Preparing A Song For Mixing - An In-Depth Guide - THE CURIOUS MIXER

5/8/2020 Preparing a Song for Mixing: An In-Depth Guide - THE CURIOUS MIXER
Preparing a Song for Mixing:

An In-Depth Guide
Wr i t t e n b y C i a n M c I n t y re
M a rc h 2 2 , 2 0 2 0

Audio Engineering

Preparing a song for mixing is just as important as mixing the song itself. Without
laying the proper groundwork for mixing a song, you’ll be struggling just to get the
fundamentals right. In this guide, I’m going to tell you exactly what to do to make
sure you can enter song mixing comfortably, confidently, and already well on your
way to producing an awesome song.
https://www.thecuriousmixer.com/preparing-a-song-to-be-mixed/ 1/19
As you should already be aware, the most essential preparation for mixing actually
takes place during recording. A mistake many home music producers make is
thinking that it’s okay to fix it in the mix. Fixes in the mix are for when there is no
other option. If you can fix it in the recording, then you need to do that no matter
how painstaking it may be. By the time you are ready to move on to mix prep you
should already have a recording that is clean, clear, and above all makes you
excited.
If you are struggling to get good recordings you should worry about this article later.
I’ve written an article to help you with recording, linked here, Home Music
Recording- The 7 Best tips. The following article assumes you already know how to
make a kick ass recording, and that you are working with one.
PREPARING FOR MIX

PREP
It’s important for you take some time after recording (at least a day) before you jump
into this phase. Your ears really need to be fresh and unbiased when you are
preparing a song for mixing I’ve talked about the different hats you’ll need to wear
while you are producing music at home, and also why you need to take breaks in
between, in another article. I have linked it here for your reference, Mixing a Song:
How To Do It and Why It’s Done.
Taking from the recently mentioned article, at this point you’ll be acting as the
assistant mixing engineer. If you aren’t sure what I mean, you might want to read
the other article first before you dive into these details. Before you actually start
doing timing tuning and editing, you need to do some cleanup. Make sure your
tracks are well organized. They should be colored, well-labeled, and packed into
appropriate folders. It’s also a good idea to mark the song sections in your timeline.
Arrangement
While marking your sections you need to be thinking about the arrangement. How
your song builds as it progresses will be something that either makes it or breaks it.
If you know nothing about proper song arrangement, then you need to forget about
both recording and mixing until you do. I’ve written an article about song structure
that you need to read first. I’ve linked it here, Song Structure for Home Music
Production.
Comping
A solid recording should also have several different takes on at least the lead
vocals. This is the point where you will grab the best sections and piece them
together. This is an opportunity for you to be very creative and unique during while
preparing a song for mixing. How the vocals blend with the rest of the song will
have a major impact on the listener. Do not take this comping lightly.
PREPARING A SONG’s
TIMING
Once you have everything conservatively organized you can move on to some more
technical stuff. It’s best to start out with correcting any timing issues. Without cor
correct tkiming your song is going to sound very sloppy. Assuming everything was
set to the same tempo while recording, it’s best to start with the drums (because it
sets the groove). Whether you used midi or live drums the idea is the same – You
need to make sure the hits follow a timed groove.
Midi
In the case of midi, editing will be a lot easier. Just be sure not to make everything
fall perfectly on the lines. I suggest you use 50-75% quantization so that your
groove doesn’t sound robotic. However, in some genres that may work in your favor.
If you just line up all the midi notes exactly where they are ‘meant’ to go then your
song will lose all emotions. Your song will be too robotic. It’ll be like listening to
Amazon’s Alexa sing (Although she is getting a lot better!) What I’m trying to tell you
is that music is about listening an feeling. If something feels good but your eyes are
telling you it’s wrong you should trust your gut. If you aren’t sure come back to it
later and hear it again.
Never make final musical judgements based on your preconceived notions of the
way things are supposed to be. Always make them based on how they make you
feel. Music appeals to the soul, not the eyes.
Live Drums
With miked drums, things become a bit trickier. Hopefully you were concious of
phase cancellations during recording. When you have audio tracks you’ll have to
mask the edit points so that they don’t stick out in the song. This is called masking,
and it makes sure your song flows smoothly for the listener. If you edit something,
make sure you use crossfading and endfading to avoid any pops, clicks, and
inconsistencies caused by the edits. If something just isn’t fitting correctly after
editing, you also have the option of time stretching that piece of audio.
The Rest
Once you have your dums timed correctly you can use them as a reference for the
rest of your tracks. All of the same ideas we discussed previously about preparing a
song for mixing apply for your other midi and audio as well.
There is also another technique you can use for editing other than just the
crossfades. Sometimes no matter how well you fade you just can’t get the point to
sound completely smooth. In that case, you can use the sounds on another track.
To do this, perform the masking underneath a point on another track that has a
sound which will mask the edit. For instance, if you had a clicky edit point but you
placed it underneath a snare hit, then obviously the snare hit would cover it up.
Furthermore, once you’ve completed editing your midi tracks I recommend bouncing
them to audio. Keep your midi version on the side just in case. The reason for
doing this is that playing midi uses a lot of CPU power. It’s better to save that CPU
power for your mixing plugins.
TUNING
The next important step you’ll need to take in preparing a song for mixing is tuning.
Most tracks should already have been taken care of in this regard. That’s because
in the recording stage you had all of your instruments in tune, right? Right.
If for some reason you can’t go back to recording, or you’re mixing someone else’s
track, you do have some options though. The options are that you can either tell
them to record it again, or you can hire an online session musician to record the part
correctly. You’re not going to have many tuning issues with midi instruments. I
mean it’s midi; you can just move the note with your mouse. That’s really all there is
to say about midi and general instruments.
Primarily what I’m talking about when I say tuning is vocal tuning. Unfortunately, the
vocal chords can be warmed up only. They can’t be tuned like the other
instruments. So any problems with vocal pitch needs to be handled with a vocal
tuning plugin.There are two varieties of vocal tuning plugins. The first is automatic
tuning, and the second is manual tuning. I’ll go over each method, as they are both
very popular.
Auto Tuning
The thing to watch out for with automatic vocal tuning is quite similar to that for midi
editing. If you try to make the entire vocal perfectly tuned at every instant it will
sound robotic. Vocal singing is supposed to have inflection. It’s what adds emotion
to a song.
Therefore, if you elect to use automatic tuning, you’ll have to make sure to use
enough human intervention to make sure it sounds the way you want it to sound. In
many cases, you’ll want the vocal to sound as natural as possible, while in others
you’ll want that tuned sound you hear in so many popular songs nowadays. It all
depends on your taste and the genre.
Manual Tuning
Manual tuning is the more time-consuming method. However, im my opinion, it’s
the best method. You can go through the whole vocal track at your own pace and
make tuning adjustments as you like. Just make sure you’re using your ears more
than your eyes. You can still make something overly robotic with manual tuning.
Manual tuning still adjusts the pitch in the same way, it’s just not doing it
automatically.
CLEANLINESS
The next step in preparing a song for mixing will be to evaluate, and get rid of, the
other distractions in your song. Distractions are the things that will ‘distract’ your
listener from enjoying the good things about your track. This is definitely something
you don’t want in your song.
Sibilance and Plosives

Bad timing and bad tuning can be very distracting to a listener of your song.
However, they aren’t the only distracting things you can find in a song. Other
examples of a listener distraction include sybillance and plosives.
Sybillance is the sharpness of breath required to make an ‘S’ or a “T” sound. A
plosive is the harshness of breath required to make a “P” or a “B” sound. Both of
these have the potential to be very off-putting.Generally, much of these effects
should be reduced while recording via mic positioning, angle, and distance.
However, you can further reduce them using several methods.
Methods
The first method is to go to the specific sections where the problem is occuring.
Lower the volume of those sections slighly. Be careful not to lower it too much so
that you create another distraction in the transition of volumes.
The second method is to use a de-esser. A de-esser does exactly what it’s name
implies – takes out sibilance. Adding this on top of the first method mentioned
above can be very effective.
The third method is something that can be used instead of a de-esser. It is,
effectively, a de-esser. The method is to use a side chain compressor on the vocal
track. This option is not available on all compressors, but many of them have the
option. It is a valid alternative to the de-esser, but it also takes some time to learn
how to implement it properly.
PREPARING A SONG WITH

A ROUGH BALANCE
This is the last step of preparing a song for mixing, and it will be done again when
you put on your mixing engineer’s hat. However, it’s a good idea to finish off your
mix preparation with this. It’ll make it easier for you when you sit down as the mix
engineer. It’ll also make you more confident when you actually start to mix.
Ranking
First I want you to take the time to rank each section in order of energy. Usually the
song should progress in energy as it moves along. The last chorus usually has all
the bells and whistles. After you have a clearly ranked list of each section, you need
to rank the tracks in order of importance in each section. The best way to do this is
to reference a similar professional song in the same genre that you think sounds
great.
Initial Panning
It’s better to mix mostly in mono than in stereo. However, you can’t just mix first and
then pan everything afterwards. Panning something in stereo changes its volume in
mono. Sometimes a hard-panned track will disappear completely in mono. You
need to set up your panning scheme first and then switch it back to mono for
mixing. If you do it this way, then whatever volumes you set in mono will sound
great in stereo. You also won’t have to worry about disappearing sounds when
switching to mono.
Setting The Faders

Turn down the faders on all the tracks. Keep the master track fader at 0. Starting
with your most important section, and using your reference song, raise the fader.
Keep your highest volume track well below clipping. Probably around -6dB. You
don’t need to concern yourself here with getting high loudness. Loudness will be
targeted later on.
For now, headroom is important. Headroom is the distance between your average
volume and clipping volume. Do this procedure in order of track importance and
then section importance. Think about gain staging. You’ll be keeping your channel
faders below your bus faders and your bus faders below your master fader. This will
help tremendously later on while you are manipulating volume.
You may also use gain plugins on the tracks if necessary. This will allow you to
have more control of where your faders are set. Note that a fader at 0dB is ideal for
optimal volume control. Listen to the song two to three times. Make light alterations
to your faders to get it to sound relatively balanced throughout. You won’t be able to
do this completely – that’s what then mixing is for. Just get a very, very rough
balance that sounds okay to you. You’ll be doing this again to start the mix anyway.
CONCLUSION
After you have taken these steps to prepare a song to be mixed, it’s time for another
well earned break. When you come back to the song in a day or two with fresh ears,
you’ll be more than ready to mix your song to greatness.
Make sure to subscribe to the email list to get updates about future content that will
teach you how to make great music at home. Also, be sure to follow The Curious
Mixer on social media.
I hope I’ve inspired you to go make awesome music. Until next time, peace!
You May Also Like…

M i x i n g Wi t h R e v e r b : A B e g i n n e r ’s G u i d e
May 2, 2020
By the time you start mixing with reverb you've already finished mixing in the true sense of the word. Your primary...
D AW R e c o r d i n g : A B e g i n n e r ’ s G u i d e
Apr 20, 2020
If you're recording in your own home studio you'll need to have a DAW. A DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is a...
Microphone Classifications And Their Uses
Apr 16, 2020
Understanding microphone classifications is essential to recording music. There are thousands of different types...
Join The Club!

Subscribe to get the lastest updates on how you can level up your home
music production skills. There will be weekly article updates emailed directly
to your inbox.
Your email will never be shared, sold, or used from SPAM.
First Name
Email
Subscribe
0 Comments
PAGES
HOME PAGE
CONTACT US
HOME STUDIO ARTICLES
RECORDING ARTICLES
AUDIO ENGINEERING ARTICLES
FOLLOW US
   

Preparing A Song For Mixing - An In-Depth Guide - THE CURIOUS MIXER

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Preparing A Song For Mixing - An In-Depth Guide - THE CURIOUS MIXER

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

5/8/2020 Preparing a Song for Mixing: An In-Depth Guide - THE CURIOUS MIXER

Preparing a Song for Mixing:

way to producing an awesome song.

PREPARING FOR MIX

How To Do It and Why It’s Done.

need to make sure the hits follow a timed groove.

later and hear it again.

feel. Music appeals to the soul, not the eyes.

power for your mixing plugins.

to say about midi and general instruments.

depends on your taste and the genre.

you don’t want in your song.

Sibilance and Plosives

examples of a listener distraction include sybillance and plosives.

Sybillance is the sharpness of breath required to make an ‘S’ or a “T” sound. A

these have the potential to be very off-putting.Generally, much of these effects

However, you can further reduce them using several methods.

that you create another distraction in the transition of volumes.

above can be very effective.

how to implement it properly.

PREPARING A SONG WITH

mono. Sometimes a hard-panned track will disappear completely in mono. You

Setting The Faders

targeted later on.

help tremendously later on while you are manipulating volume.

you’ll be more than ready to mix your song to greatness.

Mixer on social media.

You May Also Like…

Apr 20, 2020

Microphone Classifications And Their Uses

Apr 16, 2020

Join The Club!

Your email will never be shared, sold, or used from SPAM.

HOME STUDIO ARTICLES

AUDIO ENGINEERING ARTICLES

Potrebbero piacerti anche