Mixing Guide Volume 1 Equalisation

Make sure you understand how to read a Spectrum Analyser or else the below is of no use to you. Human ears can hear frequencies between 20hz to 20khz. A3 on a Piano generates 440Hz. A4 is double. I.e. 880hz and A2 is half - 220Hz. If you want to increase the volume of a sound twice, you need to increase the dB by 10dB. To double the sound pressure, that is 6dB and to double the acoustic power, its 3db. If you have elements that are in red dB (+dB or above 0dB), dont worry about it too much. Having the highest peak of the master channel at 0dB. Hitting +1dB or +2dB shouldnt affect the sonic degradation of the track.Always run a loop thrice to get the most accurate reading of the highest peak in dB. Set the ceiling of your master output or Limiter to -0.03 so there is enough headroom for certain elements to bounce. To get the perfect balance between the kick and the bass, you can do that using EQ. This is the 1st thing you need to get right before you start adding more drums and melodies to the track. Low Shelf (bass control) setup is best to use from the EQ to lower or boost the bass. If you have never heard of EJECA, you must. He has one of the fattest baselines and this is how he does it. So in technical terms Have one EQ active, set it at 80hz and low or high cut. Finally make sure the Q Knob is around 6:15. Low cut filter is good to cut the low ends. Usually I cut all the low ends of most of the drums that dont need to have a low end (snare drums, claps, hi hats etc). This process is called creating space. I like my drums to do its magic between 440hz to 20khz, thats from a Tom to a hihat. If I want the Toms to be heavy, then I add a bass layer to it and I make sure it does not collide with the main bass of the track. To be safe, I will sidechain the Tom bass to the main bass. Whatever setting fits the purpose. These days you find in house tracks that the clap is a bit offbeat so it slaps nicely in a loop. I like to put my claps totally offbeat just like the disco producers use to do it, I love it when the clap totally chops off the kick to rule the moment. The Bell Curve in an EQ is perfect if you want to focus on one sound. Two synths that have similar frequency content would benefit from the usage of parametric chops/boosts here and there to separate them. This can be very helpful to achieve a balanced mix. The Notch (this is placed to the right of the bell curve in Ableton EQ curve is good when you want an even narrower chop. This is stronger for cutting narrow frequencies. High Shelf in an EQ is used for treble control. I set mine up between 10khz to 12khz to get my high frequency drums and white noise have that crisp sound, not screaming too loud which may distort in clubs. Push them out of the mix and allow the ambience to fill the environment. Be careful White noise is a very rich texture sonically. If you boost it, you might need to roll off some of the high frequencies around 17khz. You can do this us ing the high cut in the EQ. Digital frequencies tend to distort unpleasantly when boosted by a large amount so be gentle with the EQ. If you love noise sweeps, there are few things to keep in mind. Noise has energy across the board from 20hz to 20khz. Using low cut gives you a sharper white noise sweep mainly used when making riser (uplifter) and using a high cut gives you a fatter white noise mainly used in downlifters or impacts. Luke used to give me shit because my kicks sounded like Toms when I first started. How do you get that fat kick? Ok so the trick is that you layer 3 kicks. One used for the low end, one for the mids and one for the highs. Some kicks lack a tight click, this is another reason why you layer them. Even hi hats or cowbells can be layered with kicks to add extra clarity. Use Hi Cut EQ for the low end kick so

only the bass remains. Use Bell Shape EQ for the mids so only the mid part remains to fill in and use the Low cut EQ to create the high kick (click). Now you have a complete package of a kick. If you think the whole track lacks something, adding a pad does make the difference. Pads where designed to fill the musical gaps in a track. Always try to use a pad. It is easier to mix a track if everything is set on Mo no. Kick, snare drums and clap must be in Mono. Its important to keep the 1st 150Hz or so of the drums or synth bass in mono. Panning can allow two sounds that occupy similar frequency ranges to co -exist. For example, a tambourine and shaker will usually sound better panned at opposite sides than if they were straight down the middle.

Mixing Guide Volume 2 Dynamics

When I say Dynamics you say? COMPRESSION. Thats right. In this volume we will focus on the dynamics when mixing and that is achieved by compression (mostly). It is one of the most mysterious subjects in the music production around the world. I always get asked on Twitter Explain to me compression but I am afraid I cant do that using 140 characters. Below is the simplest form I could explain not only what is compression but how it works and how you can use it best. To understand Compression you dont need a PHD in Compression. Lets keep it simple and ask ourselves When we think of Compression what other words come in mind? For me they would be Squash, Crush and Flatten. A Compressors jobs is to reduce a sounds dynamic range. The dynamic range of a sound is the difference between the quietest and the loudest moments (signal level). If you want a more 'even level' overall, you squash the highest signal down using a compressor and how much you squash it is up to you. Just like LBL suggests, follow an already made track which should guide you in achieving a pro track There are two important controls you need to know in a compressor. Threshold and Ratio. Some tweak the threshold first and then the ratio and some to do it the other way. There is no right way. In fact a combination of both works best for me. Threshold is shown in negative dB on a compressor (-dB). You can set it anywhere you like. I always follow your ears and settle with what sounds best. Once the signal level goes above the threshold point, the volume is reduced. The amount (how much) is reduced is determined by the ratio function. This is how the compressor does the job of closing the gap between the quietest and the loudest frequency within an element or the whole track. If the ratio in a compressor is set at 10.1 then it basically becomes a Limiter. Usually a limiter is used on the master channel to stop the signal going above zero dB. When you give your track to mastering, usually the engineer will ask you to remove the limiter and reduce the highest peak of the track to 5dB. This gives him enough room to master it. But you should use it when making your tracks. Limiter is your mastering effort that makes the track ready as a demo so you can start label shopping. If you feel that the compression has reduced the overall energy or voulme of a sound, thats when you use the make up function in a compressor. In Ableton 9, it is available in the Glue Compressor. It basically pumps the volume up so its loud enough a nd still doing the compression job (compensating for the loss). I always get asked how we can achieve that loud, polished, glued and fat sound? Well this is one of the key tricks to get that sound. Vocals Most vocals need compression to keep the levels even. Bringing down the peaks mean you can make the average signal level higher. Typically a ratio between 4:1 and 6:1 works best for me. Kick Kick is GOD in the Laidback Luke world. Compressing the overheads of a kick will bring the big room sound back. We will talk about the kick a bit more later in this volume. Attack and Release These determine how quickly compression takes place once it goes above the threshold and how long does it take for the signal to come back to normal. To reduce the transients, go for a fast attack (below 10ms) and to increase the energy, go for a slower attack (somewhere around 50ms). So in plain English If you want to reduce the punch go for a slower attack and if you want to increase the punch, go for a fast attack. As of the release, keep it short for club music, It will keep the kick pumping and breathing. Too long release will result in less energy overall. What I do is I set the release to 500ms and then keep reducing it until you are happy with the energy flow. Knee Usually there is soft knee and hard knee concept. Hard knee is visually seen as a bent line

in the spectrum of the compressor and soft knee looks like a curved line. If you want a smooth and natural compression, go for soft knee. If you are after a much precise and accurate compression which I use on my white not to give the kick a groove, then go for the hard knee concept. Envelopes (Peak Vs RMS Vs OPTO) This determines the analysis of the volume coming in the compressor. Peak is precise and accurate. Its perfect for high energy sound. RMS averages the level coming in. Its used when you want to have a smoother and more natural response to the signal. OPTO gives you a fast release and it slows down when the signal returns to the threshold creating a splash which is a good filler in a mix. In simple English, it adds to the warmth of the mix. Before you ask me the question Should I apply the EQ first or the Compressor first?, Let me answer it. Lets say you have a bass that needs a fatter low end, you apply EQ and boost its low end. If you add the compressor after it (feeding the EQ signal through the compressor), the compressor reacts to the loudest signal peaks. This is not good because the compressor will try to cut the boost that we just applied on the Bass. Conclusion You are better off applying the compressor first and then the EQ. Compression models In Ableton you have FF1, FF2 and FB. FF1 and FF2 are both feed forward models which analyse the loudness of the incoming signal. Feed Forward compressors are more accurate. FB is a feedback model, it analyses the output of the device and then self adjusts its compression behavior. Because FB analyses signals that are already compressed, they are not precise but generally results in a much smoother sound with less overall gain reduction. It also reduces the chances of the signal to distort. Use it if its a new thing to you, it might add a new flavor to your mix that you might enjoy. Lets talk about the KICK again Most kicks are fine, they dont need too much compression but let me excite you about an experiment you might want to explore. Compressing a kick with a slow attack can bring out the transient of the kick to add some heavyweight punch to the sound. This is what you typically hear from a track done by GUTA (check him out, he is god) or Chocolate Puma. Compressing a kick with a fast attack and fast release gives you that click sound as most kicks have. This is a technique I apply when I am layering my kicks. The bottom and mid kicks get a slow attack treatment and the high kick gets a fast attack treatment. I talked about this in Volume 1 so go back and read that if you want to understand more about layering kicks. Synth compression Synth sounds can be controlled by their envelopes. But still, having a bit of compression on it gives it that extra special feeling. Experiment with the above suggestions on all functions to get the synth sound you want. Think different and out of the box. Compression on LFO Wobbles Usually these sounds have a fast fluctuating signal. With compression you can try to make the ends meet adding a bit of texture to the overall mix. Dont over do it and in this instance, apply the EQ before the compressor. Limiter I dont have much to say on this. Laidback Luke has taught me to apply the Limiter in the master channel before I start working on a project. It makes the mastering job easy or half done. Keep it at zero. However, if you need a bit more I dont mind setting the limiter to 1 or 2 dB. I dont apply limiters to one element in a mix. I usually just apply it on the master. However, if I find a group thats volume is higher than other elements in the mix, I will try to put a limiter on the group to bring its volume lower. I do this when I am lazy otherwise I apply a compressor on the group and treat it with love. Its okay to be lazy.. HAVE FUN. Gate Gate is designed to keep the bad stuff away from the mix. Gate is not a hard compression technique that you can use when you are lazy. In fact, gating is the opposite of compression. Any signal that is above above the threshold will be heared and anything below is chopped out. It is used for cleaning up an audio signal. If I am working on a vocal that has a slight noise in it, I apply a gate so I can only hear the singing part and the noise are chopped by the gate. If you feel the gate is too harsh, use the sidechain feature in the gate itself. It chops the sound in a rhythmic fashion. Sidechaining When you are listening to someone on the radio. You will notice that when they speak,

the music volume reduces and when they stop it comes back to normal. This is achieved by applying a sidechain on the music and directed to the vocals (input is set to the vocal channel). In dance music usually most of the elements are sidechained to the kick. There is not much to add here but I would like to say that sidechaining is a basic thing that everyone uses. To me its about making sure nothing interrupts the kick when the kick plays so Sidechaining almost everything to the kick means you have a nice groove going as when the kick is played rest of the elements are slightly quieter and when the kick disappears everything comes back to light. I would like to conclude not saying that the above should be your bible on dynamics and compression but I would like to grow a seed in your mind and that is - do I need to compress a sound every time or do I need to compress everything? Every time you think of using a compressor with an objective, think about enhancing the sound without using the compressor. By increasing the volume or the envelope volume on the envelope or adding a reverb or a delay, does that make it better?. Ask yourself before you use it. This takes you to that next level and builds that confidence in you to be creative. You may not need it all the time. Sometimes it is fun to just follow your ears and make stuff that you enjoy. Forget the A&R managers and the labels because I learnt an important lesson from my friends Chocolate Puma and that is have fun in making music and after that I have enjoyed making music more than anything else. There is a lot of debate out, for and against using compression overall or on specific elements but I say it is an important part of production and you should use it to keep your mix dynamic between the highest and the lowest peak in your mix.

Mixing Guide Volume 3: Effects

Lets get started with Session 3 then. It is very easy to over use effects and kill the lifelines of a mix if you dont know how to use it or understand the maths behind how they operate. Intelligent usage of effects add a new dimension of rhythm to your track. If you use effects, you have a choice. You can either insert them in a channel or use them through the send and return channels. Usually one would insert a effect to a channel would be because they want to alter the sound of that channel only. Most common ones would be - Distortion, Compressors, Limiters, Filter, EQ and Modulation FX. While in send items you only apply Reverb, Delay and Modulation FX plug-ins and the reason you do that is because the primary use of the send and return channel is to sweeten up the mix. You choose how much signal you want to feed into the return channels by using the send on an individual channel. Then you can adjust how much of the return effects to be blended in the master channel. There are thousands of combinations you can try so have a play around. You can group your effects and save them. This is a great way to create great a template of all your favorite effects for drums, bass, synths etc. So this makes it easy for you to access them. At the same time you also need to ensure you are not using the same template for 5 years. Keep it fresh. Always keep an eye for new plugins. Follow Waves Audio and Universal Audio Newsletters. They are leaders of coming up with analogue designed mixing and mastering plugins. I often talk about Ambience in a mix. Its having certain elements in the track create an after effect in the background that remain as fillers in the mix and sometimes we call that as the warmth of the track. Yes I am talking about Reverb, the most used and abused effect while mixing. Using a digital reverb is the art of creating a virtual of a sound or the overall mix. Lets look at the parameters of reverb from Ableton Live 9; Input Processing - This is the first place to start when working on a reverb. The input signal passes through this. The low cut and high cut filters allows you to adjust the tone of the signal coming through the reverb. The pre-delay function determines the amount of time it takes to reach the first reflective surface. If you are aiming for a natural reverb use a pre-delay between 1ms and 25ms. Early Reflections - After a sound has bounced off the wall, the earliest echoes that you hear before the actual reverb tail are known as early reflections. This very important, it determines a rooms sonic character. The shape feature allows you to improve the sources clarity so try to have it as high that suits the mix best. The spin control applies chorus type modulation to the early reflectors. Global Settings - Under quality you can choose eco, mid and high. Higher is recommended choice but it will put stress on the performance of your laptop. The size defines the size of your reverb. The stereo adjust the width of your reverb. If you have it on zero then its in Mono . Diffusion Network - This part creates the reverberant tail that follows the early reflections. Hi Shelf/

Lo Shelf allows you to fine tune the frequencies. Decay Time is the time it takes for the reflection to die out. If it said at 2 seconds then it takes 2 seconds for the sound to die out. Freeze is a great feature, it allows you to freeze the decay sound indefinitely. Density and scale determine how many reflections will occur. With high density and scale you are upping the sound bouncing in the room. If you want to thicken the reverb sound then you use the Chorus spectrum. Output - The output area has three settings. Two volume controls and a dry/wet knob. You have a volume control for early reflections and for diffusion network and the dry/wet mix determines the balance at the bottom. Some sub genres of Trance and some Deep House flavors run keyboard stabs through a generous dose of Reverb with a long decay. This creates a spacious and futuristic wash of sound from the musical elements, blurring the sound together in an almost 'pad' like fashion. The reverse reverb technique is one of the most basic ones we use while building a reverb. You can play with the settings to make it sound as you prefer but the trick here is with the decay time. You can increase the decay time up to 7 seconds until you get closer to the drop and then you suddenly drop it down. Gives extra texture to your build ups. Usually builds sound empty because they dont have enough elements in there and some do the mistake of adding too much drums but actually enhancing the current sounds that exist with simple basic concepts. Reverb on Drums - To get the most from using Reverb on drums make sure you separate tracks for all of the individual elements. Dont use multiple drums in impulse. Otherwise you wont be able to treat each drum sound separately. This makes mixing hard. - Dont use reverb on the Drum Group Channel. It will make your mix messy. If you do add reverb to the drums groups, try sidechaining the reverb return with the kick drum for a nice pumping effect. - Clap samples that do not already have reverb or noise based claps with short decays can sound great with Reverb added but equally they can work very well dry if you are after a 'tight' sound. - Snare samples without reverb and synthesized snares with short decays can sometimes benefit from a slight amount of reverb but are often dry. - If your hats feel like they need some extra sonic interest a short reverb can work nicely - avoid long pre-delays. - Toms can sound messy with long reverb but some could benefit from some extra space. Usually if you put reverb on the toms you should use it sparsely in the rest of the kit. - Rimshots and other block sounds can all benefit from reverb.. sometimes a long reverb tail can work as a nice contrast. Reverb on Bass - Reverb on bass is not usually recommended but it can work to help a bass sound more 'effected' as some people like these days. If you do use it make sure you roll off the lows in the reverb signal (a low cut of about 150Hz should work nicely here) If you do add reverb to the bass consider also adding another effect to the chain on the reverb return. A delay with a low feedback followed by some modulation FX can create a nice bouncing texture to fill in the gaps if that's what is needed. I- f your bass pattern is very simple try resampling it through a reverb and reverse the audio clip to fill in the gaps this can work for futuristic styles such as minimal/tech house.

- For some added drama use automation occasionally to send bursts of reverb on certain bass notes when the structure is stripped down. (be creative). Reverb on Synth - Often a synth will sound too naked without reverb so a dash of space can work very nicely. This could be short or long, bright or dark depending on the other elements in the mix. - Deep house or Trance synths can often have long reverb tails several seconds long. Be careful with other elements in the mix if so as the stage might feel cluttered and lacking in energy. Thats it on the reverb. Now you have the basics and some ideas on how you can use it. I hope you realize how big of a tool this is. Next we will focus on Delay. First we look at simple delay - it is a sampled copy of the original sound. You have three parameters that you need to know; Delay Time - This is the time between the repeats and is usually tempo synchronized. Feedback - This sets how many repeats or echoes will occur, the lowest setting giving just one. Filter - Most delays will offer a way to change the tone of the repeats. These can offer further potential for creative delay usage. Second we look at Ping Pong delay - This is used to fill in the space in the mix. Apply them on individual channels and see what suits you. I usually use these on my keys so they have a nice echo effect so to speak. Adds an interesting rhythm. The other interesting technique I would like to mention is ducking. Usually when you apply a delay over the whole vocals, it will sound too messy. The solution is you create a ducking delay where the delay is heard when the vocal stops. The way to do this is by using a compressor with a sidechain in from the original vocal channel to the return channel after the delay. That is all on the delay. Modulation Effects is really important if you want that loud Dyro or R3hab sound. They basically add movement to a static sound. They all have something in common - that they are based on a delayed copy of the original sound in conjunction with an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) to create the movement. Lets explore this; Chorus - Much as a choir is a collection of voices, a chorus is a tool for adding additional voices or 'richness' to the source sound. Flanger - The Flanger is very similar to the chorus but with a different delay time range and the addition of a Feedback control to send the signal back into itself. Phaser - The Phaser has a delayed copy of the sound but this time with LFO modulation occurring on a notch filter that is sweeping up and down a defined frequency range. This creates a more 'whooshy' sound than the flanger and chorus. Thats modulation. Try them out and see what suits you best and try taking preset sounds from plug -ins like Monark by Native Instruments and add phaser or any other modulation effect and see how you can change that sound to something that can become your signature sound.

Time for Distortion - Distortion isn't just for Electric Guitars - it's for whenever your sound needs a little more 'bite' In a nutshell, distortion adds harmonics to the original source sound and can turn a pure sine wave into something far angrier. Bitcrusher plugin AKA Redux is a versatile distortion effect that can be used to make sounds have a 'vintage' sampler flavor. Try it if you havent yet. Its fun. So this is Volume 3. All about effects, the ones that you need in every mix. There are almost limitless possibilities presented by chaining effects together. Understanding what each effect brings to the table enables you to visualize each element in your signal path chain and with time you'll be creating your very own custom settings to use in your projects. It could be said that the usage of effects is what defines your sound. So try these if not. I guess the purpose of this is to give you the basic idea of what is what and how powerful it is, give you a quick understanding of each knob or function and the maths behind it. Once you understand the concepts, you are ready to be creative.