Mixing & Mastering

Mastering 2

What is Mastering? Mastering is a vital part of the recording process, so much so that a substantial amount of ‘mystery’ is associated with it. We've all heard stories of high-priced mastering engineers with mystical, proprietary gear based on vacuum tubes salvaged from ancient Russian submarines...

Mixing Electronic Music

The Noise Gate Some of you may be aware that the primary use for a gate is to reduce noise and any unwanted signal that is present in your recordings. For example you may have a vocal take with rumble, computer noise or heavy breathing in- between phrases. A gate is the perfect tool for removing the

More Creative Mixing Techniques

A further way of adding interest to effects is afforded to us by the recording process, which enables us to make use of negative time. In Reverse A further way of adding interest to effects is afforded to us by the recording process, which enables us to make use of negative time. By this, I mean eff

Modulation

Modulation We have discussed the most common modulation effects such as chorus, flanging and phasing. Now it is time to investigate other modulation effects. Ring Modulator and Frequency Shifter These two related effects are based on modulation of the signal amplitude. Both effects were popular duri

Filtering

Filtering There are many ways to access the power of filtering, but probably the easiest is to use a plug-in. Logic’s AutoFilter is a good example of Emagic’s creative approach to plug-in design. On the surface it appears to be a typical low-pass filter, not unlike those found on many synthesizers a

The Vocoder

The Vocoder A Vocoder - name derived from voice coder, formerly also called Voder - is a speech analyser and synthesizer. A Vocoder - name derived from voice coder, formerly also called Voder - is a speech analyser and synthesizer. It was originally developed as a speech coder for telecommunications

Vocals

Editing Vocals Vocals, particularly the lead vocal, are the main focus point in most tracks, and not surprisingly this is the area where we spend perhaps most of our time and attention during all the stages of production. When mixing, some engineers choose to start with vocals first, or drums and vo

Phaser & Flanger

Phaser Phasing was the next purely electronic effect after the wah- wah and fuzz box, and it originally set out to emulate tape phasing. In the phaser, a signal is again split onto two paths (like a chorus and flanger): one straight and the other diverted via a phase-shift network that can be varied

Delay

Spatial Awareness Much of the contemporary applications of music technology have shifted away from the natural into, arguably, more creative and artificial-sounding recordings. You can, for instance, pan a completely dry sound to one side and pan the reverb to the other side to produce a superior, a

Reverb

Natural space As you should be aware from the week one lesson on acoustics, when we experience a sound we are not only hearing it from the direct source, but also from the environment in which it is situated (reflections from walls, furnishings, outside etc). You only have to compare the voice from

Mastering

What is Mastering? Mastering is a vital part of the recording process, so much so that a substantial amount of ‘mystery’ is associated with it. We've all heard stories of high-priced mastering engineers with mystical, proprietary gear based on vacuum tubes salvaged from ancient Russian submarines...

Dynamics

Compression The human ear uses compression for pretty much the same reasons that we do in music, that being to control the level of an audio signal. As you may already be aware, the concept is to simply boost those signals that are quiet and suppress the ones that are too loud. Imagine you are recor

Equalization

Equalization is the process by which an equalizer is used to either boost or cut different frequencies in an audio signal in order to change its tonal character. In mixing, the aim is to have the entire frequency spectrum shared comfortably by all instruments, so that each one can be heard clearly i

Basic panning techniques

The Stereo Field The term stereo, short for stereophonic, involves the reproduction of sound using two separate audio channels that are then presented to a pair of speakers far apart to recreate a natural panorama of sound that is analogous to how we perceive sound through our ears. Although what we

Mixing Desk Basics

Now we have an environment that isn’t coloring what we hear we can start to look at how we can improve the mix itself. Subgrouping When you have finished recording all your parts and are ready to start mixing, it is a good idea to subgroup sections of your mix, such as the drum kits or horn parts so

Materials

Acoustics: The Basics

Room Shape The diagram depicted below illustrates three of the more typical room shapes: square, rectangular and L-shaped rooms. The most favourable positioning of the speakers within each space is shown. Uniformly square rooms are the least desirable room shapes for speaker orientations, since the

Choosing Monitors

Signal Flow

A Quick Note on Gain Channel level is another important aspect of mixing, which begins to flesh itself out during the EQ’ing process. As each new element is introduced for EQ’ing, it is first imperative that you set a preliminary fader level to get the sound, more or less, tucked into your mix in te

Mixing tl;dr

Starting From Scratch To start at the beginning, always make sure the mixer is 'zeroed' before starting a new project. By that, I mean make sure the input gains are at their minimum settings, the polarity reversals and high-pass filters are switched off, the EQ is set flat and bypassed, the auxiliar