Grebz - Mixing in practice

MIXING IN PRACTICE

After seeing the theoretical notions here, let's put them in practice. How can we make our recorded instruments clearly distinct from one another, what frequencies should we boost or cut, where should we place the instruments, etc.

We are going to study the complete mixing of a song I wrote: Life.

Instrument after instrument, we will see what plugins and virtual instruments were used and how, and we will proceed until the ultimate mastering stage. Of course, this is my way of doing things, this is not a recipe that everyone should apply in all circumstances, but that's an example that can be used as a solid base, in order to know what amateurs can do when there's no outside help.

Concrete exemple with a song of mine: LIFE

I made this song entirely in my home studio. And my home studio is only vaguely related to professional recording studios. It's just a room in the appartment, it isn't soundproof and my neighbors don't appreciate tube amps played in the evening. So I plugged my guitars directly into my audio interface (through a preamp) and used amplifier simulations for the guitars and the bass, an acoustic drums software instead of a real drum set, as well as software synthesizers. The only thing that produced some noise during the recordings was my voice. But that's a rather quiet song, vocally speaking.

Of course, before mixing it, the song doesn't sound like much, as you can hear below.

We are going to go from here...

No effects whatsoever are used in this version. The takes are raw, superimposed one onto another, the sound is monophonic (everything's centered) and the guitars are thinner than a fashion model... As for the drums, they sound really flat. To sum up, it lacks everything that could make it sound good. It's even hard to imagine that it will sound good.

Here is the waveform of the song before mixing.

As we'll see in this tutorial, we are going to have to use some tools to make Life come to life (!).

...to there:

This is the finished song. As you can hear and see in the graphics, the difference is huge.

This is the waveform of the finished song

This song is called Life, I wrote it and recorded it in my home studio in October 2011, and made some modifications in the course of the year 2012.

MESSAGES

tidave
le 10/02/2017 à 22h25

Bonjour
Il faut préciser que le mastering ce n'est pas aussi simple a realiser
De plus en utilisant juste un compresseur multibande et un limiteur on aura pas un bon son
ton audio final a plein de fréquences genante tu pourrait améliorer en commençant avec un Eq en tete , ensuite tu met un truc pour elargir la stereo, ensuite un compresseur stereo...
Ce serait un bon début
Je vais télécharger le mix final et te le renvoyer apres ajout de ces éléments et tu verras
En tout cas bravo pour le tuto , c'est un bon début
par contre je n'utilise plus de compresseur multibande car c'est trop dragstique, un EQ fait tres bien le job suivit d'un compresseur stereo
blessings

oxbig69
le 04/02/2017 à 21h54

Thank you very much!!!

d'jé
le 31/01/2017 à 16h42

Hi Grebz,
Je voulais te remercier pour ton attention sur Audiofanzine Poste 111 pour le troisième vote.
Par contre tu n'as pas de compte SoundCloud ?
Bonne Zic et A+

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

<em>De rien ! J'ai un compte SoundCloud dont je ne me sers quasiment jamais. Mon propre site m'occupe déjà bien assez :-)
Grebz</em>

Lostin70s
le 21/01/2017 à 10h10

Hi grebz, all ! Did you try Tonedeluxe ? its also free it New and i got nice feedbacks from users. You can found it here : www.lostin70s.com

Guitariste06
le 17/01/2017 à 13h24

Salut,
Est ce que tu pourrais essayer de rajouter sur ta page le plugin Amplistortion ? (www.rcvprod.com) ça simule tout le matériel guitare (et ça simule les hauts parleurs aussi) avec un son de dingue.
Merci