This music is fantastic! Very Techno-orientated. Love it. If I may be bold to offer a little critique, the first track seems mastered a bit too loud with audible clipping. The second track has smoother, better mastering. If you ever need help with some quick mastering advice, do let me know mate. I can share with you my method of mastering.
@ollie said:
How do you get it to sound professional?
Won't lie. It took me years of practice to get my mixes to a professional quality. Okay, brace yourself for a longer post.
First of all, there are no "magic plugins" that can make your mixes instantly sound better. You can get a decent sounding mix using stock plugins just fine. Of course some plugins sound better than others when it comes to certain kinds of effects like reverbs and delays, but cut your production teeth on stock plugins first.
I know you're going to invest in Cubasis 3, and the stock EQ works a treat, its compressor is decent, its reverb is adequate for Ambient fodder, etc. The IAP effect packs are worth every penny as well, especially the Waves effects. More than plenty to get you started on your mixing journey.
So, about professional sounding mixes, I'll give you a handful of "secrets" in regards to EDM and HipHop. First of all, with EDM and HipHop, it's wise to use a highpass filter to cut out the low end of most elements in a mix except the kick drum and the bass. You don't want the kick and bass fighting with other instruments for room in the low end. When EQing, a general "rule of thumb" is when cutting a frequency use a higher Q (thinner bell curve), and when boosting use a lower Q (wider bell curve). Another "rule of thumb" is it's better to cut than to boost. Then again, once you understand and grok these "rules of thumb", you can break them if you wish.
Secondly, it's wise to use either a sidechain compressor on the bass which ducks the bass each time the kick hits, or to use something like Flux Mini 2 to duck the bass once every quarter note. I prefer Flux Mini 2, which is a free plugin.
And in fact, you can use Flux Mini 2 to duck most things in the mix to the kickdrum. However, here's a secret that not many beginner producers may know. Use a longer envelope for ducking the bass, and a shorter envelope when ducking elements higher in the mix. The higher the notes of an instrument, the shorter and less severe the ducking should be. Again, that's just a general "rule of thumb".
Layering. When layering elements in a mix, keep in mind which instruments are your lead instruments and which instruments are your background instruments. In Trance music for instance, you'll be using a lot of layers. Lead instruments usually get a slight wide boost around 3.2kHz (I'd say no more than +3dB max), and background instruments get a slight thin cut around 3.2kHz (I'd say no more than -5dB max). That way the lead instruments shine through while the background instruments help pad out the mix and not make it feel so empty. (Then again, for some genres like Minimal Techno, you really don't have to worry about using so many layers.)
Then again, if you're doing a vocal track, it's a smart idea to put all non-bass instruments on a single buss/group and do a thin cut around 3.2kHz. The vocals should get a slight wide boost around 3.2 kHz so they stand out in the mix.
LEVELS! Setting the proper levels for elements in your mix is paramount to a proper "3D" sounding mix. It's, dare I say it, a bit more important than EQing even. However, it can often be a bit tricky to get the levels proper without some sort of method of "magnifying" the mix in general. SO, what I do is I solo everything but the kickdrum, slap a limiter on the master track, adjust the input/threshold until the gain reduction is around -2dB to -3dB, raise the bass, and then adjust everything else around the kickdrum and bass. The idea is that "if the mix sounds great while having the shit squashed out of it, it'll sound even better when I use a mastering plugin to raise the level to about -14LuFS".
Yeah, I usually leave adjusting levels to last as I want the mix to sound perfect when being heavily fed into a limiter. Once I'm satisfied with my mix overall, I remove the basic limiter and use Grand Finale 2's "EDM Punch" preset and adjust the input gain to get the mix up to -14LuFS. Sometimes a peak will slip through Grand Finale 2, which is why I also use an additional limiter set to -1dB. If using Cubasis' brickwall plugin, that's job done. However, if using somethign like Groove Rider 2, I use NoLimits 2 after Grand Finale 2, adjust the input to +1dB and its output to -1dB. That way, I have 1dB of headroom.
Leaving enough headroom is very important. Many streaming services online will compress your audio into a lossy format (.m4a, .mp3, etc), and if your mastered mix doesn't have enough headroom, the audio will sound like garbled dogshit when converted down to .m4a, .mp3, etc.
That said, as far as getting the LuFS levels correct, I use Youlean's Loudness Meter. I paid a lifetime unlock to get the live graph visual feedback, but you get the numerical output for free.
That's about all my poor brain can think of at the moment, Mr. Oliver. If you have any other questions pertaining to anything specific, do let me know. And, a lot of this advice can apply to all genres, but some of the advice is specific to EDM and HipHop. But given that's what I heard you produce is beat-based music, hopefully you get something out of this long-ass post.
Comments
https://on.soundcloud.com/jzcYUGV69dUof692A
Here’s another one
This music is fantastic! Very Techno-orientated. Love it. If I may be bold to offer a little critique, the first track seems mastered a bit too loud with audible clipping. The second track has smoother, better mastering. If you ever need help with some quick mastering advice, do let me know mate. I can share with you my method of mastering.
EDIT: Followed you on SoundCloud by the way.
DeepNode just sounds like that, all buzzy and stuff… so does SuperSawTooth. it was intentional
Maybe I could drop the master track down some, make it sound smoother, but it’d still be buzzy
Ah okay now I understand better.
Fair enough mate.
https://on.soundcloud.com/6QW2P8XLcLr6WHVu6
New one … I love this track
Hey JWM…
I would like your advice on mixing!!
Oliver this is incredible!
My favourite one of yours to date.
And yes, ask me questions about mixing. Lmk what you wish to know, mate.
How do you get it to sound professional?
Won't lie. It took me years of practice to get my mixes to a professional quality. Okay, brace yourself for a longer post.
First of all, there are no "magic plugins" that can make your mixes instantly sound better. You can get a decent sounding mix using stock plugins just fine. Of course some plugins sound better than others when it comes to certain kinds of effects like reverbs and delays, but cut your production teeth on stock plugins first.
I know you're going to invest in Cubasis 3, and the stock EQ works a treat, its compressor is decent, its reverb is adequate for Ambient fodder, etc. The IAP effect packs are worth every penny as well, especially the Waves effects. More than plenty to get you started on your mixing journey.
So, about professional sounding mixes, I'll give you a handful of "secrets" in regards to EDM and HipHop. First of all, with EDM and HipHop, it's wise to use a highpass filter to cut out the low end of most elements in a mix except the kick drum and the bass. You don't want the kick and bass fighting with other instruments for room in the low end. When EQing, a general "rule of thumb" is when cutting a frequency use a higher Q (thinner bell curve), and when boosting use a lower Q (wider bell curve). Another "rule of thumb" is it's better to cut than to boost. Then again, once you understand and grok these "rules of thumb", you can break them if you wish.
Secondly, it's wise to use either a sidechain compressor on the bass which ducks the bass each time the kick hits, or to use something like Flux Mini 2 to duck the bass once every quarter note. I prefer Flux Mini 2, which is a free plugin.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flux-mini-2/id1617636726
And in fact, you can use Flux Mini 2 to duck most things in the mix to the kickdrum. However, here's a secret that not many beginner producers may know. Use a longer envelope for ducking the bass, and a shorter envelope when ducking elements higher in the mix. The higher the notes of an instrument, the shorter and less severe the ducking should be. Again, that's just a general "rule of thumb".
Layering. When layering elements in a mix, keep in mind which instruments are your lead instruments and which instruments are your background instruments. In Trance music for instance, you'll be using a lot of layers. Lead instruments usually get a slight wide boost around 3.2kHz (I'd say no more than +3dB max), and background instruments get a slight thin cut around 3.2kHz (I'd say no more than -5dB max). That way the lead instruments shine through while the background instruments help pad out the mix and not make it feel so empty. (Then again, for some genres like Minimal Techno, you really don't have to worry about using so many layers.)
Then again, if you're doing a vocal track, it's a smart idea to put all non-bass instruments on a single buss/group and do a thin cut around 3.2kHz. The vocals should get a slight wide boost around 3.2 kHz so they stand out in the mix.
LEVELS! Setting the proper levels for elements in your mix is paramount to a proper "3D" sounding mix. It's, dare I say it, a bit more important than EQing even. However, it can often be a bit tricky to get the levels proper without some sort of method of "magnifying" the mix in general. SO, what I do is I solo everything but the kickdrum, slap a limiter on the master track, adjust the input/threshold until the gain reduction is around -2dB to -3dB, raise the bass, and then adjust everything else around the kickdrum and bass. The idea is that "if the mix sounds great while having the shit squashed out of it, it'll sound even better when I use a mastering plugin to raise the level to about -14LuFS".
Yeah, I usually leave adjusting levels to last as I want the mix to sound perfect when being heavily fed into a limiter. Once I'm satisfied with my mix overall, I remove the basic limiter and use Grand Finale 2's "EDM Punch" preset and adjust the input gain to get the mix up to -14LuFS. Sometimes a peak will slip through Grand Finale 2, which is why I also use an additional limiter set to -1dB. If using Cubasis' brickwall plugin, that's job done. However, if using somethign like Groove Rider 2, I use NoLimits 2 after Grand Finale 2, adjust the input to +1dB and its output to -1dB. That way, I have 1dB of headroom.
Leaving enough headroom is very important. Many streaming services online will compress your audio into a lossy format (.m4a, .mp3, etc), and if your mastered mix doesn't have enough headroom, the audio will sound like garbled dogshit when converted down to .m4a, .mp3, etc.
That said, as far as getting the LuFS levels correct, I use Youlean's Loudness Meter. I paid a lifetime unlock to get the live graph visual feedback, but you get the numerical output for free.
That's about all my poor brain can think of at the moment, Mr. Oliver. If you have any other questions pertaining to anything specific, do let me know. And, a lot of this advice can apply to all genres, but some of the advice is specific to EDM and HipHop. But given that's what I heard you produce is beat-based music, hopefully you get something out of this long-ass post.