Showing posts with label panning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label panning. Show all posts
Sunday, January 19, 2014
10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days: Day Six - LCR Panning
Thursday, January 16, 2014
10 Mixing Tips in 10 Days: Day Three - Automation
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Question of the Week
I'm excited to announce a new post series called Question of the Week! Basically every week I will be answering a question on the blog, that you submit. Hopefully this will help to give you relevant information to the type of issues and barriers you may be having when mixing or recording. Remember to submit your questions to info@willsterling.net. Anyways...let's get started!
This week our question is as follows:
"How do I make each instrument stand out from each other, but also blend? I've tried to mix well but the end product always seems to mush together in an undesirable way. I use Ableton if that helps. Thanks a bunch!"
Great question. Let's start off by tackling a couple of the issues you seem to be having.
The first issue you seem to be having is depth. Depth in a song describes how close and far away a sound seems to you. This is really just determined by how loud or quite a track is. So when you mix, you want to create a good bit of depth. In other words, don't have every track at the same volume level. Allow some instruments to sit in the back and act as layers, while other ones shine through. For instance, if you have a keyboard synth track, those are usually get to have in the background just sort of filling the gaps. But something like a lead vocal needs to sit on top of the mix and really punch through. By spending time adjusting levels and creating depth, it will help each instrument to sit together nicely and not fight for attention.
The second issue you may be having is width. Width is just what it sounds like. It describes how wide your mix is and how you have your instruments panned. If your tracks are starting to sound mushed together than there's a chance you aren't giving them a lot of separation. Try using LCR mixing to create a nice, wide, stereo sound that will help alleviate some of those crowded track problems. But don't forget to check your mix in mono and make sure that it sounds good. Often times panning can make you unaware of a problem that would otherwise be noticeable in mono. So be sure to check every now and again.
By creating width and depth you will give your tracks room to breathe and help them sit better with each other in the mix. Hope this helps!
Need Your Song Mixed?
This week our question is as follows:
"How do I make each instrument stand out from each other, but also blend? I've tried to mix well but the end product always seems to mush together in an undesirable way. I use Ableton if that helps. Thanks a bunch!"
Great question. Let's start off by tackling a couple of the issues you seem to be having.
The first issue you seem to be having is depth. Depth in a song describes how close and far away a sound seems to you. This is really just determined by how loud or quite a track is. So when you mix, you want to create a good bit of depth. In other words, don't have every track at the same volume level. Allow some instruments to sit in the back and act as layers, while other ones shine through. For instance, if you have a keyboard synth track, those are usually get to have in the background just sort of filling the gaps. But something like a lead vocal needs to sit on top of the mix and really punch through. By spending time adjusting levels and creating depth, it will help each instrument to sit together nicely and not fight for attention.
The second issue you may be having is width. Width is just what it sounds like. It describes how wide your mix is and how you have your instruments panned. If your tracks are starting to sound mushed together than there's a chance you aren't giving them a lot of separation. Try using LCR mixing to create a nice, wide, stereo sound that will help alleviate some of those crowded track problems. But don't forget to check your mix in mono and make sure that it sounds good. Often times panning can make you unaware of a problem that would otherwise be noticeable in mono. So be sure to check every now and again.
By creating width and depth you will give your tracks room to breathe and help them sit better with each other in the mix. Hope this helps!
Need Your Song Mixed?
Friday, September 27, 2013
How to Make Your Chorus Bigger
When you are a mixing or producing a song, you want there to be some dynamics. This means that you want there to be dynamic differences between verses, choruses, bridges, and so forth. If you don't have any dynamic change, say when you get to the chorus, then your song will sound flat and have no parts that stand out.
Today I'm going to talk about two things that will help you have a bigger chorus in your songs.
Tip One:
Automate Panning
Automating panning is a nifty little technique to widen up your choruses. Basically, the idea is that you have your panning automated to widen or narrow at particular parts of the song. Since we are trying to make a bigger chorus, we want to widen the sound when we hit the chorus. You can do this to multiple instruments but I recommend drums or guitars. Try having the drums panned in the center during the verses, and then have them pan hard left and right when it hits the chorus. This will help to widen your chorus and make it sound much bigger. You could also do this to acoustic guitars. If you doubled acoustic guitars, just have one play in the center during the verses, then bring both in panned left and right on the chorus.
Tip Two:
Record Dynamically
This tip is all about getting it right at the source. When a song is being performed and recorded, make sure the parts are dynamically written and then recorded that way. Have the guitarist hang back during the verse and let the drums and bass carry it. Then when you hit the chorus, open it up with all the instruments. This is basic songwriting dynamics, but if you don't have this right, it's going to be a lot harder to make your song dynamic in the mixing process.
These are just two tips to hopefully help you make a better dynamic mix. As always, don't be afraid to get creative with it! Try things and remember to break the rules every once in a while.
Need Mixing Done?
Today I'm going to talk about two things that will help you have a bigger chorus in your songs.
Tip One:
Automate Panning
Automating panning is a nifty little technique to widen up your choruses. Basically, the idea is that you have your panning automated to widen or narrow at particular parts of the song. Since we are trying to make a bigger chorus, we want to widen the sound when we hit the chorus. You can do this to multiple instruments but I recommend drums or guitars. Try having the drums panned in the center during the verses, and then have them pan hard left and right when it hits the chorus. This will help to widen your chorus and make it sound much bigger. You could also do this to acoustic guitars. If you doubled acoustic guitars, just have one play in the center during the verses, then bring both in panned left and right on the chorus.
Tip Two:
Record Dynamically
This tip is all about getting it right at the source. When a song is being performed and recorded, make sure the parts are dynamically written and then recorded that way. Have the guitarist hang back during the verse and let the drums and bass carry it. Then when you hit the chorus, open it up with all the instruments. This is basic songwriting dynamics, but if you don't have this right, it's going to be a lot harder to make your song dynamic in the mixing process.
These are just two tips to hopefully help you make a better dynamic mix. As always, don't be afraid to get creative with it! Try things and remember to break the rules every once in a while.
Need Mixing Done?
Monday, September 23, 2013
How Do I Get My Mixes to Sound Huge?
Today I'd like to share a couple tips for how you can widen your mix. Often times when we are mixing or recording we end up with a song that just doesn't sound as big as we want it to. It feels like we are listening to it in a narrow hallway, instead of a big, wide open sound. There are a lot of things you can do to alleviate this problem, but today I'd like to just share two.
Number One:
Do an LCR mix.
So what do I mean by LCR mix? An LCR mix is a Left-Center-Right mix. It is the idea that when you pan something, you pan it either hard left, dead center, or hard right. Now, keep in mind that this is not a cure-all for your mixes. In fact, there is no cure-all for your mixes. The techniques you use to mix and make your tracks sound better will vary from song to song just depending on the project. However, an LCR mix is a great place to start if you want to widen up your mix.
There are some obvious instruments that should be panned in the center, but in case you don't know, here is a quick rule of thumb:
In case you don't know, what I mean when I say, "double your instruments," is to do two recordings of the same instrument, and then pan the two tacks hard left and right. This will work very well to widen your tracks, especially on certain instruments. This is a good trick for acoustic guitars and rhythm electric guitars. It not only widens your mix, but lets the tracks you have in the center really shine through. Make sure you don't just do one take and copy it, as you will need two takes with varying frequencies for this to work.
These tips should help you widen your mixes and get your song to sounding a little bit bigger. Again, this is not a cure-all trick and there are times where you will only want to pan something 50% in one speaker or keep an acoustic guitar in the center and so forth. However, on most songs this should help your mixes and take you one step closer to achieving a professional and good quality mix.
Number One:
Do an LCR mix.
So what do I mean by LCR mix? An LCR mix is a Left-Center-Right mix. It is the idea that when you pan something, you pan it either hard left, dead center, or hard right. Now, keep in mind that this is not a cure-all for your mixes. In fact, there is no cure-all for your mixes. The techniques you use to mix and make your tracks sound better will vary from song to song just depending on the project. However, an LCR mix is a great place to start if you want to widen up your mix.
There are some obvious instruments that should be panned in the center, but in case you don't know, here is a quick rule of thumb:
- Pan the kick drum and the snare in the center
- Pan bass guitar in the center
- Pan vocals in the center
In most circumstances all of those tracks will go in the center. Most everything else, you will pan off to the side. This will most certainly depend on the type of song and how many instruments you have, so don't necessarily apply this to everything. But as a general rule of thumb, this will help widen your mixes.
Number Two:
Double your instruments.
In case you don't know, what I mean when I say, "double your instruments," is to do two recordings of the same instrument, and then pan the two tacks hard left and right. This will work very well to widen your tracks, especially on certain instruments. This is a good trick for acoustic guitars and rhythm electric guitars. It not only widens your mix, but lets the tracks you have in the center really shine through. Make sure you don't just do one take and copy it, as you will need two takes with varying frequencies for this to work.
These tips should help you widen your mixes and get your song to sounding a little bit bigger. Again, this is not a cure-all trick and there are times where you will only want to pan something 50% in one speaker or keep an acoustic guitar in the center and so forth. However, on most songs this should help your mixes and take you one step closer to achieving a professional and good quality mix.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
