Why Mixing Is OVERRATED
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
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Don't get me wrong, mixing is a crucial step within any pro-level production.
The issue is that people (especially home studio owners that produce their own music) focus wayyy too much on the final mix when they should be focusing on the right things first.
Compression..
EQ..
Plugin bundles..
Outboard gear..
None of that stuff matters if you don't have the right mindset when producing your music.
In this video, I share why mixing is actually overrated and why your mixing "issues" might not be mix-related at all.
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The problem is there is not enough cowbell.
😁 good one...my old drummer used his cowbell so often that I could do without it for a long, long time! 😉
D: THE PHONK GUYS HAD IT RIGHT THE WHOLE TIME!?!?!?!?!?! OH MAH GAH
Never mix music, got it.
You should watch the video 😂
Not what he's saying.
Yeah this guys dum as hell lookup alexmadeit he leaks audio school material
Love it! I heard somewhere once, "Track like there's no mix." Great philosophy to have
This is a great succinct phrase. It’s taken me four years to get here but finally managed it!
My biggest issue in the entire creation process is OBSESSING over a mix. This is exactly the type of video I needed to see. Getting caught up on a mix drains so much of my time
we should be obsessing over getting great quality recordings, sound design, and sound selection along with good song writing and production. Mixing is just making everything "work" together before handing it off to master.
I find that my snare tends to sound like... Well, like "my snare," which is not a bad thing. Never quite understood why people obsess about sounding like something they are not, don't own, etc. And as for drums, there's a lot to be said for quality of the heads (old dead heads versus new heads) and tuning. Getting it right at the source, as much as possible, is "the way."
I love when people say “man these drums sound amazing, what are they?” And I have to tell them they’re live drums with 10+ year old heads 😂 It’s all subjective, if it sounds good it is good 🤙🏻
I relate to this ha ha. My snare always sounds like "something I would do"
I agree with the "get it right at the source" thing, but balancing your faders, subtle compression (and I do mean subtle, or even just a clipper set to grab a couple outliers) along with some wide eq shelves are essential. Mics and your room arent perfect no matter what you did to get it right at the source for what your hearing in your head. I would say, dont use your DAW to do things a traditional console/mixer cant unless you know what your doing. Most people butcher mixing on their own by doing way too much.
Lately I've got really "basement" results, but then I've just embraced it... To a point where I intentionally tried to make my own version of St. Anger snare. 😅
Nah this guys dum as hell lookup alexmadeit he leaks audio school material
Mixing is important but if you suck it doesn’t matter to begin with. Have fun
yep basically the point
the most valuable rule i learned was, "garbage in, garbage out". Start with sounds that sound the way want it to sound.
Totally agree. It should come as no surprise that metal music (one example) is becoming formulaic. First of all, everyone seems to use the same samples. So, while they are ok for a reinforcement technique, often, it just replaces the initial sound. Second, everyone uses the same techniques to mix towards a certain formulaic "tone." So few bands seem content to have their own sound which is not the stereotypical sampled/trigger drums, and guitar tone. I have personally experienced this. The members of my own band fixate so much on the guitar tone, that we do needless mix revisions to get to a different tone. I've spent years trying to make us better at get the SOURCE sound to the final mixed sound first, then edit to tightness and then last to tweak to perfect that sound.
Great advice! 100% agree 👍 plugin companies market their plugins as the thing you’re missing that will magically fix everything. The truth is, the fundamentals of good songwriting, good basic recording and production fundamentals will do way more than any mixing plugin. Keep up the good work Bobby 👍
Great video! Not sure if this has been mentioned in the comments but a lot of people don't have a well-treated room. If you're not mixing on headphones, the acoustic issues alone will cause you to make bad decisions regarding EQ and tone. Definitely something to consider.
you are right bro, been more inclined towards production in general as it just makes mixing that much easier and fun.
💯 I absolutely LOVED the free one hour lob training, highly recommended!
thank you so much for that free training. very useful sir
As usual, great advice from Bobby. All of these points are relevant. IMHO, there is nobody better at this than Bobby!
I start my “mix” from day one. The song arrangement/orchestration needs to allow every part to have its own space. Using quality instruments that are in good playing condition, well intoned, and already sound their absolute best without EQ/Compression, and using the appropriate gain staging, microphones and mic placement for the job. I don’t want my engineer fighting things in my recordings that should have been fixed on day one.
I had a few life things go on lately that made me fall away from mixing for the time being. But I still pop in now and then as your videos are so damn good! And I still can't fathom the low amount of thumbs up you get, for all the invaluable info you put out there. I just got to take a minute out to say, Thank you!!!
I have recorded three albums with totally different in style bands. I am interested in sound production myself, so I ask a lot of questions. There are a few common basic things all producers told me.
1) if you want to sound like Metallica, you have to play and arrange like Metallica (or any band you like).
Sloppy palm mutes, alternate picking and drums not backing up the rythm guitars won't cut it.
2) Song writing is a process of elimination.
If you come up with 10 good ideas, you don't put them all in the same song.
It's not like painting where you if you add a lot of colours on the same stroke, the result will be a dead grey, it's like sculpting where you chip away the stone to reveal the shape underneath.
3) Keep it proffessional. No half a**ed performances, no mistakes, nothing out of tune or in unintended discord.
4) Limit yourself. If you can't play it live, don't record it. If it's not good enough on the third take, let it go, or go home and practice until you nail it.
Bonus: If it doesn't sound catchy with only an acoustic guitar and voice, it is not catchy!
If you can't whistle the melody, noone will remember it!
Thanks for the Heart! I'm only commenting because in my experience, everything you said so far is proven to work!
Performance over Production, Substance over Style and from a producer's perspective, Simple and Functional gets the job done- not Complicated and Ornamental!
@@KostasHolopain the thing is, mixing is an art, so You need to focus on art, and not in correcting musicians failures. As long as You can do that, your mixes are going to be in a good direction.
@@mdrumjack Exactly! The thing is that most bands believe that anything can magically be fixed in the mixing...
@@KostasHolopainthis is why 80s pop grates me so much. The simplistic tones of those rudimentary synthesisers need so much additional wet that production sounds horrible to me.
@@Theactivepsychos Each to their own I suppose. I don't mind a more simplistic approach in music when the songs are good.
This explains why I am a Ramones fan, but not a Dream Theater one, lol!
Great advice. Thanks.
I’m guilty of so much of this. It’s only because I’m soooo eager to hear everything together lol. Then I tell myself I’ll redo it all later but never really do 🤣
I LOVE your videos, you have a new big fan. And you’re really talented at speaking and explaining things. 👍
Sage advice as always. Nice one, Bobby.
I can't believe I agree with him!
Great vid man. Good signal at the source, no clutter with unnecessary parts, don't get too caught up in trying to sound like someone else's gear. My only add would be to be yourself and enjoy your music as you see it for yourself. I was mixing way back in the early 80s through a Teac 2A into a 3440 4 track. When you laid something down you had to commit before you could bounce to free up tracks for more treatment options. I had no outboards nor fancy ass fx processing. I now use Reaper, Cakewalk and Studio One and while it is easier to edit/process takes, with endless possibilities, I make sure the parts are down good before I move on. Thanks for the post.
Yesterday I randomly saw this video on my home page while scrolling on CZcams. Which led me to the free training video. I watched it all, and now.....I proudly own the complete production bundle. I'm a couple lessons in, and my knowledge and understanding of mixing has drastically changed in such a tremendously positive way. I'd say I'm about two to three years into producing music and the whole time was stuck in that endless loop where all my mixes sound bad and I don't really know what I'm doing. I literally discovered you're channel YESTERDAY and the progression I have made in that small window of time is absolutely insane. I've watched countless CZcams videos over the years and was always confused by words and concepts they'd explain, and often would try to figure things out on my own. Nothing ever clicked. For some reason the way you explain things makes me almost instantly grasp concepts, I can now confidently identify all of the things I've been doing wrong and fix them. You are so realistic and straight up with your teachings of mixing and producing, and that as a learner in your course is extremely beneficial. Bobby my man- you have saved me so much potentially wasted time and money, absolute zero regrets in investing in your course. You are game changing. Thank You!!
My pleasure and so happy to have been a help with your progress!
Used to mix in the past. I do logistics now.
When i make my own music. I really dont care about my mixes, but i get really hyped and excited when i mix other folks tracks. Especially full projects.
Ok, I watched the free training and have a question. In the process 4. Radio-ready vocal processing, I hear the vocal harmony (doubler?) when the instrument tracks come along. It sounds weird, because there is only a single vocal track and it sounds dry without harmony when you play only the vocal track. How could it happen?
My biggest problem is vocal sounding harsh no matter the mic, then I realize the problem is the vocalist. Because no other vocalists sound as annoying as him. Thank God I no longer work with him because he permanently moved out of town.
Haha😂
Good advice on mixing guitars
Love the premise here - not so much mixing is "overrated" as a rebuttal of "fix it in the mix" mentality. Get it right before the mixing stage and you won't have as far to go.
Really great points made here!
I used to think it was the mix that was the problem as to why some of My music felt muddy and lacking until I edited one of theses songs outside of the DAW in a Audio app. Turned out that all the song needed was some EQ to enhance tye bass and other frequencys and essentially mastered the song I thought was trash. Then done once it could be replicated on other projects.
I am recording band live on zoom h8, i cant get guitar tone good enough close to the originan, i use two classic dynamic mics sm57 and sh906 ,tried to place it differently, i do not accept clipping, but guitar sound on head mic of zoom h8 which we use for room is much better, the guitar tracks sound distorted, some eq helps to make them better, but it is far from the desired sound. What can be wrong? can it be because we playing loud? What cabinet vokume is optimal? Can it be zoom issue?
😂 mixing is overrated when you don't understand engineering and have come to a point where you know everything.
Yeah this guys dum as hell lookup alexmadeit he leaks audio school material
People just put way too much weight on mixing. Production, placement, and composition is 80% of what people think mixing is. And 80% of that remaining 20% is eq, distortion, and compression alone. Your song should sound pretty good before you get to the actual mixing. It's about squeezing out that last bit
Edit: should've watched the video first cause this is exactly what he said
The source is the key!!
Two things have helped me with this over the years. First of all, get *the sound* early. Track it and commit to it. Don’t settle for a guitar sound that you’ll want to fix later on. It’ll never be as good as a great sound captured off the bat. Secondly, don’t ever allow yourself to become overwhelmed by option paralysis. My typical “channel strip” is just pro-q into pro-c. I have exactly one dedicated de-esser, one tape saturator and a handful of color processors like decapitator and brainworx’s focusrite console strip (godly on low end busses and acoustic guitars). Sometimes I’ll go even simpler than that…I’ve often landed on a final vocal sound that’s a single instance of pro-q3 for resonance control/de-essing followed by CLA’s [brilliant] vox plugin and that’s that. Having 20 processors that you know up and down is infinitely preferable to having 200 processors that you sort of understand, kind of. Don’t ever settle during tracking, keep your mixing toolbox simple and when you go big, go big for creative reasons like a wacky, filtered vocal delay or a crazy, layered reverse swell.
spindrift grapefruit sparkling water... i just bought some the other day. good shit. but then again, im obsessed with grapefruit.
You are so right.. Most of the time, the issues are poor performances, poor recording/tracking, A pro mix can sound nice, but if the content is not strong, and its not reocorded decent enough, its hard for a great mixer to create magic from a turd. Polishing the turd syndrome.
For guitar tone, what I still have problems working around is that I find a guitar tone that I really like. Aaaand they are awesome bedroom tones, not recording tones.
You have to record in context , and if you’re recording guitar first work around the initial tone
Course though, probably what they could try is waves torque, eventide spliteq, spectre right? one change the main tuning of a drum so it hits on the note they want it too. eventide can seperate transients, and spectre gives more color while keeping the signal.
On the real, that was only toward drums. the rest I am not sure what you'd do other than re-record it. feel like electronic music is the complete opposite of this, and many so called rock drums in most scenes are just modified sampled kits in kontakt. a whole different ballgame you guys have. staying out of this genre is what I prefer, but I applaud you all for the dedication and solid recordings people are wanting to bring to the table. that's very tough to do in my opinion
So I can’t make my live recorded kick drum sound like a 808 if I rent a Fairchild Compressor?
I’m on a few “mix critique” groups. Many projects are so full of wrong notes that I can’t bring myself to constructively comment on the mix. It’s kinda sad because often there’s so much work put into these songs. But if you can’t hear wrong notes, you’re screwed. Music theory!
Couldn't agree more.
What do you mean wrong notes?
Such good advice. "Get it right at the source!" The best mixing you can do is... Not really needing to do any mixing cos all the tracks sound great before you even start! In other words, you can put lipstick on a pig all you like... it's still a pig in lipstick.
stereo wideners probably will make your guitars sound less clear so tread carefully with such plugins, or just don't bother and increase the fader instead for ever so slightly so that your guitars will not be too quiet in mono playback when compared to using stereo wideners.
Another video just showed in step 1 how they just selected decent samples together and then it already sounded way better than my mixes. It was eye opening to say the least. Nowadays I spend a ton of time selecting the right tuning of the right snare, right tom and so on. ML drums is cool because they recorded the different tunings not just have 1 tuning and pitching it.
Do you remember the name of the video?
Can you explain impulse response to me like I'm 10 years old? 😄 I'm using amp sims too.
One piece of advice that hardly anyone ever talks about, especially when you're dealing with home recording, is to make sure that whatever sound card or audio interface you're using has high quality converters in it. You need to check those spec sheets to ensure it's ADC/DAC is as high as you can get for the price and definitely above numbers like 106 or 108 in dynamic range. You can go out and buy $1000 monitors, $1000 mic, even an expensive pre amp but then you go run all that through a subpar interface with bad converters and then you're mixing audio from out of that same subpar sound card is why your mixes suffer because you can't mix what you don't hear. All those other factors like acoustic treatment and quality performance matters too but don't slack or at least be aware of what audio interface you have and especially before you invest in buying one.
I would add stereoizing tracks with delay. A lot of guitar tracks are stereo and helps to soften tracks. Just listen to any demo from any old band
Good tracks mix themselves. Just bring up the faders to where it sounds good, and you're almost there. A little bit of EQ and compression later, and you have a very useable track. But getting good sounds at the source is the hard part.
This is an excellent video! Subbed :)
So the problem is me. Got it. 😂 You’re not wrong. I truly do appreciate all the information you provide on this channel. I have learned a lot and my mixes have definitely improved, but I have a long way to go and a lot of practice to improve in myself.
Thanks for your video. I think the take home here is:
Best mix strategy, is good tracking... You cannot polish a turd.
Oooh boy. Don't hate me now, but I kinda sidechain my snare to my kicks because I don't want low end phase issues, and right after the kick hits the snare comes and... It's just there. I mean there is a snare, and it kinda makes my kicks more powerful or "punchy".
Yes. It was missing real tape and even a little AD clipping.
I felt that. After awhile I stopped buying plugins, and just started listening to my mixes as a whole. Another thing I realized is that I can’t compare myself too much to bands I like cuz at the end of the day, my band consists of totally different people from my heroes. I still feel there’s a need for improvement but that will come from constructive criticism and digesting the track itself.
Videos like this confirm that there are WAYYY too many clueless people out there trying to do this. I used to think "populism" in the music business was a good thing, now I'm not so sure.
last mix I researched ended up having 8 snare samples on it.
Was hoping to learn something new 😭
5:30 Am i tripping that i hear a whistle?
It's like they say "music is food for the ears"
Good ingredient in, and the right spices ; great dish
Crap ingredient in and add too many spices to cover it up ; bad dish
Always cook mixes with good ingredient if possible and you'll you save yourself from ear-acid reflux
I struggle with dialing in a mix-ready guitar tone. Should I finish the drum and bass mix so I can dial in the guitar tone to fit with those two instruments? Or should I leave the drums and bass dry and unprocessed, and dial in the guitar tone then?
Maybe try to fit the bass and drums around the guitar?
And invest in a mix ready IR pack if you dont already have done that.
I liked the advice of working with bass sound together with your guitar sound. In concretion, I very quickly dial in an okay guitar tone, and then I go to the bass track and swap around the IRs while the guitars are played. I listen to which one fits the guitars the best.
To me it would feel so strange and unnatural to dial in the bass tone before the guitar tone. I usually just dial in the guitar tone to the dry drums.
@@christopherharv maybe the unnatural and strange change is what you need to do.
Otherwise you can get a bass VST where the tones are pre mixed. And are designed to fit in a mix.
Make it easy for yourself, so you can use your full potential my man!
There is no dos or donts in the music world.
Its all subjective.
I've never created an actual mix in my life beyond playing guitar over synth/drum loops and maybe adding vocals. But some of these are so basic that I remember them from the audio engineering course I did in community college. And that was a summer course I did for extra credit in highschool 20 YEARS AGO 😂😂
A very hot take of mine, bring back the garage demos. I’m speaking mostly to black, death, thrash and doom metal bands here. I feel metal should be primal and rebellious. Focusing more on the music versus the production. Modern metal to me is more of an EDM style production. I just wish bands bring back the dirty, gritty and underground sound. Let the musicianship and song writing be the spotlight versus how good the mix is.
I'm going to pick at the argument and say that; in today's world, things like sample replacement on drums, and choosing the right impulse response actually counts as "part of the mixing process". It didn't used to, because we used to actually record and "fix" these things onto the recording medium, we used to always mic a speaker cab, and drum samples weren't really a thing way back when. But it's 2024, and these are just things that a lot of artists would expect their "mixing engineer" to naturally do as part of the process. So, with that in mind, "mixing" is an awfully important part of the process, because the definition of what counts as part of the mixing stage has been greatly expanded over the years.
Feel 100% free to disagree with me, I just thought I'd offer a different perspective on things :)
Great video, by the way!
You are probably the first blogger, a real guru, who explains the very essence of the process, and not a bunch of junk! Thank you, your videos are more and more useful!
Check out house of kush
If the old school albums weren't heavily edited, they were really strong takes. Watching a Cannibal Corpse DVD with the drummer Paul struggling to survive while Eric Rutan is telling him to do it again lol
After spending 10k on plugins, I feel the overwhelming need to prove you wrong because otherwise I feel like a fool.
He is wrong, recordingrevolution is wrong, anyone who says the plugins don't matter is wrong. Like ok you CAN be good without plugins if you already have the best sources, but my guitar sounds like shit, and beyerdynamic + nx studio make it sound workable. Proximity and Rbass make my vocals sound passable. BOD is needed for software bass to sound right. These emulate things like preamps that would've already been in use and taken for granted in real studio setups. And of course, compression and noisecanceling.
Tracking is God. And in a pro studio with people that really know what they’re doing.
I can’t get the beaters to stay in the mixer…..frig!
Also your music isn't played by Dave Grohl, recorded at Sound City, mixed by Butch Vig, mastered by Howie Weinberg.
*mixed by Andy Wallace
I don't accept that as an excuse! I live my life with the view that I'm capable of learning to do almost anything given the right knowledge and equipment, so If they can do it, I MUST be capable of doing achieving similar results, I'm just not there yet!
@@Dave-Rough-Diamond-Dunn good for you. 😄
@@MC-og5ssIt is! In the meantime, you'll just accept that your mixes suck and keep making excuses! Sucks to be you! 😂
the best mix I ever got it happened just recording every tack the best I can and making good gain staging...
So true! Good video as always. Get it right at the source and the mix comes together SO much easier. Garbage in garbage out.
Yyyuuuuppp been saying this for years 😂😂😂 amazing how many people still comment "BUUUUUUTTTTT"
And the proceed with straw man argument.
I get so much flack for saying the same things you're saying. But it's because CZcamsrs have essentially over glorified mixing as if it's the magic. Blows my mind how much emphasis is placed on mix when most peoples pre-mixed tracks sound like garbage.
I couldn't agree more!
100%. Can't mix your way out of a trash production anymore than you can master you way out of a trash mix.
I don't feel like it's necessarily overrated, but definitely not as essential as it used to be. Because now you have songs that abuse clipping distortion, like rap 808s. Then these songs will chart like crazy. There's also a trend in harsh vocal saturation, like BLADEE. It's sad but it's not as essential as it used to be.
I think this stems from the fact that a most of the industry is geared towards beginner home recordists with everything being "mix ready" and "studio ready" and so on, completely neglecting the engineering side of things. Most people nowadays can do a fairly decent job mixing, the problem is that they usually work with badly produced and engineered tracks. The 2 main things that separates top mixers from your average small studio producer is a) they can deliver quality at an insane speed and b) they almost only work with top quality productions from front to back. That's why their songs sound so much better.
So if you can't get access to great engineers and producers (granted there's currently a lack of them in the industry) then maybe try becoming yourself a great engineer and producer. If you succeed, you'll have no shortage of work
My first thought was drums. LOL. and the first thing you said was drums.
a mixing god.
A ten-minute explanation of the meaning of "s*%t in, s*%t out".
Have you tried the new Grape Spindrift??
Wow, I didn't even know that existed! Definitely gonna be looking for that in the supermarket tonight.
I haven't seen it in stores, but I got an Instagram ad 🤣@@FrightboxRecording
Garbage in, Garbage Out.
TL;DR: shit in, shit out.
Regarding guitar tones. Tone is in the fingers.
to sum it up, get it right at the source, the less mixing you'll have to do...the age old addage
Shit in - shit out:)
I struggled to get the guitar tone I wanted from ir's until I found God's Cab (Mesa OS)
You are absolutely right. 🙂
Overproduction is not better production. It might be in the case of Def Leppard's "Pyromania" or The Cars "Heartbeat City" with Mutt Lange obsessing on all the little bits. BUT in most cases, more is less. If you try to hard, that trying hard is the feel of the final result. If you want the song to feel xxx, you gotta be that when doing it.
:-)
Mixing is overrated also because after all, people won't care too much about the mixing, but more about the song's meaning and composition
This is a great topic. Remember to have fun folks. If you're really paying attention and feeling excited by what you're doing (picking sounds that inspire you, creating an arrangement that feels good), the song will mix itself. If you're focused on copying someone or some band (with the secret hope that the world will tell you how brilliant your music is) you might as well give up and go for a walk. Successful music making only comes to people who work fast and have fun throughout the entire process.
The less plugins the better tbh.
I use EZ Drummer 3, my snare is a sample I downloaded. I just adjust the snare volume in EZ Drummer. Works for me.
EZ drummer 3 is so crazy good. The drums sound so awesome it forces me to record better tracks.
2 min to get to the point. It is a recording/ tracking issue. Next.
Some of the best sounding music was mixed in the 70s from tape without computers.
❤ Why it sounds so nice recording in tape and how do they manage to avoid noise, can you please tell me
I do think that AI will take over mixing in the future, and being a mix engineer might have an expiration date now.
Many commenters on this video seem like goofs who either didn't watch the video or listen to the point.
The point is: If you don't track well then you won't mix well. Period.
I agree! I think most people see the title and comment before they even watch the video 😂
Get it right at the source, obsessively.
I totally agree, i always thought i might be hearing well but my hearing just totally fine on an audio test, most of the time when im listeing too mixing/ mastering walkthroughs i just dont hear any audibile change,
And now with ai i dont really have do doo crap,
0:39 turning off this video
I have never once listened to drums in my life.