Joe's Bar

[SonicTramp]

The way I do the bottom end is trying to connect start from the beater of the kick and end with the bass's sustain in a continuous/seamless single note or whatever. If I let the sub dominate then it's purely for my own listening pleasure. And yes, to Roy, there's magic down there.

To mikej, glad you noticed the vocal sticking out on mix 5. Well, I heard mastering engineers say that they can EQ the vocal and do whatever they do with it in stereo/master bus. I was like, really? So I did a slight boost in the 800-900Hz, the place where it did the least damage and still helped me lift the vocal out of the mix. So I got one (louder vocal) but lost the other (too much mid). It could be bc of many things but it doesn't matter bc your observation answered my questions. I just need to be finer with my moves. Thanks, man.

[mikej]

In broad terms, starting off I tend to think about it more in terms of where I want each instrument to sit in the frequency spectrum. But yeah - as you say the kick is usually one note so to speak. You can generally find the fundamental and boost it a touch if required to provide a solid foundation to build everything else on. Depends on the track of course, it's generally going to be the kick or bass that 'wins' the low end of the mix, and I find I do generally end up choosing kick. As you say it acts as an extension of the bass. Unless there's a Djembe or Cajon or something in the mix as they can't half generate some sub tones.

This track is a bit tricky as there is quite a lot of low end (sub) information in both the kick and bass to tidy up, and a lot of it you cannot hear unless whatever monitoring you are using goes that low. I probably could tidy up the low end in my mix even more than I have so far.

Yes you can target different areas on the mix bus with eq. Vocal, snare, or just to add a bit of body or air on the mix. Whatever really. For me it's the final polish that hopefully brings the mix alive, with half a db here and there.

I know a lot of people say oh, I'll save that for the mastering engineer. Well, I am no pro, and really only post mixes on here so there's really no danger of any of my mixes bothering a mastering engineer any time soon. For me it's become part of the mixing process, and part of the attempt to present my mixes as best I can. Well that's the aim. Just my opinion though. As with everything we are talking about, everyone is of course free to do what works best for them and mix it how they like.

Cheers!

[Roy]

I know a lot of people say oh, I'll save that for the mastering engineer. 

[Narrows eyes....]

This whole narrative reminds me of something from Hitchhiker's Guide to the...etc.

“what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project.”

“Ah,” said the marketing girl, “well, we’re having a little difficulty there.”

“Difficulty?” exclaimed Ford. “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!”

The marketing girl soured him with a look “All right, Mr. Wiseguy,” she said, “you’re so clever, you tell us what color it should be.”

We're talking around the minutia. Make the mix sound good. Move me. I don't care about phase. I get it. I was obsessed with M/S stereo recording back in the day. There's a lot of fascinating aspects to audio. I just want a good mix.

We're going on about scales and I just want some shredding. I want a solid rhythm section and some guitar fills and some upfront vocals. I do not care if the kick tracks are in phase. I don't even care about kick tracks. This could be a kick [redacted] mix without the kick drum. We're talking about audio, which is important, sure but we're not talking about music which is more important.

I'll admit I've not done it, but, just make a good mix. Don't mix for the mixer on here this site. Mix for your friends or mix for your enemies or mix for your kinda deaf aunt and move her. Also buy her flowers she's lonely. Mix for the guy underneath the hood or bonnet in whatever weird land uses the term 'bonnet'. They're hard at work changing the Johnson rod and timing belt fluid. It's due and they want a quality song to listen to while being butch and dirty. And/or for doing their makeup, I don't care because it's a mix for everyone. And this is all bs but it's intending to be motivating and that's more importnat than worrying about what's in phase or not or the typo that I'm leaving because it's still a quality post.

It's my bed time.

[SonicTramp]

Don't quite get what's going on and must have missed something, but...In your little story, aren't Ford and the marketing girls 2 entirely different people? With, possibly, completely out of phase (just a little punt, for... fun) in perspectives? So which one is the one you pick? My point is: just bc the wheel is important to Ford it doesn't follow that it is to the marketing girl, right? The same way you think phase is not important but I don't hold the same thinking. So which one of us is wrong? I am ready to jump ship.

Don't worry about it, bro. It's just talking. Nobody dies. Either that or we just shut up and learn nothing. I am curious as to why, it seems to me, you are frustrated. It's all good. Just a bunch (2 actually) of us talking learning from one another, mostly me doing the learning. And yeah, it's only phase. If I can handle my gf, I can handle phase. My gf is a lot scarier and just as mysterious. But just like her, it takes time for me to understand. I have time.

One slight disagreement on the guitar thingy. One cannot do shredding w/o knowing the scale bc one is destined to hit a wrong note somewhere along the way that can be avoided if one knows and understands scale. 2 things one must know in order to shred that guitar: 1. scale and mode, 2. the key and tempo of the song. Sure you can still play after a few tries, but only after. If you know the scale, the key, you just play. That, to me, is the diff bet one and a pro. But that is only my opinion.

To mikej. Yeah, man. I try to get my mix as loud as I can and learn to master my own mix. I am on your camp on that. Even that, getting it loud, is hard enough and requires some skills. I struggle to match mine with yours. Not too long ago, I couldn't even match 1/2 of yours.

[mikej]

Just a small point regarding mix bus eq. I am mainly talking about the difference a little mix bus eq can make to a mix and not about making it loud as such (for a change ). If you check the video example I posted I think you get the idea - the track goes from sounding like a good mix, to sounding like a great record. Well, that's my opinion anyway and I'm just sharing that.

Yeah - I feel I have missed something here too!

Well, as I said everyone is free to mix it how they like and make their own mind up on how they see things.

My experience so far has been that it IS all the little things that count and all add up to make a great mix, a bit like layers of an onion. The more little things we know that we can draw upon the better, right? If you are missing something then you maybe aren't going to get a great mix. It's all additional tools in the box to draw from. Or not. Anyone can hit the render button on their daw and get some sound out.

Same for the shredder who doesn't know music theory. or where any of the notes are on the fretboard I think?

The great guitarists will likely have obsessed about everything from pickups, amps, effects, to the wood the guitar is made from, the profile of the neck, to the make and model of speaker in the cab. Hours spent learning music theory, practising scales and other exercises along with playing technique. Which guitarist will have the better chance of realising their vision and moving the listener? It's got to give you an extra edge right, an extra dimension to how you think about things?

Do they think about the neck profile when they are coming up with a great solo? Probably not, as they have already considered it in the past and no longer have to worry about it....

I guess it may look like I am 'obsessing' over the details - such as phase and eq here...

Correct me if I have this wrong. From my perspective I am only talking about a couple of things that came up in discussion. A couple of 'little' things that contribute to making the greater whole.

I make no apologies for who I am. I'd rather share and discuss how I see these things in a little bit of detail (things that I have also spent hours figuring out) in the hope that it might help other people make up their own minds about things.

Maybe it might help someone else to get closer to realise their own mixing goals. If it does great, if it doesn't, no big deal at least I tried to add something of value to the discussion. I'm just saying, hey here's some stuff I think about, maybe it will help others too.

If I feel a mix is lacking a touch of 300Hz or something, It's just my opinion. I know some people have the opinion that stuff is for the mastering engineer, which is fine, but I happen to disagree with that thinking, which is why I mentioned it, and also gave an example. I suppose I view it a bit like saying why not leave the automation to the automation engineer, or the mix balancing to the mix balance engineer. If it helps making a mix better, why not put in the effort?

Having some understanding of phase helped move my mixes forward. A little mix bus eq helped move my mixes forward. In another thread we've been discussing mix balance, and automation, etc. All little things that I feel helped move my mixes forward and I wanted to share that with others in case it helps them move forward with their own mixes too.

Do I think in terms of phase or eq points when I am mixing? I suppose I think that maybe the kick could be a bit more solid, then I might consider looking at the phase...

The wood is actually made up of trees, I think?

I dunno, I hope I've made some sort of point to consider?

Cheers!

[Roy]

I suppose my point was we're talking about a lot of stuff and not really mixing. I say don't worry about phase. It's important to know and be aware of but don't _worry_ about it. And I think for a lot of us this is just kicking the can down the road. Getting bogged down and thinking that the secret to a good mix is x, y, or z(ed). We can talk about scales but what makes someone a good musician is time on the instrument.

There's no real secret besides just doing some mixes and getting some feedback. While I think all the technical aspects are important I don't think they're what makes a mix good or bad.

[Mixinthecloud]

Coming from my speakers:
1&4 sound similar, beefy with slight sub, more so in 4 than 1
2 is thinner less beefy but more defined
I would choose 2 bc I can always get help from the bass

The #4 sound raises another question, 'How do you use your OHs?'
Some mixers will go full spectrum while others will filter low end from them so they are essentially using the overheads primarily for cymbals. Filtering low end from the OHs will definitely reduce low-end phase issues while maintaining the spatial references of the kit below them. If you bring everything on the kit 'in phase', is that more accurate? IMHO, no. It would be more unnatural to do that since the physical kit has built in phase anomalies from a live listener's perspective. For me, there is only one bottom line. The only thing that counts is what sounds best to you, the mixer.  If everything 'in phase' sounds best to you, then that is the way to go. If not, then don't. Any talk of technology and the technical reasons for phase alignment seem moot. If the context is for releasing a song on vinyl, where phase issues could cause mastering issues, well then that's just another reason to discount vinyl as a medium because of its inherent flaws and limitations. We all watch top end mixers on YouTube or PureMix, etc., and I would offer that not one of them would disagree with 'go with what sounds best' to you.

[SonicTramp]

I think both of you (Roy&mixinthecloud) are missing the point. 2 things I want to maybe have a small debate with if you don't mind. First, there is no way you can come up with an out of phase of anything that sounds better than when they are in phase. It's just fact. If they sounded better than one another, one of them must be in phase. That is how important phase is; it determines (dictates) which one for you. You actually have no choice. Second, "if it's good, keep it," sounds simple enough, but let me challenge both of you to define "good" for me. I bet tho we prob have the same definition but our sounds will be diff. Why is that? My last mix the kicks are completely out of phase, yet the kick, at the time, sounded beautiful to me but both of you rejected it. The one before it the kicks were in phase but buried deep in the mix. So if I listen to you, mix 5, the one you rejected, is the one to keep. This is my attempt to remove the word "good" from your statement. It doesn't work. It doesn't mean the same to all of us.

Usually when we make assumptions about things we should weight it carefully so that our assumptions dont come back and bite us in our bhine, right? I am looking at you, Roy. Just bc I am here posting stuffs doesn't mean I am not diligently practicing mixing. I love mixing. And yeah, man, I have this stupid desire to want to know everything, yep, that's the key word, everything, about it. Such an impossibility, but we did think like that in the past about going to the moon. There is a scientific explanation for it somewhere that I (and perhaps we) do not fully understand. I will leave no stone unturned. Learning new things is fun.

Another maybe more personal thoughts. If we don't discuss about technical stuffs in mixing here, what do we talk about? I'd love to talk about my gf and how she harasses me when I am trying to concentrate to mix. But then there are other sites that handle that, right?

Your advice, both, and only my opinion, is deeply unsatisfying. So we just leave it like that knowing we can do something about it? Turn a blind eye to it, pretend it didn't happen? Sure I can do it too, super easy to do, but I am not you. I will be, tho, only when the argument is convincing. Right now it is not. It explains nothing. Any thoughts?

[Roy]

"Better" is subjective. I've definitely flipped the phase on a bass amp track and it sounded "better" when blended with the DI. There were just cancellations that worked better than the reinforcement when they were in phase. Which they never really were to begin with because the bass mic was however many milliseconds later than the DI track.

Whether or not a mix works or is effective isn't solely based on if the kicks are in phase. The kick is generally pretty far down the list of what makes a mix work or not for most songs. If I did or didn't like a mix you did it had nothing to do with phase.

I feel like you might be overthinking things and that's not what's going to make a mix better. That's not to say don't be knowledgeable or put the work in but there's way more to what makes a mix work than what we've been going on about for 4 pages.

I'm sorry if this is frustrating. I suppose I'm not being helpful or not saying the right things. Which is fine. I'm happy to bow out. Good luck.

Cheers

[SonicTramp]

ah, we just talking, bro. I learn from you too. And I am not frustrated bc of what you said. No,... more out of curiosity and learn your perspective. What you think sometimes matters to my mix. I still remember you told me a long time ago on another song that I should be more aggressive with the guitars and that advice helps every time I mix a rock song, even now. You might not know this but every time when I mix a rock song you were (or an idea of you) always there breathing down my neck screaming "louder." I still need your opinions on my mix. Just remember this: I always respect your opinions even when mine is not aligned with yours.