Mixing Music
Mixing audio tutorials for music are here as well as other sound mixing information.
Mixing music is as much an art as it is a science - TheWhippinpost demystifies the science, so you can express your art.
If you're concentrating on a song-part for too long, your ears become quickly tired. You will sit there, and you will think: '...nah'; and you will convince yourself everything is fine. But what you've probably done in fact, is over-compensate without realising.
Native Instruments Traktor DJ Studio 2.6 is out and it wants to bring you out too!
No don't worry, we don't mean out of the closet, we mean into the real world of live performances... and big time!
In Part 2 we looked at how to "isolate" sounds when mixing drums so we can pick out instruments like the snare and hi-hats for EQ'ing.
In this final part of the mixing music interview series, Rick goes on to explain in more detail how he'd mix the kick drum, snare drum, hi-hat and vocals within an hip-hop track.
Here we talk about mixing drums in Cubase, covering the bass drum (kick drum), snare drum and hi-hats.
We also touch on "isolating sounds" using the Cubase EQ mixing panel to boost or cut and there's also some tips for avoiding a "muddy" mix sound production.
If you listen to The Prodigy or Oasis, chances are that you've already been musically touched by our guest music-mixing sound engineer to the stars, Rick Snoman.This page is a brief profile of one of the UK's leading sound engineers.
So you've got your phat tune down and you've got your audio mix to perfection, but it still doesn't quite have the same sparkle and life as the commercial songs in your CD collection... it's time to master your song.
Compression is all about controlling the peaks and troughs (dynamics) that occur in your mix when, for instance, the quieter vocal moments are drowned out by the guitarist during recording and/or playback. In a nutshell, it squashes the loudest peaks and boosts the quieter troughs, meaning you can up the overall track volume to get that extra punch.
... another technique: just punch the guitarist!
Yes, we have the pleasure this day of an exclusive interview with Rick Snoman, sound engineer to the stars, discussing the tricky subject of mixing music and getting that right professional sounding mix.
