23-03-2016, 01:47 AM
(22-03-2016, 05:53 AM)gkallergis Wrote: Glad to see you are progressing! Well done to the rest of the guys for helping, too!
Regarding balancing, what I do, which you might find helpfull is this:
* All faders to lowest level
* Bring up the kick so that I get around 10dB of headroom on the master.
* Bring up the snare so that it has the same apparent volume (see above post from Shul) as the kick.
* Do the same for bass.
Buy doing that I make sure that the rhythm section stands out. The snare is indeed one of the most prominent components in the mix. After that, I continue adding the rest of the instruments and finaly the vocals.
Note that building a mix can be done in many ways. You could start with the overheads instead and use the rest of the drum mics to add definition. You could start from the vocals like Shul suggested. Whichever track you use as the starting point will usually be more prominent in your mix in the end, so I guess the way you build your mix depends on the music genre as well.
After I get an initial balance and panning, I start compressing and EQing. It is important to rebalance here, if needed, since compression and EQ, might through your balance of a bit.
One final note regarding kick and bass muddyness is this: I EQ out everything bellow 25 - 30Hz on the kick and I am quite aggressive cutting in the area above 100 - 150Hz. Then for the base I cut everything below 80 - 90. Additionally, I might boost the kick in the high mids a bit to get that click. I am a fan of more clicky kicks and bass so take this with a grain of salt and sweep for the right freqs, the numbers here are just an idea.
Hope I helped and if I said something wrong please correct me!
Cheers!
Greetings from Texas!
I come from the live music scene for sure which is a totally different ball game for sure, which I am learning now for sure.
Live music is all about the low end as most decent FOH reinforcement comes with the magic "sub". Low end gets people dancing which gets people drinking which makes the venue MONEY! To drive those subs there needs to be enough low end energy in the mix. I learned this when playing music thru the FOH during the breaks. I set up a quick Master Buss--my first involvement with the world of the DAW--and mixed all the mp3s we were going to use to increase the low end energy so that when played thru the FOH and the subs the energy was there. So I duck the base with a side chain from the kick to clear the lower end--from about 30hz( the high pass on the bass) to about 100 to 150hz depending on the sound of the kick. Keeps the low end working.
I also usually double track the kick, sending one right up the middle and the other one with a send to the drum room reverb which is panned from about 20% Right and Left to about 90% Right and Left depending on the type of music. easy to keep the energy of the kick without increasing the volume. Both tracks are at about -18db to -12db on the k-20 scale.
the Pushtec free plug has a real nice setting called "monster kick" which I use a lot as well as the Blockfish compresor set on "Kick".
took me a long time to figurre out how to make the kick nice without overpowering the mix--but alas I still overpower it sometimes just because I like it!!
I still think that my latest mix is a little weak on the kick but I have bowed to my Teacher--Shul--on this one.
Have a listen to REV5 and let me know what you think.
Mike