7 pro techniques to improve music production mix _ getthatprosound
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My favourite tool for the job, Waves
Renaissance Compressor.
PRODUCTION TIPS, TIPS & TUTORIALS | 08. MAY, 2010 BY
GEORGEGTPS | 21 COMMENTS
I was thinking today about how there are some pretty basic production
tips that I wish I’d taken on board earlier with my music. If you’re
anything like me, sometimes you have to hear the same tips and advice
repeated a few times before you start thinking, “Hang on, if I actually did this, changed my approach a bit, rather than just keep writing tracks the
way I’m used to, I might actually get better .”
So make the effort to try something new or different with how you
approach your productions every now and again – it may make things
more difficult at first, but it’s the best way to improve.
Here are 7 such things to try – pretty simple, but often remarkably challenging
to remember when you’re caught up in that moment of creative inspiration:
1. Parallel compression
Using compression effectively is
fairly easy once you get your
head around the principles of
what it does to your signals, and
it’s the simplest way to give your
sounds some of that elusive pro
punch.
Moreover, getting punchy drums is
really key in any genre these days,
be it rock, techno, dubstep or drum
& bass. Even in modern movie
soundtracks, you really want those
huge orchestral percussion hits
pummeling the audience with the force of an explosion!
Parallel compression is one technique that can help here. It sounds
complicated but it’s not – you simply duplicate your drum track (or any other
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type of track), and then heavily compress the duplicate, leaving the original
uncompressed. When you play them back together, you get the powerful
‘breathing’ dynamic sound of the compressed version, whilst still retaining the
detail, brightness and clarity of the uncompressed version. The best of both
worlds…
Incidentally, another term for parallel compression is “Motown compression”,
because part of the famous old 60’s Motown sound was created by using
parallel compression with an EQ inserted right before the compressor,
tweaked specifically to highlight the vocals. So whether you’re inspired by
Marvin Gaye’s Motown classics, or other compression fans like Dutch drum &
bass heroes Noisia (you should really be listening to both in my opinion), give
parallel compression a try.
In case you’re wondering about the right tools for the job, check out my list of
The 10 Best Compressor Plugins In The World for suggestions.
Noisia feel “What’s Going On” from Marvin Gaye
2. Sidechain compression
If you’ve listened to any electronic or dance music over the past few
years, you’ll recognise sidechaining immediately – it’s that pumping,
breathing sound where it seems like the drums are punching rhythmic
holes in all the synths and pads. Sidechaining is guaranteed to give any
track more groove, as generally the more dynamic interaction you can
create between the elements of your track, the greater the sense of a
really tight, driving whole.
It’s achieved basically by compressing one signal with another – so for
example with my tech-house track, I set up a compressor to act on the synth
pad channel, but the compressor is triggered not by the synth pad sound
iteslf, but by the kick drum track. So when the kick drum sounds, the
compressor squashes the level of the pad right down, creating the
characteristic ‘sucking’ effect.
Let me know if you’d like me to cover the specifics of this in a proper tutorial.
3. Correct and ‘incorrect’ uses of reverb
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Jesper Kyd’s hit
soundtrack for
Assassin’s Creed II
Generally speaking, you would normally set up maybe two or three
different reverbs as send effects (FX Channels in Cubase, Aux Channels
everywhere else) when you start a project, and as you create and mix,
route some of your individual tracks to one or another of these. I believe
it’s important to always leave at least one sound completely free of
reverb though, to give a sense of where the ‘front’ of the mix is.
However, things can get much more interesting when
you use reverb plugins as inserts on your channels.
My favourite trick for creating really haunting
ambience pads and hit effects is to insert a reverb on
a channel, bring up a huge ‘cathedral’ or ‘church’
preset and set the wet/dry balance within the reverb
plugin to 100% wet. You’ll be surprised how you can turn really uninteresting
source samples into cinematic gems.
Games composer Jesper Kyd is a master at combining traditional orchestral
techniques with unconventional/modern sounds – have a listen to his recent
score for Assassin’s Creed 2 for an idea of what a difference effective reverbcan make, for free at his Myspace page here.
Check out this post on The 10 Best Reverb Plugins In The World: guaranteed
to get the creative juices flowing.
4. Set up your speakers correctly
You can spend all the money you have on great sounding gear, but if it
isn’t set up correctly in a half-decently prepared room you may as well
not have bothered. This is because you can only operate your gear
effectively based on what you can hear in your particular listeningspace – so if your speakers are bunched up in a corner of the room,
you’ll probably find the bass is boosted quite significantly. This is great,
until you come to mix your music based on this bass-enhanced sound –
when you play your mix back somewhere else, you’ll probably find that
there’s no bass at all because you compensated for the ‘colouration’ of
your room sound/speaker setup.
I’ll be covering how best to set up your
home studio in more detail in a future
article very soon – but in the meantime,
get your speakers as far away from the
corners and walls as you can (within
reason, even a few inches can make a big
difference), and try to position them so that
there is an exactly equal distance between
the left speaker, right speaker, and
where-ever your head is when you’re
listening/mixing (making an equilateral
triangle). You’ll find you can make more
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Make an equilateral triangle
between you and the speakers
Minimal techno superstar Richie
Hawtin knows how to keep things, er,
minimal
accurate decisions about panning and
respective levels across the stereo field.
5. Get minimal – Less Is More
It’s easy to get carried away when you’re inspired, and it’s great to
explore every idea you get for a particular track. However, the flip side
of this is you then have to know how to edit your ideas and only
incorporate the best ones into the final mix.
In the end this comes down partly to
experience – knowing what will
sound good because its worked for
you before. But more fundamentally
it comes down to having a clear idea
of what you want the track to do,
why you’re making it in the first
place. Once you work this out, and it
can be tough sometimes to realisewhat the real reason is, you’ll find it
becomes obvious what should stay
and what should be left on the
virtual cutting room floor.
A good rule to work by if you’re not sure then, is “if in doubt, leave it out”.
Always work towards creating more space in your mix, and make the few
elements that are already there even better rather than piling on more stuff.
Clutter and a lack of focus is a sure-fire sign of an amateur mix. If you don’t
agree, listen to your favourite music and count how many different elements
there are going on at any one time. See?
Since first writing this post, I developed this idea into my 10 Producing
Principles: see that post here.
6. Variation and dynamics
Incorporate builds and drops,
quiet and loud sections, even
changes in tempo from slow to
fast (most live bands naturally
speed up very slightly in thechorus, for example, and this
definitely has an effect on the
soaring feel of some choruses).
Maintain the listeners interest by
making the track a living thing,
constantly developing and
morphing.
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Amadeus knew how to build to a
crescendo, then bring the crowd to its
knees with a massive euphoric
breakdown
Study and reference your
musical heroes… but don’t
turn out like the guy in this
movie.
Also, the best way to make
something seem really huge and
loud is by contrasting it with
something very quiet and intimate-
sounding. This is the trick behind
the best breakdowns in all forms of
dance music: anticipation created by
switching from hard and loud to quiet and sparse, and back again. Orchestral
music and movie soundtracks are great sources of inspiration here. I mean,
look how ahead of his time Mozart was.
7. Compare & contrast
If you’re like me, you’re constantly
comparing how your music sounds in
relation to your favourite artists.
I’ve found the best way to set this up
usefully is to have a couple of my favouriteartist reference tracks actually running on
their own ‘Reference’ track within my
sequencer, that I can solo on and off with
one click – that way, I can make super-quick
A/B comparisons between my mix and the
ball-park sound that I’m trying to stear it
towards. Remember, always start with the
goal in mind…
Just make sure when you do this that you don’t
inadvertently or otherwise produce a really
good rip-off / cover version of your reference
track instead of your own original idea… we
don’t need more doppelgangers… :)
There’s more on choosing and analysing reference tracks in this 3-part
series:
Improve Your Mixes Now: How To Select & Use Reference Tracks Like A
Pro>>
And many more production tips and tricks here:
50 Pro Tips For Breathing Life Into Your Electronic Music
TAGS: ASSASSINS CREED, COMPRESSION, CUBASE, DRUM & BASS,
FEATURED, JESPER KYD, MINIMAL, NOISIA, PARALLEL
COMPRESSION, REVERB, RICHIE HAWTIN, SIDECHAIN, SIDECHAIN
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21 Responses to “7 Ways To Improve Your Music”
08. May, 2010 at 3:51 pm # alex
hey, mr robinson, i think this site is awesome! well done! but how
did you learn all this stuff?
what is yr advise for somebody like me that loves music but doesnt
know how to start? i dont even know how to play a keyboard!
REPLYREPLY
10. May, 2010 at 2:14 pm # george
Hey alex, thanks for your comments!
I guess I learned first from reading everything I could on the subject
of music production, then actually doing it a bit, then talking to people
more experienced than me. Then a bit more doing it myself, a bit
more experimenting, a lot more reading, especially interviews with
other musicians and recording artists, and all the while a lot of time
spent listening critically to as many different kinds of music as
possible.
Then while I was doing my Filmmaking Masters I also had the
chance to study with tutors from the Royal College of Music, as well
as professional sound designers and film composers. But the
fundamentals I taught myself, and I believe anyone can do the same.
You don’t even need to be able to play instruments, you just need
some imagination and your computer mouse to click in notes and
samples.
I’ll be writing a post shortly on how to get started in making music on
your computer, stay tuned! All the best, G.
26. Jun, 2010 at 12:40 am # St Mark
Nice post.
Regarding parallel compression, it’s also commonly called “New York
compression”.
Another way to achieve the same result is to use a send to an aux or
bus, and insert the compressor on that aux or bus. This approach
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therefore does not require duplicating the tracks.
REPLYREPLY
15. Jan, 2013 at 5:29 am # j. isaac
+1
26. Jun, 2010 at 1:55 pm # george
Hey St Mark, that’s a good tip, especially for keeping things
uncluttered on the arrange page of your DAW. Certainly a better solution
if you’re using this technique on lots of individual tracks (likely for
dance/electronic music).
REPLYREPLY
05. Nov, 2010 at 2:58 pm # Emiel
sidechain, please cover in detail. im usgin very old (1998) db pro
comp with send receive for it, interested in your method(s)
REPLYREPLY
05. Dec, 2010 at 5:58 am # Kyle
Hey there. I really appreciate what you do here. I’ve been
searching for a site like this for quite a while now and I’ve finally found
this! I’m an amateur engineer and I’ve been trying to ‘get that pro sound’
on my mixes for a few years since I went to school for engineering.
Anyway, thank you for taking the time to do this.
- Kyle
REPLYREPLY
20. Dec, 2010 at 10:25 pm # george
Thanks Kyle, if you have any further requests or anything
drop me a message and maybe I can incorporate it into a relevant
post ;)
20. Dec, 2010 at 4:29 pm # Nick108
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The word ‘clutter’ comes to mind when asking people who hear
my music repeat often. Too much happening all at once, and
please, shorten tracks, but its hard when there’s so many tastes to try to
merge, a million ideas all going at once, that key word, light and shade
and ‘if in doubt’ leave it out.
I open a file and try to grab into it, the sounds I like. Then later when
writing, only use what is in that file, it starts to sound like me, not
someone else. And practise rearranging commercial CD tracks to suitmyself. Like my tortoise, one foot in front of the other slowly and surely,
he gets right from his night box to the pond, thats the same way I try to
progress. I like sites like this because it explains what I need to know or
already suspected, and teaches me to follow it.
I tried Tafe course earlier this year, but left after five weeks. When I
asked specific questions like ‘how do I change an Xpand sound using
midi in a piece of music. I was told ‘that is not in our curriculum’. At that I
left. I find I learn more from sites exactly like this. Its relevant to what I
need to know, not someone elses curriculum designed to help pay the
mortgage on their house.
REPLYREPLY
20. Dec, 2010 at 10:24 pm # george
Thanks for your comments, it’s great to know you’re getting
practical benefit from these posts. You’re right, I’m not running a
curriculum with a grand overarching scheme – rather just chattering
about some of the things I *haven’t seen highlighted very much in
courses, but which I’ve found to be useful and applicable in my ownway through personal experience.
I guess part of the difficulty of learning about any subject, particularly
early on, is knowing what’s actually relevant to you and your personal
approach, out of the much larger mass of information available. So
I’m glad you found something relevant to you here! :) I hope your
tracks are becoming more de-cluttered – feel free to mail me some if
you like. George.
27. Feb, 2011 at 6:24 pm # Gavin
Hey, about the parallel compression… How should you set up
the compressor… would you just use the same settings you would
normally use on a drum track…. i looked at the image you had by your
explanation and noticed that you had a small ratio (1.25), the threshold
was turned down to -19.6 which is more than I usually use on my drum
tracks. Also the attack time was very late and the release was really
long…. is this just a random picture or actually an informative image
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based on settings you would implement? I also noticed that is says
Mastering Opto for the settings….
For a drum track, say with my TR-808, I usually set the threshold
between -10 and -13, I set the ratio to about 6:50, the attack to
anywhere between 16 and 33, the release to between 125-130, and
then I adjust the gain on the compressor. Let me know what you think
about these settings.
BTW I am using the R Compressor as well.
Thanks and great site!
-Gavin
REPLYREPLY
17. May, 2011 at 5:06 pm # stephen
good work, I’ve been looking for a place like this to help help out
newbies like myself! thank you!
REPLYREPLY
06. Aug, 2011 at 10:59 am # Ralf
Hello
thanks for your webpage.
Information stripped down to really important stuff.
I’m wondering whether it makes sense to have an send channel only for
drum reverb and then route the whole drum kit through it.
I want to archieve that the drum kit can be placed in the mix as one
REPLYREPLY
06. Aug, 2011 at 1:39 pm # george
Hey Ralf, thanks for your comment.
If I understand you correctly, I think the simple solution is to first route
all of your individual drum kit channels to a group channel / buss –
that way they can all be controlled as one, with a single channel fader
when you’re mixing.
Then you can send all or individual kit sounds to your reverb send.
Then, if you want to control the dry kit sounds and the reverb send as
one in your mix, route your kit group channel and the reverb fx
channel to another group/buss.
There a couple of other routing options to achieve your final aim of
controlling everything as one, but this is the structure with the most
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built-in flexibility, where if you want to go back at any point and adjust
any individual level, the amount of reverb on individual instruments,
or any aspect of the overall balance, you can.
I will soon write a post on gain structure and routing options when
mixing, I hope this helps in the meantime! G.
25. Aug, 2011 at 11:39 am # Gabriel
very nice sir!! thanx for the input.
REPLYREPLY
29. Aug, 2011 at 6:03 am # Adam
Great website, very glad I found it. Im just starting out with
ableton and im trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible.
Thanks
REPLYREPLY
04. Aug, 2012 at 2:08 am # houmam
Thanks
REPLYREPLY
15. Jan, 2013 at 5:35 am # j. isaac
you are like… a genius . I love that u are posting stuff like this..
however I am afraid that someone will steal my style and I will be
deemed as the one who stole THIER style… I feel like my music is
good. I mix it well (days) and I make cool sounds (some samples ..dont
know about copyright infringement) and then how do I make it big??
what about the politics… the people I havnt met…and the style or song
that someone made that sounds like mine but better :(
REPLYREPLY
16. Feb, 2013 at 12:52 pm # Kelvyn
I just discovered this site and think its fabulous!
Just one thing though. There seems to be a general consensus that
‘Less is more” which I find somewhat confusing and potentially
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dogmatic. I agree that as a rule of thumb if one doesn’t know or isn’t
sure how best to implement technology or music into a production that
it’s better to stay on the safe side by keeping things simple. But there is
something to be said about a raucous cluttered approach to arranging
and mixing obviously depending on the creators vision. I love Phil
Spector’s ‘Wall of sound’ approach and personally try to avoid keeping
things clear all the time as it’s nice to mix it up sometimes as well.
Thanks for all the information:)
REPLYREPLY
17. Feb, 2013 at 3:49 pm # GeorgeGTPS
Thanks for raising the point Kelvyn, really interesting and
thought-provoking.
Firstly, I definitely wouldn’t want to advocate any idea to the point
where it seemed ‘dogmatic’ – as you say, I’m thinking of ‘Less Is
More’ as a helpful rule of thumb rather than a fixed rule that must be
adhered to at all times. It’s not something you have to keep in the
forefront of your mind at all t imes, necessarily: Think of it as
something to remember when you get stuck with something, as a
possible approach to overcoming a problem. ‘What happens if I take
this element out of the mix? Does that solve my problem?’ or ‘If I tried
limiting myself to only one software synth, one compressor plugin…
would that enable me to make more tracks faster and speed up my
learning curve?’
Perhaps ‘Less Is More’ has been mentioned in quite a few articles
throughout the site by now, because I find it can be applied in so
many contexts, but maybe the accumulated effect of this is the
impression that I’m ‘banging on’ about it :)
I think I first discussed the idea properly in the 10 Principles Every
Producer Must Know To Achieve The Pro Sound – please check that
out if you haven’t already, as I talk there about how there can be ‘No
Rules… but Principles Are Useful’.
You’ll also notice in that article that No.1 is ‘Less Is More’; No. 3 is
‘Challenge All Assumptions and Question All Accepted Wisdom’ – so
I believe you’re absolutely right to be wary :)
Yeah, when is Less not More? In terms of throwing a whole bunch ofsounds and parts around and getting properly ‘messy’ with our music
– I agree, creativity isn’t clean and tidy, and if we try and keep things
too precise at every stage of the process we’re likely to end up with
quite rigid and unexciting music. And it’s not very fun to be too
methodical all the time . (It can also take longer to learn things if we’re
too careful and methodical: in my experience, happy accidents are
often a major part of the learning process and the styles that different
people develop.)
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Leave a Reply
I love your example of Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ :) In one sense
he is kind of ‘the exception that proves the rule’: one of the reasons
his style is so famous and has it’s own catchy name is that it is/was
so unusual and does fly in the face of many of the preconceived
notions of how pop music could be constructed and what it could
sound like.
On the other hand, you could also say that while a ‘wall of sound’
approach is designed to create a very dense, ‘more is more’soundscape, the way it’s constructed is by layering together many
parts playing quite simple things in unison , with lashings of reverb
contributing to the sense of complexity; this kind of production
necessitates that the number of different musical parts/phrases being
played at any one time needs to be pretty carefully worked out, and
this led to a certain stripped-down, ‘formula’ approach:
“[It's] basically a formula. You’re going to have four or five guitars line
up, gut-string guitars, and they’re going to follow the chords…two
basses in fifths, with the same type of line, and strings…six or seven
horns, adding the little punches…formula percussion instruments — the little bells, the shakers, the tambourines. Phil used his own
formula for echo, and some overtone arrangements with the strings.
But by and large, there was a formula arrangement.”
- quote from Jeff Barry, Spector collaborator.
Does this mean you could apply Less Is More to Spectors very clear
mindset of what he wanted to achieve and how he was going to do it,
if not his production style? I’m not sure, but I enjoyed thinking it
through :)
Oh, one last thing: Spector also resisted stereo in favour of purely
mono mixes (arguing that stereo recordings took the control of howthe record sounded away from the producer and put it in the hands of
the listener and their particular playback setup) – definitely a case of
Less is More!
Anyone else have any thoughts or examples on this?
13. Apr, 2013 at 8:01 pm # Denta
Thanks for this great article! I’m very satisfied because i’ve found
this site!
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