Okay, on to the final stage where everything is make or break, it really doesn't matter. If you've recorded another best tracks in the world. If you can't mix everything together into just a single stereo track, then it really doesn't matter. This is where the rubber hits the road. Your final piece of music is going to be delivered in a single file that has just information on the left and right side that means that we have to balance all the levels of all the tracks so that everything can be heard. And also we can achieve a balance between the left and right speakers also call in backwards a little bit with our delays and reverbs and just get a perfect balance between all the instruments in our Sonic space we talked about before the lows, mids and highs.

It's kind of a fun exercise to clean up your desk, put away all your toys, just grab a cup of coffee or tea and just kind of see what you have to work with. If you're traveling If you've recorded a crappy then we record them garbage in garbage out, right? You might be able to fix problems with punching in like we showed you in the last session. But sometimes I just find it might just be easier to rerecord some of those tracks. Anyway you do it, you should have the building blocks of your song. And they should be well recorded individual tracks that we will balance together to get a well mixed, final stereo track.

Okay, I'd love to tell you that. Here's the 123 formula to mix your tracks. But there are many different mixing styles depending on the genre that you're mixing. This might seem like a stretch, but listen to this. Think of it this way. How do you shoot a movie?

Is it a documentary or romantic comedy Thriller I mean, think about all the colors, looks and supporting music in any of these movie types. The look of the movie ends up almost being like one of the characters. Movies are produced in a star for example, this one here is called down with lab was made a number of years ago but certainly alludes to a lot earlier period and that probably around the Maybe mid 60s Now this one he is shot with lots of bright pastels check us out Barbara Novak beers the better houses do number one author has everything she needs. So obviously, that song sorry that movie was shot with lots of bright pistols the production look of that is very, very bright. So you might be thinking, Okay, I guess that's the way you should movies compare and contrast that to another movie called nine.

So if you were to see that movie might be here, I'm sorry, I've got it all wrong. I guess the way you shoot movies is lots of dark shadows and people in silhouette and maybe just a key light. There's no fill lights, and you'd be wrong basically. This is pretty obvious to everybody. Movies are produced in Certain style and they pay honor to genre and we really the same way with mixing songs you need to mix within a genre check out this genre where you hear the kick drum. It's just kicking drum lots of low end, but you definitely hear that kick drum really shines through that mix compare and contrast that this song did you even hear the kick drum here?

What's the permanent instrument or instruments within that mix? Of course, the horns right now you might be crying faster. Hey, come on. This is completely different time. They didn't have really good recording equipment back back then. That is true.

But I guess the way I would prove my point is if I could bring a modern recording that I kind of was mixing the staff from. From a timeline. Go check this out. I love this guy, his name's Raphael Saadiq. record this a couple of years ago. But what genre is he honoring that corny guitar right now is that I had this guy's album and there's some vocal tracks on there that actually kind of break up this distortion on create made a really clean recording Absolutely.

But what he wanted to do was pay homage to that genre. So we mixed within a style. So remember that genre is so so important when mixing you better have listened to a million records in the genre that you're working on. If you want to create a type of mix the buying public want to hear if it's country, you need to have it sound like this. Big Blue banjo live lots of fuckin raw right from the mind down back in Australia. Big drums right listen to that.

I have is pretty hot. While your average record buying public doesn't know, a DB from a hertz, you better know that they have heard a ton or records in this genre that they're interested in. They'll be looking for that same sound from your song. I mean, you can get creative and wit. I mean, we're supposed to be credit but please, please know the ballpark that you're playing. Does that make sense?

Now, having said that, there is one common principle that seems to pretty much go across genres that you can pretty much take to the bank and that is this, who is the undisputed star of your mix? Absolutely is your lead vocal. If you can't hear the lead vocal clearly above all the other elements in your mix, then you might as well pack up and go home. Try this experiment, go to the food court in your local mall and listen to the music piped over the PA day. Chances are with all of the background noise of everybody buying their Chinese food and cinnabons and the fact that those little speakers in the mall have really no basement. All your hair clearly is the lead vocal and that is exactly what the people will be whistling as they go home or to the record store.

No one goes time and you know whistles the baseline. It's hilarious that we mix using thousand dollar genelec studio monitors but the people here mostly stop by Little crappy little speakers. But anyway, any any way you can it make sure please, that vocal is king. Now if you have all the band members looking over your shoulder asking for their instrument to be louder, you're going to be caught in a never ending Battle of ever increasing levels. Let me put it this way. Okay, let's paint a picture.

I like blue, someone would like red. We've got green, what about purple? We're still not we have nothing but black. If everyone wants to be heard, no one will be heard. We only have so much Sonic space to mix in. So we need to make judgments about what's what gets put in and more often than not what gets left out.

Just remember that the vertical is king and we want to place everything subservient to that vertical. So in terms of mixing, I mean, what can we do? Let's take all of these instruments and place them on different channels. You can see that the drums has been broken out into kick, snare and hi hat. With everyone having their own channel, we can then have much more creative control. Remember that vintage pitcher with all the band members around a crowd around a single microphone, not much control back there.

But with everybody miked up separately and recorded on separate tracks. And coming up on individual channels, we have a lot of control. Now, does anybody get intimidated when you see a big mixing console like this? Be honest it right. But here's how I look at it. First, I get all the unused challenges out of my head, just get get rid of them.

Then I just need to concentrate on the remainder of the remaining channels. In fact, just learn one child because all the rest are really a duplication of those channels. Once you get over that fear. You can pretty much did on a massive console. I'm not breaking a sweat By the way, actually, I did. The course at UCLA on movie sound and those guys have the craziest console.

In fact, it takes three guys to mix. A movie in their consoles can be 20 feet wide. One guy mixes dialogue, one guy mixes folly, and environmental sounds and one guy does the music. It was a really, really cool cause kind of understanding how much audio plays a part in movies. Anyway, here's a tip to break down the exam, the anxiety you might feel when dealing with a mixer. If you want to pan the snare drum, then look at the row of pan knobs and cross that with the snare channel.

And then you've got your target. You want to EQ your piano across the EQ section with a piano channel. And voila, that's the area to concentrate on. You don't have to worry about anything else. So in terms of mixing, think about what can we do what we can adjust relative volumes using the faders. We can pan back and forth across the stereo field using the pan pots we can aggregate Variable delays to position the track further back in the mix via awk stems, we can add insert effects to fix problems or give the track maybe a special character like compressors to make a channel pop out of the mix, or maybe a noise gate to quiet down a track.

We can EQ each track to boost or cut certain frequency ranges to change the tonal color of that channel. But in terms of our personal mixing, I like to break the process down into three steps and in this order first and always first, fix your problems. Then get a rough mix and then finally push the sound to Final Mix. Let's look at fixing problems first. Now if you have a horrible sounding track with hiss and distortion, save yourself, save yourself a bunch of time and just go back and record it again. I've wasted countless hours trying to save a track that really just should have not been saved.

Sometimes it's just better to start again. If it's a musical mistake, like a bad note or something Then punch in and fix it using those tricks I showed you in in the last session. Now, in terms of fixable problems in your mix, we'll look at the big two, and they are EQ problems and isolation problems. Let's look at fixing EQ problems first. Now, if we were to take an issue like this, and we could wrap up the game, and we'll narrow up that queue, so therefore, we are just boosting a very small band of frequencies, then we can sweep that all the way up the top of the spectrum, all the way down until actually problem just pops its head straight out. Once it's popped its head out and we've identified that then we can take the gain, and we can pull that down to get rid of that problem that I've put that little Gremlin in kind of you can see still there.

It's not like you can get rid of him completely. But with a narrow enough cue and the right type of problem. You can really get love these problems just set them right out with a very narrow band EQ. Let's look at a practical example. Okay, let's look at EQ problems. First I'll play this song Can you hear that be affected by so this guitar, it's right on this guitar track.

Now if you're listening on little tinny laptop speakers, you may not be able to hear that hum. But if you're listening with headphones, or through some decent speakers, you're here, there's a nasty hum on that guitar. So we can use the technique that we learned a little while ago by turning on this EQ and what I'll do is turn on this band here. Remember what we did, we ramped up the gain. We narrow down the cue right? And then we sweep that cue around until that problem frequency pops its head up.

Let's have a listen. Fingers we can hear that really loud and clear right here. So remember what we did. Now we've accentuated that area. So it's kind of like that whack a mole technique. If you've ever gone to the bear and you've been at work a man's way, the whole idea is you wait for the little threats head up, and then you try to hit it.

That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to accentuate the problem. We're certainly not going to leave it like that just made the problem worse, but what we did by making it worse, we've allowed it to kind of stick up its ugly head, then we can take this game and we can just shop that straight out. Check out how it sounds. Lot of that actually got taken out. So the trick to fixing problems in your frequency spectrum could be something like a nicely quality and vocal maybe boom unison, the floor tom.

So maybe in this example, which was a home on a guitar track, what you end up doing is cranking up the game, make sure the queue is nice and narrow and a switcheroo until you find the problem, then suck it out. Now, you'll notice that I was doing this in software because we can really just see everything you know, visually, but certainly you can do this on many hardware multi tracks. But I would suggest to some of you that just have hardware multi tracks that you might want to start using your computers. Pretty much everyone has a computer and there are, you know, software applications that are eating Like audacity, that you can export your tracks in your computer, we can work on over there and then pull them back in there. A lot of these techniques I'll show you can be done in hardware, but boy, it's a whole lot easier to accomplish them in software.

By the way, that's a big reason that I've recently got this little zoom recorder because it's really the best of both worlds it can record up to eight XLR at a time and then you can just drop those bars. It records a little SD card showing your computer and then work on it from there. You can even act as an i o box and control surface. So you can mix from your computer from the faders from the front desk Anyway, back to fixing problems notching out frequency ranges is really a great place to start. If you have problems on your track, keep that notch really narrow to avoid cutting out the good stuff, particularly if that good stuff. And the problem live in the same area.

I mean, if you had a track that had high hats and it had a 60 hertz hum on it, you could easily Crank that 60 cycle hum out without worrying about the source material, right? Because a 60 cycle hum. What about if that was an a bass guitar that lives right down there, you don't need much more care. I mean, I've been asked how could you fix that I just re record it. And you can also use EQ to pull up a whole frequency range at 80 hertz roll off the text the rumble out of a vocal track. Maybe you wanted to roll off the treble on a kick drum or bass guitar track to take out any unwanted hiss.

But be careful of this because only taking out the frequency range is obviously a well away from the good stuff. Maybe the really low end away from a cymbal overhead mic, maybe the really high end hiss from a bass jet, you kind of get the picture. Okay, on to the next big problem with transmitters with isolation problems. So probably the fix will only probably be done in software. I don't know personally too many hardware model tracks that have decent noise gates. Remember, we looked at this back In the effects section, but basically you seller channel, you go to the noise gate and you turn that on, and then you fish around with the threshold so that you let the big stuff come through and weed out all that spill.

Okay, once we fix the problems, we can then move on to getting a rough mix together and then and only then we can start really fine tuning that mix. And all this happens across a mixing landscape and in your typical stereo mix. Now, it all happens between these two speakers. And even though this is just really a one dimensional space with some time tested techniques, we can actually position sounds in a kind of a pseudo 3d space. Most obviously the fader and pan control on any channel will position that child that child between the two speakers with different levels, the positioning of these elements in your mix have tended to kind of settle into these standard ones, like the lead vocals typically right in the middle, the background vocals can be spread out wide kick and snare down the middle. Hi Hat normally just to one side a bit, listen to some of your favorite songs on headphones and try to isolate all of those sound elements in your head and kind of take note with our pad.

You can experiment a little bit Remember to honor the genre that you're working in, and certainly don't stray too far back. One big thing to consider is that there are elements that take up a lot of power, anything that has a lot of low frequency power, like say kick drum and bass drum suck up a lot of energy, so it's always best to place them right down the middle so that they can use both speakers. And by the way, a lot of the frequencies down there are hard to hear the position in terms of pen anyway, so you know, just put them straight down the middle and get creative with all the other bells and whistles of your mix. In terms of placement out wide. So most instruments will be placed at one point across the stereo spectrum by using the pan knobs. There are some instruments that are naturally stereo like say a drum loop.

For example, if you have a stereo drum loop that you want to get the most out of, then assign it to a pair of tracks and pan each of these guys out wide. Maybe have some backing vocals that you want to place. Maybe 10 is in the middle altos and the left and Sopranos on the right. There may be times actually when you want to widen a track, but place the guitar right down the middle and add a delay to it. See how wide that became. Let's see that one again.

He's original guitar at a very short delay So isn't that amazing how that guitar sounds I mean, if you place it right down the middle and delay it, if you delay it long, you're here kind of two guitars if you do a very short delay, and then pan those guys out what it just stretches it out between the two speakers. In terms of front to back, we use the tricks of reverb and delay along with relative volume to push a sound further, from front to back, the lower the relative volume and the more verb on the sound, it will position it further back in the mix. Listen to this example. Let's take a piano and place it right at the front of the mix. So you can hear that's a closed mic piano it sits right at the front of the mixer if we add some reverb to that.

It kind of gives the impression that it's further back Mix. Obviously that is over the top the example of how much reverb I would never put that amount of reverb sounds doing some flashback scene and some sloppy ships with chick flick or something like that. But you get the idea is that a little bit more of it tends to just place it back in the mix. Again, don't put that amount of effort. Now, up and down is kind of a stretch but we tend to visualize high sounds being up here in LA sounds been down here I'm not sure whether it's something to do with vibrations like through the floor, and that we sing up high in our head and falsetto. However, however we think about it, we tend to kind of visualize sound this way like lows here and highs here so we have left and right.

With a plane or pamper, we can stretch sounds with a short 30 millisecond delay, we have back to front control with relative volume and reverb. And up and down kind of is where the sound is on the frequency spectrum. So, when you think about mixing is almost like crowd control when you're just taking a picture of a whole huge family reunion, you just want to position everybody, all the folks around so everybody fits into that picture. Now, remember, we said earlier that one particular element is king in a mix. What was that? Absolutely the lead vocal.

And here's a great mixing exercise that we can do work on getting your feet wet with mixing. Imagine if you could have a professionally recorded backing recording that had the entire mix nailed down except Billy Burkle. That way you could practice recording your lead vocal, and positioning it perfectly in the mix. without all the other moving parts in the picture. Where do you think we could find a professionally mixed backing track without a lead vocal? Any guesses?

Absolutely as karaoke? This is a great exercise to have all the parts except your lead vocal now down so that you can really concentrate on the start of your mix. If you can't get the vocal to sound good over this, then you'll never get good to sound over your own tracks, right. So, I've actually recorded a lead vocal track over this backing track. And let's see if we can make this sound like a record. Okay, he's on my vocal track right here and his backing tracks as well.

So first thing I do is go into my gate, turn that on, and you can see it it's closing your paradise. Except when it's in there, but no, it just sounds a little flat paradise park in LA shredder A lot of times I'd make my own effects but there's so many presets and these guys it's a lot easier to fish around here. So I'm down into the dynamics. And the great thing about this you can check it out. you're auditioning these guys strike. Wait till it sings again.

Here we go. paradise for the past. Oh, bingo. Okay, that'll be great. You can see that again. Okay with that selected, let's go ahead and click on OK.

So already it's sounding a whole lot better right? You got to pay paradise park in LA. Looking at each you now and we'll turn that on. I'll use my whack amole technique to put them in a low mids. Keep that very narrow and push around. was around 372.

Now let's widen that out a bit. And then I can start pulling that out of it. I don't want to pull a whole lot because that's where a lot of my buddies my vocalist, check it out. Okay, I can't pull that amount, but I can pull out maybe a tiny little smidge boxes. Now let's go to some other to bring up a ramp is completely our dice. That's what I'm boosting but let me just reduce it by a tiny amount.

Also go to some air in my verticals. This is what it sounds like boosters are the next couple of TVs. This one here is a plate reverb. So we'll turn it on. paradise with a fast food sickness caught up really quickly just so I can hear that slap. A little bit of slap, they're able to punch certain words if you like.

So you can bring that all the way down there and just ramp it up on the words that you want to echo. Another way to do it is actually setting you want it to be and then you can turn it on when you want park in code Cool, we took a vocal recording in a closet on $100 microphone and made it sound pretty good, right? I'm telling you, nothing will get will reveal your biggest problem quicker than this exercise. So if you can't get a good result with a karaoke track, then get back to basics. How's your mic technique? Are you close to the mic are using a pop filter?

I mean, do you even have a decent mic? Keep going back to this exercise until you have a really good result. Just go ahead and Google karaoke tracks to find some tracks to work on. Okay, let's get to work on building up a basic mix and many people will have different views on building a mix. You made may have your own I can only show you what's worked for me and I find that is the most common way to build a mixed net This is kind of like constructing a building. You start with the foundation first and immerse genres.

That is the rhythm section of the drums and the bass. It's great to build the foundation of the rhythm section first, because everything else has to kind of settle on that bid. So I have a song here that I've been working on. You can see that we have drums, a little percussion loop bass, a couple of guitars, a Rhodes piano, lead vocal and a whole bunch of backing vocals and here's what it sounds like just with all the faders go ahead and mute own vocals just want to work on the band first. Just kind of getting a rough feel of the backing band here before we start with me. Okay, so let's go ahead and we'll mute all the band members are here so we're going to deal with the vocals.

Go to the vocal part here we go. All I need is you every day by my side. Got to let you know you're the one that stopped working on the bland here. About lovers between you ruin Yeah. In my life all I need to remember I'm working on a bunch of vehicles I'll set up a locator where all the workers come in that way I can always just go bang straight back to like this. Oh Andy Did you bring the band back in.

This whole pot is really just trying to really just use the faders and the pan pots to kind of get a good blend. We'll polish it later but just to kind of get a blend here. All I need one thing I will note over here I've doubled the vocal right here and off to the right about now. Never been known by designers. Now we're never known. I think if you were to solo this it sounds horrible.

Place that in the mix. Then actually sounds decent. Oh that's a rough mix.