Question on mixing/mastering?

[idssdi]

I was planning to write songs and record them this summer so I could release a record at the end of the summer. However, this hasn’t happened yet for two reasons of which me not liking being forced to be creative is the most important one the other one is that a pretty big part of my money went to clothes and 3 sessions with a personal trainer. Now I’m kinda like the record will come when it comes.
My question is basically for when I get there are there any tips and tricks( like eq. settings etc.) I should know to make the mixing and mastering a bit easier?
Secondly, what’s the most efficient method of recording and mixing/mastering? Record and then master/mix each sing individually or record all the songs and then master/mix all the songs?

 

[Filip Tomiša]

Ok first thing you need to understand is the difference between mixing and mastering. When you are mixing you are working with separate audio files like “guitar left”, “guitar right”, “vocals” etc. You are mixing each file separately, so for example you eq and compress “guitar left” and you are satisfied with it and then you move on to “gutiar right” and you eq it and compress it as well and so on until you mix every file in your song. (there is obviously more things to do than just eq and compress but I’m just trying to keep it simple so you can understand). After you’ve mixed every file and you are happy with it you export the whole thing into one single audio file. That file would be the mixed version of your song. Then you would put that file into your daw and you would master it. Mastering is just polishing your mixed version and making it louder. So you would use an EQ and maybe boost 0.5 or 1dB on low end to make it “bigger” or “fatter” and maybe boost the same amount in the high end to make it “brighter”. You don’t boost for example 5db when you are mastering cause that’s too extreme because you are not boosting just one file or instrument but you are boosting the whole song and if you would for example boost 5db on the high end to make the guitars stand out, you would also boost the cymbals and crashes and that wouldn’t sound very good. So that’s why you want to boost in small amounts when mastering cause you are just polishing the whole thing. The most work is done when mixing. Also in mastering you would want to compress your song to “glue” it together and then maybe you could add a tape emulator to make it warmer. The last thing you do when mastering is LIMITING. Limiting is just increasing the volume of your song to a commercial level so that it doesn’t sound too quiet. When you are done limiting you export the file and you have a mastered song.
As for the eq and compressor settings, Rick Beato made videos about that so that should help you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAGC2fUAU1M

but keep in mind that: NOT EVERY GUITAR, KICK, SNARE, BASS, VOCAL…. SOUND THE SAME. Every sound is different so if you read that you should boost the kick on 50Hz that doesn’t mean that every kick should be boosted at 50hZ. Some sound better when you boost them at 60 HZ. SO nothing is written in stone but the cheat sheets will help you where to look.

 

[Andrew Fernandes]

I see Filip wrote a long paragraph, so I am a bit overwhelmed cause I don’t have much to say. But I am gonna try. If you use logic you can record and then keep recording over it and select the best parts of the performances to “punch in” as syn said for beast and the harlot. Mixing is the first thing you do after something is recorded. Also if you’re doing an album, I would master all of the tracks with the same master I think.

 

[idssdi]

Thanks guess!

 

[Ezequiel Romanko]

another tip i recently learned for mixing its when you’re doing eq just take one point and boost it to hear where its sounds really bad and seems to annoy the other instruments then turning it down again to a point it stops annoying the other instruments , i know a good video of that but its in spanish D: if you understand spanish i can send you the link if you want, but anyways you have to keep in mind the frencuencies of all the instruments on the song, cuz you want to cut or boost frencuencies depending on what you want to be hear in the song, for example: the bass has its most important sound in the middle-low and low frencuencies , so if your guitar have a lot of middle-low and lows the bass won’t come out in the mix ( you won’t hear it) it happens the same with kick if you have too lows in other instruments the kick wont show up. and i think it could be better mixing one song by separate cuz you don’t have the same situation on every song so the mix will be more in deep and not generic, but anyways just keep working on it try a different mixes until you like what you hear, a final tip save the project before mixing and then start mixing and save with other name so you will have the original record project if you don’t like the final mix reload the original unmixed project and start again. i hope it help you