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Fast Mixing, Questions and Answers from me...and hopefully from others!

Production and recording
#1

Thanks to everyone who attended the tutorial I gave on fast mixing and why you want to!..Hopefully I didn’t talk to fast…but it was about fast mixing so I thought the tutorial should be no longer then the length of an album!

Anyway if you ave any questions pop them in here and I’ll do my best to answer or if I can’t I’m sure someone in this talented community can.

Also here are a few articles I wrote for community a while ago which cover some of the topics I discussed so you can have a read through those aswell Mixing Tips from A Pirate Site Tech in Dublin

Once again thanks for attending and I hope you found some of it useful to bring into your mixing sessions

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#2

Hey Gareth,
Thanks again for the great workshop yesterday!
I wanted to kindly ask if you could explain the methodology of quick and bold moves again maybe? Like where or better said in which mixing stage do you use the quick moves? You explained them first but refering to the top-down-strategy, it seems like they‘re more useful at the end.

When it comes to the bold moves, do you push the channels to a point where it‘s like “mh perfect” or already to much?

You spoke about a strategy to balance the low-end where you place the kick at -3db and add the bass until you hit the 0db. Is it gain-staging-wise ok to hit the 0db in the group/buss and reduce back to like -6db before sending to the master bus?

Kindest,
Brandon

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#3

Hi Brandon

Thanks for attending the session yesterday and good questions!, Quick moves is so that you don’t spend too long obsessing over the minutiae but are continually focusing on the bigger picture of the mix, it also helps reduce listening fatigue (and makes mixing more interesting!), so quick short small moves first to chisel out the mix.

Big Moves is more for making a mix more dynamic and interesting rather then “balanced” as “balanced mixes” can be a bit lifeless I would push the “big moves” where its a point of too much and then back off by half. You’ll catch this then when you gain stage the group and probably go back to it again. It’s your choice though if you’d like to do after the top down element but remember to keep checking gain staging if you’ve already applied any outboard/inserts to the groups.

With bass end balancing I would measure the -3db on your mix bus same as hitting 0db on your mix bus but moving the faders rather then the groups to achieve this. trust me you’ll keep coming back to this during your mix to re balance anyway :wink:

Just remember to look at your mix buss meter and LUF’s during the process so if you do end up actually reducing the Drum and bass group so it is no longer hitting 0db on the VU on your stereo buss, that’s ok as you’ve already established the relationship between the kick and the bass anyway. Hope that makes sense?

#4

Hey, big thanks for the reply! It totally makes sense now to me. Looking forward for the next sessions :sunglasses:

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#5

Just adding these links of things I mentioned during the tutorial.

At the moment waves is having a half price sale (sure when don’t they!) on the Abbey Road Mastering plugin I mentioned that I use for MS Eq on my groups.

Here’s a great free VU meter VST where you can select the reference level (and a bunch of other features!)

Here’s a nice little tutorial on the concept of rear buss compression to go a bit more in depth of the concept I was discussing. If you don’t have access to an 1176 compressor you can try using a compressor with a slow attack and medium fast release on a 2:1 ratio with between -2 to -4db gain reduction depending on taste

Also I love using a Fairchild 670 tube emulator plugin for drum parallel compression …there’s a great one from Universal Audio but might be also worth trying the puig one from waves (once again they have a sale on :wink:

Overload and IKMultimedia also have their own versions of this classic