mix is pretty good actually, doesn’t sound too muddy on my cans.

Where it needs work (and this is just my opinion of course), is the arrangement.

Think about what the focus is at each point of the track. A track is like a journey.

You’ve got a lot of good parts going on. If they play for too long, or there are too many at one time though, the ear loses focus. I would strip it down a bit. Make it far more sparse early on.

Tease little snippets of bits that come in more fully later. Filter stuff up and down. Let some stuff simmer and then cook that shit later.

Just more experience arranging needed, to get the most out of the track. A lot of good parts there!

3 Likes
22

Sounds alright to me, especially for someone describing themself as an amateur.

I’m no expert, if anything my mixes are still pretty shit, but I’ve mixed enough tracks now that I know the sort of sound I’m going for and I more or less know how to get there. And that’s all mixing is really.

Be careful of too many dos and don’ts. The key to finding a good mix is to experiment loads and fuck shit up loads until you gain enough confidence and belief in your abilities that you can say “here’s my track, it’s awesome” instead of “here’s my track, is it shit?”. Because in reality, if you are happy with your work and present it with confidence, who’s to tell you your mix is shit?

Also, always listen to your tracks in your car for reference. If I can make a track sound good in my car, I can make it sound good in the back of an Irish pub on a Tuesday night.

7 Likes
23

I think i was able to replicate your experience by comparing the mix on my sennheiser 560s(super flat, open back headphones in a similar range as the Beyerdynamics) as well some more “colorful” bluetooth headphones that I use when I’m doing chores. Sounds like there’s a ton of sub-100Hz info in both the kick and bass. I would shorten the release on the kick and maybe gently high pass both of them get them to playing a little more nicely. You could also try a different kick sample that’s less boomy and more thuddy(lol sorry). Think more 909 beef instead of decaying 808

1 Like
24

Ah, so this is the sort of thing I’m missing. Right now this is a bit of a foreign language to me - I don’t even know how I’d go about implementing what you say - but hopefully that’s just a case of learning some mixing skills (someone further up suggested a useful YT channel). And thanks for the kind words. Yeah my track is rather tensionless and I take your point, though I was aiming for something in the mould of Terry Lee Brown Jr., whose tracks just seem to glide, effortlessly, often without tension (though mine ended up being a bit funkier.)

@White_Noise thanks for the really helpful tips there, particularly re: clicking kicks and doubled-up bass. I’ll definitely be implementing that.

@Phillip this whole thing about keeping things mono or stereo at certain frequencies - presumably that’s not something I’d control on the DT, but in post, presumably by exporting it via Overbridge and then adjusting certain tracks to mono, or am I way off?

100% So grateful to you guys for all this stellar help, and really appreciate those tips. Makes perfect sense re: sounds competing for space. Much more potential for things to get muddy when they do. As for comparing yourself with others, I should know that. I follow a philosopher called Krishnamurti who always said comparison with others was a big part of human problems.

Appreciate the feedback! That seems sound advice. Still fairly new to this; I come from a classical background so I have my music theory down, but actual composing (and arrangement as a subsidiary of that) is where I need to improve. I went through a lot of decisions as to what played during what and when, but listening back I can hear that it could be more sparse. I suppose you always try a bit too hard in the early days. The ambient crowd noise sample in particular is probably over-used.

Love this. It’s easy to be overawed on a place like Elektronauts where, if you post something, you know it’s going to be heard by people who can do so much better than you and spot all the flaws, but continuinity breeds confidence. This track is already quite a bit better than my earliest efforts. (Sidenote: I’m a professional web developer; my first ever website was luminous purple and yellow, and must have actually made your eyes bleed. Progression, progression!)

(Takes notes: Progression = car to Irish pub - got it :laughing:) Yeah I didn’t think to test this in the car. That’s something that’s now on my to-do list for today.

More really helpful advice - thank you. When I made the track I didn’t even give thought to how different kicks (or snares, hats, whatever) would affect the mix. I think I thought any kick/snare/hat would work in any mix.

25

In regards to the question you tagged me in: yes it would be something you take care in post when you export your multitrack into the daw. No it would not be making the entire track mono, but a range of frequencies within those tracks, if you want to play it safe and make things mono under 100Hz like a lot of people say to do. Which you should when you’re only starting to mix but at some point you’ll stop doing when you know what you’re doing :nerd_face:

By the way regarding something you mentioned earlier: audacity is not a daw but an audio editor. Just FYI :blush:

1 Like
26

Yeah, that’s not the case - although it often sounds like it, perceptually.

Imagine a kick that for some reason is a pure sine wave at 40hz. No high harmonics or click, just that fundamental tone. If you have a speaker that sucks at low end - say, a mobile phone speaker, a small Bluetooth speaker (and it’s not because they are bad, it’s because they physically aren’t large enough to deal with stuff that low; the wavelength of a 40hz sine is a bit over 2 metres) - you’re not going to hear much. The same kick with a bit of click, or harmonic richness - noise, say: you will hear more of the high end on a crap device, but you’ll now also know this there.

If you’ve even been in a place with someone listening to dance music on a phone and it sounds… passable… a lot of what feels like “low end” still has a bunch of higher information in. It still sounds better on a good sound system, it just doesn’t disappear on a bad one.

So sound design and choice is part of this. (I am convinced that some of the “sound” of a lot of EDM in the last 15 years is because it sounds good on crap speakers as well as clubs)

I’ll also be honest about “how bedroom producers sound like this”: mixing is a per-track thing, and a lot of bedroom producers, esp in things like house, are working entirely in software where this is borderline free, processor-wise. Not many of those tracks are the raw stereo out of a single box run through light mastering.

(I know many people on this forum make a lot on nothing but hardware, but live sound and mixed sound aren’t quite the same vibe, and a lot of people are still recording and mixing in multi track).

So 1) yeah, for the sound you’re interested in, more detailed per-track mixing might be good. But you can also get a long way with sound design tweaks, and that Base/Width filter is ideal for thinking of as a “place in the mix” tool.

You might also find engaging in stereo mastering, possibly with an engineer, an interesting exercise.

and 2) at the same time, this isn’t a numbers game. It’s a what-it-sounds-like game. You’re not mixing in Excel. So some of the work will be building experience. Sit down with tracks you like and just listen, in great detail. Why do they work? What’s special about that kick? What can you hear? How could you copy it with what you’ve got? And then listening and fiddling til you like your own things.

Sound is quite relative: you have to adjust what you’ve got til it sounds how you like, which means you can’t just set your mixing and processing chain to the same numbers and be done.

See, lots of words to say ‘it depends’. As you build experience, you’ll go faster from “I need to change something about the kick” to “here are the settings/adjustments I should make”. But you’ll always be ping-ponging between the land of listening/aesthetics/vibes and numbers/faders. Over time, you just ping-pong faster.

4 Likes
27

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide that detailed help. That’s gold for someone in my position right now.

I’ve been listening to house/electronic a long time but only recently started to do as you suggest and really listen to it from a producer’s perspective, with an ear for which hat they chose and why, etc.

As an example my current track-of-the-moment is this. I’ve just relistened to it on tinny laptop speakers and you’re right, it still sounds passable - almost everything is audible, which, as you and others have said, presumably means most stuff had a HPF added.

But then this track sounds great everywhere to me. That’s the difference, I guess.

Could I trouble you to elaborate on this? I found this interesting. Are you saying that a lot of producers get plugins to automate this stuff within a DAW, or am I misunderstanding?

It also got me thinking about live sets. I’ve watched lots of people like Henry Saiz and David August playing live (awesome example) - not just DJ’ing but also playing synths and drum machines. How is it that these sets sound perfect (at least to me) if there’s no post-production i.e. mixing/mastering going on, they’re just playing?

Continued thanks to everyone - could never expected all this help.

28

Def this.

The other big one is, having too many ideas for one track. It’s tempting to put all your ideas in, but often its better to be ruthless and delete the weakest riffs etc. Save something for the next track!

4 Likes
29

  1. Careful choices in sound design, and composition, avoiding overlap etc.

  2. Probably running through some sort of mastering chain/box.

30

Don’t forget to do it on the FXs too. Each FX has a Filter to work with.

It’s funny that you mentioned David August. I saw him Live in Montreal for his Album D’Angelo and me and my friend (a Sound man) thought that it sounded awful. Was it the Sound man’s fault? Probably. I got out of the show disappointed. Poor David. The Album D’Angelo sounds fantastic.

31

All I mean is: until you run out of CPU, the cost of adding another multi-band compressor to a channel is dragging it onto a mix channel, and most DAWs come with good-enough mixing tools built in. (Eg: Ableton’s EQ8 parametric EQ, compressor, glue compressor, and multi-band splitter are all fine).

Want to run a different EQ on hats to kick? No worries, drag it in. As opposed to: try not to run out of jack cables or rack mount boxes… or features (eg: two filters in a Digitakt) on the device you’re using. That’s all. The cost for experimenting is low (even if many producers often use way more plugins than necessary to achieve a sound, who cares, the record is what matters).

32

Got it, thank you. I’ve never actually used a DAW so that whole world still awaits me and hence much of the terminology is a little alien to me. Right now I just make stuff on the DT and export and hope it sounds passable!

1 Like
33

Welcome to the mixing journey!

If you’re unsure where to start, use an eq on a main instrument, like the chords, with a bell and wide Q with maybe -3 dBs. Close your eyes and slowly go through the frequencies, and try to listen to everything but the track you’re eqing. You’ll hear how the track becomes more open, darker or lighter etc. You’ll hopefully find something that sounds better.

On the top off my head I’d recommend checking the mids on chords, voice(hey i think they’re saying?), horns and the reverberated sample. Placing emphasis (eqing the other elements down, or boosting one instrument, in one area) on lo mid frequencies on the chords, hi mids on the “hey” sample etc. Possibly some extra width somewhere!

I find, personally, that if I get the mids right, the rest comes a lot easier.

Overdoing it can create a dull mix though, so I like to save a copy after each mixing session, and retaining the original as is. Also, don’t worry about mixing plugins yet, imo it’s fun for coloration but not necessary for creating a good mix.

As for headphone stuff, it is very hard to listen through one pair of headphones or speakers and have it sound good everywhere. Easiest thing to do is to switch between your headphones, or just as many sound sources as possible.
And if you’re going headphones only, remember to take brakes! Too multi-hour sessions will probably get you tinnitus, like it did to me.

34

not really. It means that everything that is “low” - bass, kicks, etc - has some kind of non-low component. A high/quick transient; some snap or noise or click. They might still mainly be low, but they have non-low components (“higher harmonic content”) and that makes it stick out elsewhere.

Listening to the Kevin Yost, both the four-on-the-floor kick and the bassline have something going on midrange as well as low. You get less of the low on the laptop, but the higher end draws your attention. The HPF/low cut will be all over the mid and high tracks - that piano/keys riff sounds quite middy, but I am pretty sure there’s nothing going on its low end; make space for the kick and bass!

But that’s also all in the composition: what’s low is the main kick, the off-beat kick (which has way less top, much lower, works as ‘rumble’ rather than ‘thump’) and the bass. Hats, claps, vocals, synths, effects, all spread throughout mid-to-top.

35

Just my 2 cents, this sounds fine on my phone over here.

Kevin Yost is a good person to reference against. His Wanna Dance is in my references list FWIW.

I try to remind myself that the journey is the destination, visualize tubing down a breezy river and float on…

1 Like
36

Poor David indeed. Didn’t know he had an album out - definitely going to check that out. His Boiler Room set is one of my favourite sets ever.

Thanks for all that great advice. Re: headphones, yeah, this is the one thing I’m still a bit confused about: what’s the point of my expensive mixing headphones if actually I could just mix on the (decent) IEMs I listen to everything else on, and besides we have reference tracks to use too? Just not sure what the point of mixing on the Bayerdynamics is, only to then take it into a DAW and drastically change everything. But I’m obviously missing something. Perhaps I just need to accoustically treat the room I’m in and use monitors.

Thanks for the breakdown analysis of that track, that’s super helpful. I’m listening to that track a lot now and trying to pick out the things you and others have said. This is opening up a whole new world I never considered before.

Ah I picked a good producer, then - pure chance, as it just happened to be my song of the moment (it’s in Danny Tenaglia’s excellent Global Underground 45.) I’ll check out the other track you mention.

37

D’Angelo came out in 2018. Great Album.

38

hmm, well, I guess it sort of depends what your aims are?

has anyone ever made anything with a Digitakt (or less!) and then just taken a bounce of the master and released it and it sounded good, and people danced? Yes!

but…

could they most likely have improved the mix by exporting into a DAW or running it through a desk? Also yes!

you’re getting way more options in a DAW (compressor per track, reverb and delay per track, the ability to easily double things, stereo tools, send fx per track - a lot of things the DT can’t do…)

you can of course just make tracks in the DT and call them finished - but equally, you can write the track, bounce the parts and do loads of mixing work in a DAW after that.

1 Like
39

Interesting. So in this regard, is the DT (or any similar) box really more of a scratch pad, the idea being you shouldn’t expect it to sound perfect, or the finished article, when listening back on the DT, but merely a rough first draft of what will later be finessed in a DAW?

40

The idea is too busy, not the mix. I think you added too many sounds that overlap and don’t really give each other space.

This is more about producing a lot more tracks and with that experience you will get much better.

1 Like