Transcripts
1. Introduction: I love making music. After trying to give
it up plenty of times, I always picked it back up, so I know the love is really there and it's really genuine. Honestly, it's just something
that I need to breathe. My name is Isaac Duarte. I'm from Chicago, Illinois, and I'm a music producer, and I also create content and
own a kit site called the soundgallery.com
You've probably seen my work all over social media, all over You Tube,
Splice's You Tube channel, video games, mix tape
tracks, all sorts of places. If you're nervous or unsure about your mix
because there's a lot of ***** and there's
a lot of things that overwhelm you, it's okay. The hardest part about mixing
is knowing when to stop. Mixing is pretty simple, it doesn't have to be this
big complicated thing with all these
different plugins. You can get a really good mix
by keeping it bare minimum. You're going to follow
along and watch me mix this beat in real time. After years of trial and error, I want to give you guys what I've learned so that way you can dive right into it and
create high quality tracks. Now, if you don't use FL
Studio, it's perfectly fine. Everything that I'm going
to teach is universal, so you can apply it to your dough and it'll get
you the same results. One thing that I want you
to walk away with from this class is an understanding of how simple mixing can be. I'm excited you
joined this class. Let's jump right into FL
Studio and get to mixing.
2. Getting Started: I know mixing could be scary, but don't worry, I got you. I'm going to show you my
mixing process as well as my workflow and my
thought process behind getting a good mix. By the end of this
class, you'll have a fully mixed beat
that sounds good, hits right, and is ready to be sent to any artist
of your choosing. So follow along with this class, head over to the project in Resources tab and download
this project file, and open it up in FL Studio. Once you do that, you'll
be able to follow all the things that
I do in this class. For the most part,
I'm going to be using stock plug-ins and
free plug-ins, so they're all available to you. I'm also excited to hear
how good your mix sounds. Upload it to the project
in Resources tab so that way I can hear it and give
you real time feedback. Now open your doll and
let's get started.
3. Start with Leveling and Panning: We're going to kick
this off with leveling. Now, to me, leveling is the second most important
thing next to sound selection. The reason why I touched on sound selection in all
the other classes is because sound
selection is one of the most important
parts of mixing. If you start with bad sounds, you're pretty much
going to be throwing a whole bunch of makeup
on a rock, on dirt. It's not going to
look good at all. But if you start with
good high quality sounds, then mixing becomes a breeze. If you don't know
what leveling is, leveling is basically finding a good balance between all
the instruments with volume. If you have something
that's either too loud or too quiet, it's not really going
to translate well. When the artist hears it, they're going to skip to the next beat because
it's not sounding punchy, it's not sounding high quality, and all that starts with good sound selection
and leveling. One thing I really want
to emphasize to you is not to stress your
brain on mixing. The reason being is
because when you send it to an artist
and they cut to it, they're going to want the
stems and their engineer is going to mix it to fit
the vocals perfectly. That's just something that
you have to deal with, but it's honestly going to
enhance the record and it's going to enhance the beat.
Just keep that in mind. Now, the way that I like to
start is to make sure that all the sounds are linked
to its own mixture track. You can click the sound
and then click "Track", and it'll automatically
go to an open track. I'm going to go to all the sounds and go
to a single track. Now, if you're like me and
you have a symbol or riser, and you have it going one way, and then you have it reversed, you can put it in
the same channel. This is at 25. I'm going to put it at 25 because
it's the same sound. You don't really need
to change up too much. Now we have all our
sounds in the mixer. If I play it and I
only mute one sound by right clicking
the green button, that's all you're going to hear. Nothing else is playing. When it comes to mixing,
you want to go to the busiest part where all
the sounds are because that's where the most stuff
is happening and all the sounds are pretty much going to
have the most tension. You're going to
want to highlight that by holding right click, and then boom, dragging over so that way you highlight it and when you press
play, it loops over. Next. What you're going
to want to do is stretch out this mixture window and look for these
buttons right here. Let's just go to extra large so that way
you can see it and you can see all the plugins that I'm using at the same time. I'm not trying to hide
no sauce for you guys. [LAUGHTER] This **** right
here is the stereo field ****. If you turn it all the way left, it makes the sound go all the way big and it's all
the way stretched out. You don't want to have
it stretched out because it'll pretty much water
down your sounds. If you go all the way
right where it's purple, it's mono, meaning it's
just in the middle. It's not going left and right. It's just in the middle. I like to level in
mono because it's a lot easier for me to
identify certain things. Then once I'm done, I'll just reset it and
then it should sound good. Little word of advice too,
you do want to start with the drums because if you
start the opposite way, you might not have a good
balance because you might put too much emphasis
on the melody being too loud as opposed
to the drums. Then everything's just
going to try to fight for space and it's
going to be squashed. You don't want that. Now, I'm going to start
with the kick in 808. What I'm looking for is
just a good balance, just a certain punch that
I'm comfortable with. I don't want it super
loud like this. That's too much. I want a nice good
balance between both. Next is the clap. Next, the accent.
The accent snare could be cool that loud, but I like them to be tucked behind the main
clap snare pattern. Now this hi-hat. I'm looking for a good balance
within the drums just to feel comfortable to introduce
the other elements. I want to pan this to
the left a little bit. I want the kick to be
the loudest thing, and then the clap and the 808 to be the second
loudest thing. I want them to have
a good relationship with each other because if I have a clap super loud like this and the kick
super quiet like this, you hear more of the
clap and it's way more noticeable and it's overpowering
all the other sounds. I want there to be a
good balance between both so that way when the listener hears it and
then they start hearing the other elements
like the hi-hats, the open hats that complement
it but aren't as loud, then it gives them a good
groove to listen to. Now that I have a good
balance with the drums, I'm going to introduce
the main melody because it's constantly playing and the
listener is going to be attached to that melody
throughout the whole beat. All the other elements are drawn and wrapped
around that one melody. I think that should get
the main focus first. I just bring it down and
then I slowly introduce it. Now the piano keys. Now the pad. Now will be a good time to reset the mono **** just
for reference, just to hear what
it sounds like, and then we'll put
it back into mono. It's sounding pretty good, so let's put it back in mono. Let's turn the pad down
just a little bit and then introduce the pluck melody
and the tremolo pad. Now the violin. Now let's introduce that re-space. Let's do it over here, the
first part of the chorus. Now, you could put the base
in mono, just like the 808. You could put the 808 in mono, but nine times out of 10, whatever 808 you choose from any pack is going to be in mono. If there's an 808 that's
going left and right, don't use it because that's not what base instruments are
supposed to be used for. You could put the
re-space maybe in 30%. Let's hear the beat not in mono anymore so
that way we can just get a sense of what it sounds like. I can bring that violin down just a little bit. That sounded pretty good. Probably the most minimal thing
that we have to do now is just introduce the riser
and the other textures. Let's put it back in mono. Then let's just
look for the parts. Now, this part, you
don't have to loop because they're
really fast sounds. Let's start with
the riser first. I feel like the riser
could be turned up. Let's reset the volume here. Let's level it. That's
sounded pretty good. Let's look at the crash. That crash is way too loud, so we got to turn that down. Now let's listen
to this texture. That one sounding pretty
fine where it's at. Let's hear this all day hit. Now that we have the
melodic elements balanced perfectly
with the drums and we have the textures
and transitions flowing smoothly
from part to part, we could just listen back and adjust little by little
wherever we see fit. Let's listen to it as a
whole with mono unchecked. Still feel like that
violin can be turned down. Turn that crash down. Now it's your turn to
balance your tracks. Start with the drums,
get a good balance, and then introduce the
melodic parts one by one. Once you do that, then
you can introduce the other textures and transitions so that way
everything can flow smoothly. Now, don't be afraid
to analyze some of the mixed decisions that I've
made in this project file. You have access to it and you can change
anything you'd like. Next up is EQ.
4. EQ Your Tracks: Now, we're at the EQ stage. Now, if you don't know what
EQ is, it means equalization. All sounds have a
frequency range where they shine the best, but everything outside
of that bleeds over. That's when EQ comes into play because it gives you
more room to clean up everything and focus on that one general frequency range where the sound is
shining the best. Now, what EQ does is basically a volume map for
specific frequencies. If you want to turn the base up, you would go occupy the lower registry of
the frequency range. But if you want to clean up the base to allow the
higher registry to shine, you would basically use
the EQ to clean that up. EQ is perfect for brightening
stuff or darkening stuff. Now, when it comes
to this track, we have good sound selection. We have a good balance
of all the elements. But we can't really leave it
just there because there are some sounds that occupy the lower registry and
the higher registry. We need a EQ to clean that up, so that way certain parts can shine the best. We're
going to do just that. I'm going to go to the
busiest section where all the instruments are and I'm just going to
loop that over. Next, I'm going to go to each individual instrument and just solo it and clean
it up a little bit. We're going to go to the rhodes, which is the main instrument, and I have a EQ pulled up. Now, the easiest
thing you can do is either go to this one right
click and go to high pass. Then you can adjust
the curve if you want, but if you want a preset, you can right click "Presets", and go up here and just
click "20 Hz +18kHz cut". This to give you a same thing
but it just sharper curve. I'm going to listen to it and I'm going to show
you our high EQ. That's pretty much
it. That's what I do for all the elements. I'm rolling off this first band and I'm cutting
all the lows, all the way to the low mids, and even all the
way to the mids, just to hear when the sound starts getting affected
and then I back off. I'll show you one
more time. I'm in play and I'm rolling
all of this off. I don't want this. Now, it's starting
to sound super thin, so I'm going to back off. Sound a little hollow. So
I'm going to go back up. I'm going to find a sweet spot. I cut all the way
to the 220 range. That way the sound is cleaned up and it doesn't
have any low end. That way the 808 and the reese bass have
its own place to shine. I'm going to do that for
the other elements as well. Click the VST go
to that preset and do the same thing. I don't want to overdo it, I don't want to underdo it. I want to just find the
sweet spot so that way I know that I took enough
lows out to the point where it's affecting
the sound and the lows are completely
removed and then I'm backing off a little
bit just so I can find that sweet spot to where the sound doesn't
lose characteristic. Now, let's go to the pluck. Now, I'm going to slow the pluck because the pluck has
the most effects. Now, one thing to
keep in mind is the order of effects
does matter. If you put the EQ all the
way up in the first insert, it's going to affect
the raw sound. But if I introduce creative
effects to give it more character like I
did for this pluck, then it's going to
introduce some lows that you might have
thought you took care of, but now they're reintroduced
because you have all these different
effect plug ins to give it that character. It's best to bring it all
the way at the end so that way you can control
it a little bit more, and if you want to put a second EQ, that's
perfectly fine. If you don't know how I'm
moving the effects up and down, all you have to do is put your pointer over the plug
in name and then just scroll down on your
mouse and you can move the order of effects.
Let's hear this. I don't want to
cut off the high, so I'm going to put
this over here. Now, this is sounding
pretty good so far. Now, let's try this pad. Let's hear all the
melodies together. I got to take care
of this violin. Now, if you feel
like the sound got a little bit more thinner and it's messing
with your balance, all you have to do is highlight those elements by holding control and clicking the Mixer, so that way you can select
them all and then you could just bring them up in volume just a little
bit to match up. Let's play the drums so that way we can hear that. Now, that I have all my melodic elements done and
mixed and EQed, and I'm going to move
on to the drums. Drums are very sneaky
because they'll have some low end and
you won't even know it, even though they occupy
the high registry. If you look at this high
hat, look at all that. It's just added low end
that we don't need. I'm seeing my CPU and it
is tweaking a little bit. One thing to ease the CPU on your computer is
you can go up here to Tools, Macros, and then
you can hit Switch to smart disable
for all plug ins. This is basically
going to turn off all the plug ins that
you're not using, so we're not using
the other effects at this moment so that we can
focus on just these elements. Also, keep in mind that all mixer tracks come
with EQ on them. They're not affected. You could just adjust them here. They're just the three band EQ. For this one, I'm going
to add some high end to this clap because I like my
claps crispy, then snare too. It's sounding pretty good. The EQ decisions
are pretty light. I don't have to do too much. The only thing that
I would probably EQ is maybe the risers
and the textures. But because it doesn't
have that much low end, it really doesn't matter because it's only affecting
a certain part, so I wouldn't worry
about that too much. You don't want to
put a whole bunch of EQs and stuff on there, and also stock
plug ins are great because you don't have to
do too much with the EQ. All EQs are pretty
much the same. If you have a stock one, you pretty much have
a million other EQs. Now, we have all the
elements cleaned up. We've made room for
the 808 and the kick to hit perfectly without
any interference. Let's hear before and after. I'm going to turn
off all the EQs. Now, this is before. It sounds pretty cool, but I want all those elements
back. Now, let's listen. Now, it's your turn
to EQ your tracks. Start by EQing and cleaning up the low end and then
enhancing the sound. You can turn up the high end on some claps or you can
make way for other sounds to have their own shine within that frequency range just
by adjusting the EQ band. Next up is automation.
5. Write in Automation: Now that we have a good balance and we've cleaned up our sounds, we need automation to introduce certain effects
at certain parts. Automation could be applied
to any plug-in to turn a certain sound or **** up and
down at a certain section. I'm going to put
on my headphones and I'm going to show
you how to automate. Now for certain
parts I might want the low end just because it gives a little
bit more fullness. For example, if in
the verse I don't want that reece bass because
I introduced it over here. I'll simply delete
it or mute it. Then I would go to
those two instruments, the EQ on the rhodes
and the piano keys. I would simply go
to the mixer track, go to the mix ****, right click and click
"Create Automation". Now it's going to look
like this because it's all the way active. If I have it midway through, the mix **** is going
to look like this. Then it's going to go up because I have it going up in a
slant. I don't want that. What I want is for it to be on until I hit the verse part. I'm going to right click
to create a point, and then right click again
to create another point. Then right click over here
where I want it to stop. Then right click over here, so I want it active. When the start of
this verse happens, the EQ is getting cut off. Now, I'm going to
label it RHODES EQ, that way it's easy to identify. Next I'm going to go
to the piano key. I'm going to do the same thing, right click "Create
automation clip". I'm going to click this track, and then I'm going to
insert an empty track, so that way I have a little bit more room to work with so I don't have
to play the guessing game. I'm going to repeat the process. It goes from just this
to this. You feel that? I like that. It feels good. And then it's going to turn off. Now the low end is gone as soon as the eight way in the
kick are introduced. Now I like how that sounds. What I'm going to do
for the intro is I'm going to repeat the
process the same thing. You could also have
it on a slant. You could control like how
smooth you want it to come in. It could come in
super smooth and then super aggressive
at the end. But for the intro,
I want it to have that low end because I'm
already filtering off all the high end
when I was creating the automation for the intro
to create a catchy intro, it sounds like this. Sounds like something's coming because that low
end is still there. Then the low end is completely
gone from those low nodes. It's felt more than heard and it's complementing
the reece bass. It's just that simple. Now
here's how to create an outro. You highlight the outro, you open up fruity balance. You get a peak at the
plug-ins that I use on daily fruity balance. Now you're going to right click the "Volume" **** and
"Create automation clip". Then you're just going
to create a nice slant down and if you
want to adjust it, have a little bit more of
a smoother volume fade. You can do that. It
sounds like this. It sounds more cinematic. Sounds like a nice resolution. [LAUGHTER] Sounds really good. Now if you want not have to put automation
clips on everything, the great thing about
the new FL Studio update is you can use cross-fades so you don't have to use automation for
audio wave forms. All you have to do
is go up here to this top left corner and
click this wave form. Next, click this show
fade editing controls. Now you can have the
ability to do this, so that way the riser
comes in a little bit more smoother so you don't have
to add automation clip. Everything else is coming
in pretty smoothly. Now if you want to
control all of them at the same time
without having to go one by one and go okay, right here, Do the same
thing and try to mimic it. All you have to do
is hit "Control", click the track, and it's going to select all those sounds. Zoom so you get a
more detailed look and then adjust the fade. Now all the other fades are adjusted exactly
like that one, so you don't have
to copy and paste. Or spend time that you
don't need to waste on trying to get as detailed as possible
with those fades. You can do it all at once. Now the best thing
about automation is you have control
and you have time. If you control something
at the right time, it'll just sound chef's kisses. Back then they didn't have
to do that because they had to do it little by
little on tape. And that was probably
time consuming process. But with the creative
effects that you have, you can control when you want
certain things to happen. That's the beauty of automation. Now it's your turn. Try using automation
to get creative with your effects and control what you want to control at
a certain point in time. If you wanted to have a fade and then rise up, you can do that. But if you wanted to
have a cinematic ending, you could also do that with
the magic of automation. Now I want to see what you do. Next up is clipping, that's where we get our
drums to really ****. I can't wait to see you there.
6. Use Clipping: Now I can introduce you to the icing on the cake, clipping. Now, what is clipping? Well, clipping could be
a good or bad thing, depending on how you use it. Bad clipping is going in the red and it's
sounding distorted, it's sounding squashed together, and it's sounding
not good at all. Most engineers and producers
tell you to avoid clipping. But over the last
12 years or so, maybe even 15, FL Studio has really changed the music industry and music in general because of their
outlook on clipping. Everybody always says
FL has a certain sound, and it's because of the
way that they figured out clipping, rather
soft clipping. Now, soft clipping is
the good clipping. Soft clipping pretty much
rounds out the sound, so rather than having
it full-on in your ear, it has a more pleasant
ear-pleasing sound and it's perceived
to be even louder. Hard clipping is
when your master goes red and you get
digital distortion. This is what hard clipping
looks and sounds like. I'm going to go over to this tab where the light bulb is, to the precomputed effects, and under the Boost
**** is Clip. Basically, there's a
ceiling introduced, and the more I push the
sound with the Boost ****, the more it's clipped and
it looks like a square. Now, brace yourself because it's probably going to sound
loud and not ear-pleasing. [NOISE] That's hard clipping. Now, if I play this now, [NOISE] and boost it up a
little bit more, [NOISE] that's soft clipping. Notice how the waveform
got bigger and it's out of you as opposed
to when I hit Clip. You see that the
more I turn it up, the more square it is. But if I turn off Clip
and I turn it up, you see the louder
the waveform gets. It basically amplifies the sound and it gives it a lot
more volume to it. Now that we know
that soft clipping is good and hard
clipping is bad, let's apply a soft
clipper onto the master, so that way the drums
could really hit. The first thing that I do is
I open up a parametric EQ. When I open up the EQ, I turn up a bit of the high end and it's going to
sound really good, especially when I introduce
the soft clipper. Because just like the soft clipper is
rounding out the sound, it's also dampening
it a little bit. If you pull up the high end just a little bit
on the EQ ****, you'll get a more ear-pleasing
sound because there's high-end introduced and
it's not all just lows. Now, I'm going to open up
a soft clipper right here. Boom. Here's the
free soft clipper. I don't touch the *****, I don't do anything that is already messing
with the sounds. It looks pretty the way it is [LAUGHTER] and
it works perfectly. Now if you don't use FL Studio, you can also use this plug-in
called GClip. It's free. The great thing about
this clipping is you can control the softness
and the hardness so you can have a nice blend between ear-pleasing soft
clipping and a hard clip. Now, let's hear what these
drums sound like dolo. Now that I have the
soft clip on there, I can go back to the
kick and turn it up. I'm going to hit Control and select the Kick and the 808, and I'm going to turn it
up just a little bit. Now, I know I said I don't
clip when I'm leveling, but with the Kick, I like the clip because once I have the soft
clipper on there, it's giving it a
more rounded sound, and I'm going to show you. I'm going to put Edison right
behind the soft clipper, so that way it records
it and you see it visually what it looks like. For years, people have been tricking others into
thinking that you need to have all these plug-ins and all these other
analog gear effects to make kicks sound good. Honestly, you just need to apply a soft clipper
and turn it up. That's why a lot of
people love FL Studio. I remember one time I was in the studio with somebody
and they were like, no those kicks aren't hidden, open that up in FL Studio and just run it through
there and then export it. [LAUGHTER] That's crazy. But
I was like, you know what? Hey, he knows what he's doing. They gave me the session
and then that's what I did. I added that slide to it. Now let's listen
to it in context. It sounds pretty sick. Another type of
clipping that I use is called a Fruity Limiter. I don't use the
FL Limiter a lot. As a limiter, I
don't use it like that because I think
it's the devil. [LAUGHTER] It'll
mess up your sound. What I do is I mess with this
saturation **** right here. Now, I put the ceiling
all the way up, so the limiter is
not even active. But I'm going to
listen to the sound and I'm going to
use the saturator. This gives me a different
type of soft clipping, different sound,
different type of taste. I personally like it. If I want soft clipping, I'll use a soft clipper, if I want a little
bit more control, I'll use the Fruit
Limiter saturated button. It gives it a more
crunchier sound. I'm going to record it in Edison just to show you
what it looks like. I'm going to adjust saturation. They both hit differently. I think using the saturator adds a little bit more warmth. It's all personal
taste, but honestly, you can't go wrong with
any of these methods. Even if you use GClip, you can achieve the same
results the same thing. If you're using Ableton
and you want to know how to make your
drums slap, use GClip. Now that we got
the beat to knock, one last thing that
I like to do as a reference is I like to lower the master volume all the
way down to negative 20 dB. I know I'm sounding
crazy right now. But the reason why I like to
do this is because when I play the most busiest part
and I lower the volume, it's a dead giveaway of what sounds are poking out the
most that I could lower. That's just a last-minute
little thing. Let's listen to it. Slower
it down a little bit more. I'll probably lower the high
has down just a little bit. Lower the mass volume
a little bit more. Probably lower the
clap, just the dB. Then maybe lower the volume on the violin and lower the
trend part just a little bit. Now everything is
sounding pretty good. Let's turn it up and let's hear what it sounds like. Now, the last thing that
I like to do is I like to turn the master volume down
between three dB and six dB. The reason why is because when the artist hears the
beat and they're vibing, they're like, oh, man, this is hard, I got an idea for it. They want to jump right into it. But if it's too loud and some elements are not
in the right balance, then it's not going to
sound right to them. They're going to be
like, as soon as I put these headphones on, it's not hitting right,
it's not sounding good. I don't know, and you want to
remove all doubt and all overthinking
from their process. Once you lower it
negative six dBs, you're going to
hear what they're going to hear and record to. Golden rule, go to
the master volume. Turn your master volume
all the way down from negative 20 dB maybe
to negative 40 dB. Just to see what sounds
poke out the most. If it pokes out, adjust. Then bring it up to negative six dB to negative three dB, just so you can get
an idea of what the artist is going to
hear when they record to. Just so you know, it's hitting, everything is sitting right, and when they hear it on
loudspeakers with their voice, it's going to sound good. Let's hear that. [LAUGHTER] The only thing I'll probably turn down is
that riser and that crash. Again, I don't want any
sound really poking out, and that's negative
six dB range. Now we have a fully mixed track that's ready to be
sent to any artist. It hits, it sounds really good. It's arranged simple, but good enough for them to create
a really good song on, and all the elements are there. Now, it's your turn to show
me how your drums knock. I want to hear you use clipping with your drums
and I want to hear how good you can get it to sound with those two methods
that I showed you earlier. When you're done, export
the track and upload it to the Project and
Resources tab so that way I can give you
real-time feedback. Who knows? Maybe I can collaborate with one of you
if it sounds really good.
7. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you've made it to the end of this class. You should now have
a fully mixed track that sounds good and it punches. Upload it to the Project
and Resources tab so that way I can hear it and give
you real-time feedback. I hope you learned a
lot in this class. I appreciate you for taking
the time to watch and listen. I really can't wait to
hear what you've made, and I look forward to
seeing you next time.