The Producers Thread: Production Tips, Tricks, Techniques & Questions

[Bruce]

Evaluate your mixes on multiple systems until you really learn what your room and monitors sound like. Chances are you’re pretty far off from a great mix if you’re in a less than stellar sounding room. “The car test” is pretty popular.

It is helpful to import a reference track of a popular song in the style of your production. A/B frequently to see how your mix is holding up. Volume match them, the reference track will be much louder.

Mixing on headphones used to be a no no. Not anymore. The Slate VSX changed my life. Well worth the money.

This may be unconventional but I picked this up from Your Mix Sucks book. Start your mix using a relatively flat home radio. Something cheap no more than 100 bucks. Level everything on that and make broad adjustments here. After that, finish your mix on your monitors. This worked well for me a few times, surprisingly.

 

[Bruce]

Figured you guys may appreciate some recording and guitar amp porn while we’re talking about this stuff.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Figured you guys may appreciate some recording and guitar amp porn while we’re talking about this stuff.

Always!

Aahh

 

[Fireproof]

What are you using for a DAW?

Logic makes this pretty easy; I just hit record in Logic to record the audio and use my iPhone to capture the video, giving myself an audio marker at the beginning (muted strums) so I can line it up easier once I import the video into Logic. Logic splits the audio/video tracks and puts the audio on it’s own track for you to edit however you wish, which works great if you were talking in the video but didn’t have a mic running into Logic to capture it.

From there it’s just lining up the muted strums so they’re in time and pressing the Export button!

That sounds pretty straightforward. I need to try that.

 

[DrewJD82]

That sounds pretty straightforward. I need to try that.

Easy as hell, I just airdrop the video from my phone to my imac, then in Logic- File- Movie-Import and Bob’s your uncle!

 

[Fireproof]

Easy as hell, I just airdrop the video from my phone to my imac, then in Logic- File- Movie-Import and Bob’s your uncle!

Ahh that’s great. Thanks brother.

 

[Orvillain]

One of the best things I've learned, especially with mixing and drums in particularly, is to not leave the faders static. Move them around. Animate the mix. Use room mics to reinforce certain drums by bringing their level up for those drums, and keeping them low for everything else. Snare is typically the one you'd reinforce in this way, but it can work for toms too.

Read "Mixing With Your Mind" by Mike Stavrou. That book blew my mind when I first read it, and taught me a lot.

Fucking hell I feel old. lmao.

 

[Stone]

Here is a Noob question
When Recording and using a song or backing track how does one have the guitar parts come out of both L&R speakers ?
Direct out of Helix through Interface and then in Presonus Studio One

Thanks all

 

[Bruce]

Here is a Noob question
When Recording and using a song or backing track how does one have the guitar parts come out of both L&R speakers ?
Direct out of Helix through Interface and then in Presonus Studio One

Thanks all

If the sound is in the middle, it is. Equal levels in both speakers make the sound appear in the center. Stereo when it was developed had a center channel. It was largely done away with for this reason. It’s not necessary.
Add a ping pong delay to your guitar if you want to see it’s coming out of both speakers. Or you can unplug one at a time and hear it too.

 

[DrewJD82]

Parallel compression on drums is how I get them to pop out of a mix without overpowering everything else. Since I only use SD3 for drums these days, I just create an aux bus and send the entire stereo mix of the kit to it and use that Brainworx Townhouse compressor I discussed previously. I'll start with the fader all the way down and slowly bring it in with the full mix playing. Depending on the song/tempo, I'll either focus on just the initial transient hits or for something slower, I'll increase the release time of the compressor.

This was one of the "Ohhhhhh snap!" realizations I had when mixing.

Since I generally create my own room reverb for the kit, a lot of times I'll run a bus out of the parallel compressor aux to a reverb (Abbey Roads Chambers if my favorite for this) and it keeps the reverb from being too much. For slowing songs, I'll generally just bus a reverb straight from the kit instead of the compressor aux. Depends on how much room I have to play with within the song.

 

[the swede]

What are you using for a DAW?

Logic makes this pretty easy; I just hit record in Logic to record the audio and use my iPhone to capture the video, giving myself an audio marker at the beginning (muted strums) so I can line it up easier once I import the video into Logic. Logic splits the audio/video tracks and puts the audio on it’s own track for you to edit however you wish, which works great if you were talking in the video but didn’t have a mic running into Logic to capture it.

From there it’s just lining up the muted strums so they’re in time and pressing the Export button!

This, is basically what I do for my IG clips that I’ve done.

That sounds pretty straightforward. I need to try that.

I use my stomp of course, record into Logic, and record with phone or dslr camera. If im happy with both audio and video, I’ll then treat the track with logics compressor, pretty much the guitar preset will do, then add the adaptive limiter and meters to the master bus and get the thing in the ballpark of around 12db integrated lufs… or whatever it’s called…

Then I import the video to Logic, align audio with the video and it’s audio so it’s looks natural and good
(doesn’t always need to be perfectly synced between the two because the camera picks up audio at a distance and in the room, while the stomp audio is pretty much very immediate).
Then it’s all about setting the loop start and end to the time I want for IG (30, 60, 90 seconds for reels), then use the “export audio to video” function (muted video track).

Then I take it into iMovie and add whatever stuff.

 

[Bruce]

Parallel compression on drums is how I get them to pop out of a mix without overpowering everything else. Since I only use SD3 for drums these days, I just create an aux bus and send the entire stereo mix of the kit to it and use that Brainworx Townhouse compressor I discussed previously. I'll start with the fader all the way down and slowly bring it in with the full mix playing. Depending on the song/tempo, I'll either focus on just the initial transient hits or for something slower, I'll increase the release time of the compressor.

This was one of the "Ohhhhhh snap!" realizations I had when mixing.

Since I generally create my own room reverb for the kit, a lot of times I'll run a bus out of the parallel compressor aux to a reverb (Abbey Roads Chambers if my favorite for this) and it keeps the reverb from being too much. For slowing songs, I'll generally just bus a reverb straight from the kit instead of the compressor aux. Depends on how much room I have to play with within the song.

Just hit my first mix with the new SSL bus comp that I just got. Holy shit canned drums REALLY love this thing! For my first hardware comp this thing is a lot to take on but not even knowing what the hell Im doing with it, just running it thru and applying light compression makes things so much more 3D and musical. So happy I got this piece.

 

[HotRats]

My best tip is this:

Be bold and commit your sounds to tape, don't leave everything to the mixing project.

 

[DrewJD82]

My best tip is this:

Be bold and commit your sounds to tape, don't leave everything to the mixing project.

Fully agree and for multiple reasons. The biggest reason; removing some options for the future allows you to just get the damn thing done instead of dicking with it forever. If I’m tracking something with delay on it, that delay is going to get printed in the track.

This and going for full takes from start to finish are two things left over from the tape days that I refuse to let go of. While I’ll punch in all over the place as I’m writing, when I go for the final takes I go for full takes. While not everyone can hear the small variances/changes throughout the song, I know they’re there and they go a long way in not making everything sound like a copy and paste.

 

[HotRats]

2: automations, automations, automations. move your faders, sends, returns, plug in parameters as needed. let the song guide you and create movment.
3: every song is different, don't be lazy and start using common chains on all songs. Sometimes sharing channels works sometimes doesn't at all.
4. build the mixes on piece at the time starting form the most important elements and then adding everything else, and please don't put your vocals last in the mix, add them very early or even first thing.
5a. don't try to turn your recorded material into what is not and will never be, I mean. if you recorded a jazz kit and wanted a black album drums you're screwed, live with it or re-record your material
5b. always record your sounds as close you need them to be.

 

[HotRats]

Fully agree and for multiple reasons. The biggest reason; removing some options for the future allows you to just get the damn thing done instead of dicking with it forever. If I’m tracking something with delay on it, that delay is going to get printed in the track.

This and going for full takes from start to finish are two things left over from the tape days that I refuse to let go of. While I’ll punch in all over the place as I’m writing, when I go for the final takes I go for full takes. While not everyone can hear the small variances/changes throughout the song, I know they’re there and they go a long way in not making everything sound like a copy and paste.

Dicking around is the worst thing of this work and usually leads to worst results.

I also find that committing finished sounds in many cases makes everything sounds more cohesive.

Of course there are exception. For some styles of music or kind of fox's postprocessing is basically the only way.

I actually really enjoy the sound design part of the mixing process when there's room for it.

 

[Bruce]

Fully agree and for multiple reasons. The biggest reason; removing some options for the future allows you to just get the damn thing done instead of dicking with it forever. If I’m tracking something with delay on it, that delay is going to get printed in the track.

This and going for full takes from start to finish are two things left over from the tape days that I refuse to let go of. While I’ll punch in all over the place as I’m writing, when I go for the final takes I go for full takes. While not everyone can hear the small variances/changes throughout the song, I know they’re there and they go a long way in not making everything sound like a copy and paste.

Just had some music hit iTunes a month ago. I recorded the guitars for it and sent them off when my son was still an infant. He’s now a jr in high school.

 

[la szum]

Favourite Producers?? Who do you all admire, or take notes/cues from?

I love Martin Birch and Terry Date for the hard stuff, and Daniel Lanois when
it comes to ambience and atmosphere.

 

[HotRats]

Kevin Shirley is my hero.
I also admire Chuck Ainlay work.

 

[Lopp]

My next step is to sync my DAW recording with Video (me playing), I have no clue as to how to do this , seems complicated
oh well one more thing for this noob to learn

I highly recommend DaVinci Resolve as a powerful pro-grade video editor and... It is free.

You can quickly get up on running with Resolve with your knowledge of DAW. Some of the features may require a little research, but there are tons of YouTube vids.