How to have a good mix?

[steevio]

its worth doing an exercise in checking all the fundamental frequencies of everything in your mix, and then charting them, and it becomes really obvious what needs tuning up or down. your ears are only partially good enough to spot these overlapping frequencies in a complex mix, but when you use this method to change things, you notice the difference straight away.

Im interested in this, but how do you do that? Simply by looking at the highest peaks on the eq chart? What are the more accurate methods? If you can elaborate a bit it will be great, because i always hear about avoiding clashing frequencies but i dont know how to properly analyse the spectrum on my tracks. Thanks.

yes thats it basically. just isolate your parts and spectrum analyse them, or run them through the oscilloscope i posted earlier for AK.
the biggest spike to the left will usually be your fundamental, each subsequent spike will be a harmonic, or another note if its say a chord or compound sound. a chord will be a mixture of notes and harmonics, but its not difficult to work out which is which.
download the harmonic chart from wikipedia;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_s ... 28music%29

read up on harmonics, and read it again till it becomes normal to think in harmonics, this stuff is so fundamental to music and mixing that you have to know it.

[simonb]

i find the best way to get the levels right is to take out everything in the top end of the spectrum first and make sure all the low end stuff works and grooves without it.
so i mix my kick, bass, low toms, low synth sounds etc. and make sure everything is clear and there's no mud, (even mixing only the lower oscillators of a synth sound) my cut-off point is roughly around 300 Hz.

That's an interesting idea, I'll try that in my next mix. You're right that things like hi-hats tend to fry your ears a bit so it makes sense to get the lows sounding good first.

I'm steadily improving at mixing, and it's hard to say exactly what the 'secret' is... I think there's a lot to be said about really understanding EQs, compression, reverbs and so on instead of just slapping them on and hoping for the best. I'm only saying that as someone who spent far too long just slapping things on and hoping for the best I mean, really think about why you're, for example, cutting a certain frequency with EQ and listen to the effect it has in the overall mix. I recently read "Mixing Audio" by Roey Izhaki which I thought was a really good book, quite long but it explains stuff in detail and has lots of audio examples on the included DVD. I not only went through the examples but tried experimenting on my own sounds as I read it.

Or you could just adopt the approach mentioned by Steevio and some others, i.e. if you're using electronic synths/sound sources there shouldn't really be any need for much EQ and compression when you can adjust the sound at the source, again it's an interesting idea.

[steevio]

to be honest most of it is down to experience.

even if your monitors/acoustics etc are not optimum, you can compensate if you know what you are doing.

i think the one thing that worries me about beginners these days, is 'the mastering engineer will sort it' syndrome, and they dont see the importance of putting the hours in practicing and perfecting their mixing technique.
when i started no-one ever thought about mastering engineers, other than the guys that cut your record. it just wasnt an option.
every single producer i knew back then was an expert mixer / composer.
there's no reason why it shouldnt be the same now.

put the hours in, thats the secret. - with anything.

[tone-def]

lets not forget, most mastering engineers that do stuff for digital labels will make your tracks sound worse. if you want good mastering you need to pay for it.

[isaaclevy]

following this, very interesting.

[simonb]

put the hours in, thats the secret. - with anything.

+1.

There's not really any big secret, it's all about getting the right knowledge then putting in as much time as possible. Not got enough of that "time" thing in my case

[qfactor]

You should know your monitors and your room. Listen to A LOT of music similar to what you are producing and you'll get the idea... Also, be sure to invest the money and the time to get good gear, very important if you're doing this seriously.

[qfactor]

lets not forget, most mastering engineers that do stuff for digital labels will make your tracks sound worse. if you want good mastering you need to pay for it.

This is particularly true... if a label it's not paying for mastering, avoid it.