how i mixdown tracks - quick, simple, loud and clean mastering
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- čas přidán 31. 07. 2024
- In this video i explain my overall aproach to mixing down electronic dance music. From creating, to mixing, balancing frequencies, clipping dynamics i tried to explain everything. join my on the ride!
#music #mixdown #production #elevate #ems
more in the mixing & mastering playlist: • how i mixdown tracks -...
0:00 intro, HELLO!
2:08 creating & mixing drums
10:22 layering drums
11:49 gluing drums
12:56 clipping drums
15:30 frequency balance drums (ozone)
21:52 creating & mixing bass
24:27 sidechaining the bass
28:03 mixing the bass with the drums / overlaping frequencies are good
30:00 overtones for the bass
51:20 music parts / pads / piano
1:13:00 outro
Loudness is not in Mastering: its in the Mix
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Hi, I'm Polarity and do music at home in my small bedroom studio. I record regularly sessions and publish them here. I also broadcast live on twitch from time to time. // Hallo ich heiße Polarity und mache Musik hier in Berlin in meinem kleinen Schlafzimmer. Ich zeichne regelmässig Sessions auf und veröffentliche sie hier. Wer möchte kann das auch live auf Twitch verfolgen, wo ich öfters Live sende!
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BTW I finally joined your group. You're hands down the best out there for everything related to not only Bitwig but my favorite for watching your process and approach in general. I've been making music for a long time and I always learn something watching your content so joining and paying for your group is the least I can do, after watching your videos for the last year plus. Thanks!
🙏 thanks for the kind words ❤
This is brilliant. Might be in fact one of the greatest mixing videos for electronic music or all time.
Perhaps it needs to be a first mixing beginniers lesson before wasting time :P
Made it to the end. Might be your best video to date. Every little bit is perfection.
i've needed this video from you for so long. 🙏
Wonderful! Your pacing and clarity is greatly appreciated.
The Ozone 8 EQ pink noise trick was so useful, didn't know about it until now. Thanks for all the time you will be saving me !
gold.
Love this in depth tutorial man. Thank you!
This is such a great video, thank you!
I learnt so much much great tutorial especially on the drums great tutorial
Danke!
Golden lesson!
Hi, you are my 5from5 Star Contributor for this Month! Really really new stuff for me to learn. Even motivating me doing 1000 new things! I call this is showing passion for the community!!! Thanks a lot Bro, Keep on moving like that! :-)
❤
Amazing videio. My paper full of notes, screenshots, timestamps... Very informative!
💜
Some great tips! That EQ5 reference option on the side panel is pretty slick. Just like you mention tradeoffs in how you balance the energy of freqs, if you/we end up spending too much focus on the technical aspects of mixing and mastering, while composing, it tends to take away from the just the composing and trying to create something that sounds amazing. As most of us are solo composers and producers, it's obviously more of a challenge because we don't have a studio with multiple people responsible for different aspects. As I get older I try to at least get the ideas down before focusing on more technical. It really depends on each person and their skills and talents, but Ultimately it's trying to balance even more than just the mixing or mastering. It's all a lot of work and time.
Can you save time if you are "mastering" while you compose? Possibly. I still think you can create a great song and it not be perfectly mixed or mastered. Average consumers could care less as long as it makes them bob their head, tap their foot...or shake that booty.
you make a great point about making a decision and sticking with it. having a thousand ideas cluttering the screen and having to decide which several to go with or just being pragmatic yet creative and going with something you've already made the decision about in your head. i think that comes with confidence over years of music making. it's the same as a painter who thinks about the next move they're going to make, or not thinking about it, but simply having the confidence to make the next move and allow it to be intrinsically confident in nature.
yes overthinking is in most cases harmful to the craft. if you decision is not good, you learn something anyway and maybe do it differently next time. :)
@@PolarityMusic hopefully yes lol
I remember an interview with Krust some years ago and he said for roughly every 14 tracks you start, you get one good one that is worthy.
I feel is though this is a fairly accurate thesis. It's not too hard to create some cool sounding shit. But to get one that really nails it and stands out uniquely takes a culmination of multiple efforts.
true! also this is a great talk about this topic too. watched this years ago. czcams.com/video/vM39qhXle4g/video.html
@@PolarityMusic always try to keep that in mind and move on with your projects that helps for sure! good tip
Pretty much got a similar workflow by making the individual instruments peak at 0db and sometimes some hard clip but I have started to work with the channel mix at -10db or -15db if I have a lot of instruments. trying to not go past -5db on the master. found it to be easier to balance and mix dynamic tracks that way. during mixing or creating the piece, I just turn up my monitoring system a bit to compensate for the lower output volume. After mixing I usually end up around -3db on the master so a bit higher than at the start of it. which I guess is me getting used to how loud things are and just pushing it louder just a bit because I don't watch the master volume during mixing. when mastering one of the tools I use is a loudness analyzer and push the whole mix with a limiter until I get to a satisfactory loudness for whichever platform the piece is intended.
But great video it does cover a lot of good things especially if you need something quick and good sounding without going through the full process or more traditional way of mixing then mastering which just takes a lot of time or money
sounds good. I go for gain staging too for traditional songs, sometimes. but like you said its always more work, and involves alot of compensating for volume changes in all kinds of places.
Now do house and techno! Please!!!! Love it!
Thanks for all your videos, this one has been very helpful in many ways but especially about mixing levels when in the creation process. The bit I’m still confused about is the gain staging subject so the following may be confused / misinformed, so I’d be grateful if you could clarify a couple of points for me?
You mentioned several times about using the peak limiter to adjust various elements to 0db (especially kick and drums generally) as an anchor to start from. This confused me because I thought that if I were to have too many tracks that were peaking high then I would be more likely to end up clipping on my master channel and I thought that was why BWS’s default new track volume was set at -10db to avoid that problem? I saw in your “check your levels” video that you change that value to 0db. Also I watched your K20 metering video where you were aiming for green/yellow (which equates to around -20db) and if channel meters were red then it was too loud. In this video I saw that many of your channel meters were going red. Does that matter if the individual track and/or the master channel meters go red? I guess we’re naturally programmed to see red as bad or danger (but I don’t know if that’s the case here).
Also I always hear about the optimum -18db level for plugins (I assume this is essentially the same principle as -20db level in K-20 metering?). Am I right in saying that the 0db level is what you might try to aim for with your drums after all processing has been applied in the creation / mixing stages? And would that be 0db for the individual drum element channels, the drum bus channel, or the master channel?
Lastly I’ve heard about leaving headroom (but I’m not sure if this headroom is needed on all channels or just the master channel, I believe this headroom is required for the mastering stage?).
As you can probably tell I’m a bit confused on (many) levels 😄
Thanks,
I do a pretty quick straight forward gain staging on each channel. Nothing concrete. Thank you for the video
Thats great Stuff.. I use a similar technique to your ozone pink noise technique as Reference tonal level guide, but instead of ozone I use bitwigs - Spectrum Device with the "B - Device input" pointing to a Pink Noise Generator Device Output (MNoiseGenerator - Melda Production) as reference guide on the spectrum analyzer in bitwig on the track. I also turn off the output of the MNoiseGenerator (pink noise generator), so there's no audible signal coming from the pink noise generator and replicate the same spectrum device thats pointing to the same pink noise generator on multi tracks/groups/master for quick reference.
Nice!! Good to not have that plugin dependency. I appreciate the tip
Master track -6 need if I do alone?
Love this! My question: I manage to get good results with the modulation like at 42:00 in thus video. But from that moment on I would like to kind of change this modulation, sounding like opening up the filters more sort of speak. But these are 2 sounds now and the eg the cutoff is already modulated. So I think you should have a macro knob which increases the amount of modulation. But I don’t think it’s possible. I hope you understand my question 😅
yes. you map a macro to the "amount" of the modulation in the left inspector. i think i made a video about this when it got introduced, but not sure which video :D but you also can map two macros to the same target... it´s a quick way of doing this
@@PolarityMusic Yes! It worked. Searched for its own automation lane, but you have to do it via a macro. When you aim correct you get an arrow underneath the modulation amount in the left pane.
Your Peak Limiter trick is also gold. Most of the other tips I was already aware of, but confirms them and are spot on. When you need more topend you should try lower your lowend instead of slapping an EQ on. Mindset!
I have to dive into Phase4 and Polysynth. Perhaps you could also make a video how to create the 'popular' sounds for the different genres with these synths? Or am I the only noob who can't get his head around sound design :-)
Also: I noticed that you almost always use individual reverb/delay per track. Some say you should use sends so multiple tracks 'live' in the same space. Using all different reverb/delay per track is supposed to sound messy. What's your opinion about that?
It would be nice if you could zoom in on your processors and show what you are doing, I can't see what is happening, it would be a big help!
Lots of good, valuable advice. Thanks for the EQ match / pink noise tip in Ozone. One visualizer I do like is Tonal Balance Control, also from iZotope, at the very end of the master bus. Pick a genre, switch to Fine mode, and use it as a guide to agree with or not.
You can also import noise or any song into Tonal Balance Control (White Noise with a -4,5 db/oct curve for example works well), so you can check against any kind of frequency spectrum possible
Hi Polarity, danke für das Teilen dieser meiner Meinung nach klugen Tips und Weisheiten (auch im guten Tempo und nicht zu simpel, niocht zu repetetiv), die im Gegensatz zu den Behauptungen der allermeisten "tutorials" stehen. Vieles, was Du sagst, habe ich bisher nie so präzise in Worte gefasst, daher eine gute Referenz zum Verlinken, wie auch ich es verstehe. Ich wollte Dir gern noch eine Anregung geben: Habe inzwischen so einige Deiner Videos angeschaut, und es scheint mir so, als ob Du "upwards" Kompression noch nicht so richtig "entdeckt" hast für Dich? Ich weise deshalb darauf hin, weil Du ja sehr richtig sagst quasi "context is king, always" beim Musikmachen. Nun könnte man auch anstatt die Drums zu crunchen, auch den Hintergrund "heranziehen". Ich verstehe schon, dass gerade ein Clipper auf dem Drumbus auch diesen speziellen, eckigen Sound bewirkt. Rein dynamisch betrachtet könntet Du aber auch die Drums oder gar den Instrumenten-Bus mit Upwards-Compression verdichten. Das hat z.B. den Vorteil, dass die Transienten, also das Nahe vom Sound - sofern sie hübsch klingen - vollständig erhalten bleiben, und auch der typische Kompressionssound auch weniger stark ist. Ausserdem bin ich mir recht sicher, dass Upwards-Kompression nicht Parallel-Kompression entspricht, weil bei Upwards-Modus sich Attack und Release und ggf. auch deren Kurven gegensätzlich verhalten können. Jedenfalls klingt es deutlich anders. Man erhöht/verlängert im Grunde die Sustain- und Release-Phase. Das Dynamics Modul aus Bitwig kann ja upwards Kompression, allerdings nur rudimentär, es fehlt eine Range (wichtig, damit nicht das leiseste Rauchen plötzlich auf 0dB anschwillt) sowie ggf. ein Freedraw Modus. Richtig gut hier finde ich zum Austesten MCompressor bzw. MDynamics, auch TB BusCompressor v3 scheint mir richitg gut zu klingen (leider nicht mehr weiterentwickelt, gäbe noch TB Compressor V4, finde ich nicht so toll klingend...?). Würde mich jedenfalls sehr interessieren, welche Schlüsse Du aus Upwards-Kompression ziehst. Grüße!
naja ich nutze im video den sustain gain vom transient shaper. is ja auf ne art upwards compression. aber ja, im grunde mag ich den sound nicht so, das gibt dann schnell so einen plattgedrückten edm sound imo. Ist geschmacksache, wie vieles :D
what is that hard clip rack?
look czcams.com/video/-wxy651bwPk/video.html
You are the boss! I'm learning a lot from your channel. If I could make a wish I would like if you could make a tutorial on how to make a track in Moderat or Avoure style. 🙏
Do you clip vocals too?
usually not. but when i like the sound then yes
@@PolarityMusic another question: do you Clíp all the sounds to 0 db then gain stage them or just by ear?
letting every track peak at 0db (with limiter or clipper) it is gain staged for me :D
I turn then tracks down i want to put in the background
@@PolarityMusic awesome! I’m a little confused, the bass and drums don’t clash at 0 db both? And do you Clíp the instruments like synth pianos ext? Thank you
if they are in the same frequency range then yes they clash. this is why i turn down the sub/bass by some db and let the kick only the loudest part. eqing or positioning parts in the frequency spectrum is also important. my sub is low, my kick above, then snare, leads, pads, vocals, hi hats on top. everything has its place.
Im not sure what exactly i said in the video but the whole clipping part is only about getting the dynamics under control. if you think clipping sounds too harsh, then fallback to soft-clip or limiter or compressor. for more softer results.
After that you dial everything back you think it needs to be more in the background. like pianos, leads or bass. and only leave parts in the front (peaking at 0db) that you want upfront. maybe the kick/snare or vocals or whatever. depends on the track / taste.
you can also do the traditional approach and gain stage via rms or lufs and leave headroom, and then fiddle around with compressors while maintaining the same loudness, which is imo a longer process but sometimes better (for film music or ambient, where you want high dynamics) and then dial in the faders for a mixdown.
Hey, have you heard of Clip-to-zero strategy (CTZ) presented by Baphometrix?
yes, but im still not sure why its called "strategy" or why there is a new term for it. all this stuff is around for years. I remember clipping/limiting at 0db back in 2005 :D Mixing is all about frequency balance (eqing) and reducing dynamic range (limit/clip).
yes, for it's also reinventing the wheel all over again for mysterious reasons. Just was curious what you think about it :-)