Transcripts
1. Course Intro: Hey everyone here at Skillshare. Let me introduce
myself as the teacher. In this course. You will be learning the EDM, mixing and mastering
fundamentals. An entire course focused on one thing to make you
understand the basics of EDM, mixing them all stirring. Let me introduce myself first. I'm Braam fitter,
a deejay producer and mastering engineer
at a studio Iran gold. This makes us sick. As a di GMP produced
outside two labels such as spinning records. And I'm offering for
clients all over the world with big
hit wreck guts that God's over
millions of streams on pretty much all the labels
that are out there. I'm super, super
excited for this course because I want you to learn the most easy to de pointes way of mixing
and mastering EDM. A lot of videos out there, which are absolutely grades. But in this particular course, I've focusing on
teaching you the basics. So yes, after this course, you can mix a monster
EDM music without difficult plug-ins,
without buying plugins. You can even do this
with stock plug-ins. And in every DAW, I'm super excited
for this course. I'm using my own trek to get a weight loss called every
night, which is out. Right now. I'm using this
trek as a demo for demonstrating the
techniques I'll be using in this course. So you understand what
is we'll take to make a song from being
prediction, that's finished. Prediction that's mixed into
a master ready release. So let's not waste any time
and let's jump right in. We go EDM mixing them all,
stirring fundamentals.
2. Session planning: Let's start at the start. After the prediction
is finished, It's important to say, all right, this
direct is finished. It's time for mixing. How can you know that
it's ready for mixing? Simply listen to the
track and be sure that prediction y's
everything is produced. Su ones. When you work
for someone else, then you don't have
to worry about this. But you have to worry about
this first step wishes, as we can see here in
the finder. Your stems. Right now, the stems in
front of me are well-named, easy to understand, and
very, very structured. This is very important because this way
you already starts with an understandable
file name structure. Very important. So don't miss this step. It's an important note as
well to keep in mind that if you are mixing and
mastering your own music, it's really, really
beneficial to export the stems and not work
in the prediction session. This saves so much CPU and it makes sure
that your notes are tempted to go back into the
production and make it clear move and decision to go
into the mixing stage. Keep that same minds. So let's go into the DAW that's dragging these stems
and take it from there. Right now our stems are
loaded into the session. And before we start, we need to export our premix. This will give us a Guides of any changes we make
during the process. We can AB width the
before and after. By exploiting the premix, I mean Exploiting
literally the sounds that plays when all these stems to get her
are being played back. Let's do it. So there we got the premix. Now we can start with the
structure of the session. As you can see, we got our session right now
here and all the stems are light-colored and
in a random order. Now, to get a really
focused workflow, I highly advise you to
first do this step, which is the planning of your session in a way that you understand
it's very easily. What I like to do is start
with the full goal on the top. Now they have the effects
right on the needs. Have to since an instruments
right on the knee, death after drums and
their need deaths. And the bottom have
the kick and the bass. This way. The overall way your
session is build up. Guy node represents the frequency spectrum
because you've got your base on the bottom and your focal on the top because the focus is
the most important. And you can mix
from bottom to top. Let's do that and let's make sure that we've got
that implemented in this session right here. First big gig. We pick the base, subbase, big debate shelter. We make it into a group. And we boot it on the bottom. We call it kick base. Then we got all the drums. We put it right above that. Then we get to get all instruments on
top of the drums, then got to get
her all the facts. And the remaining stems
into the right groups. We need to make the
focal group, of course. Now let's close them all up. We have this fairly
straightforward order. Let's give some colors. Move the focal up a bit. Here we go. Now we have a clear view
of the entire track. All the green stems
are instruments, the white ones are the effects. Everything that's blue
represents the full goal. The rest stamps on
the drums and a dark rat stamps
kick and the bass. This is the way I like it. And make sure to
the fellowship or copy away that you can
implement for yourself. So you can really have a specific way of working
with different songs. This will help you be so
much more focused and yeah, way better result because
you're just really effective. All right, So we've finished
our session planning, and it's time for the next step.
3. Levelling: So now let's go into
the firm parts. Let's first listen
to the song and then go over the first super, super important step into mixing this song,
which is leveling. And during listening
to this song, I wanted to ask you
to try and focus on what needs to be
changed level wise, what needs to be louder? What is maybe a
bit overwhelming? Do you feel the song? Is every channel present in the sounds elements that's sticking out in an
impassioned way. These type of questions are very important during the
listening of the song. I want you to take this in
minds and tried to already think what needs to be louder and what needs to
be quieter. Let's listen. So as you can hear
super Gulf song, it already sounds
really well produced and it's ready to get brought
up to the next level, width somehow for mixing and mastering in a simple
way, install plugins. So we're not going
extremely in-depth. Are we going to do everything
that you need to do, the fundamentals to get it
sounding absolutely fire. So let's go and we had a listen. I'm curious if you
also pointed out some things on this
drag that needs to be brought up
and brought down. But if you ask me, I would say that
the base could be a bit more intense bass sound. So not the frequencies
but the base itself. The more higher and upper
mid-range frequencies. If the bass sound
a bit far away, they don't sound really
present and they sound like they are
a bit too quiet. Then I would say as well
that the drop focal sounds too far away as well. While in this Req, there is no real melody. So I would say that the focal actually most of the
drop its power, its HUC. So I would say to
definitely bring it up. So let's keep it
simple and let's just adjust those things
on the levels, no effects, only levels here. That's loop the
drop for this step. And then I'm looping
the most busy part of the Drove because if
this part is mixed goods, that mostly it's represents an overall goal makes
him master as well. That's sad though it's
always of course, needed to listen to the
overall track as well. But to start, it's very, very effective to just focus on looping the most
busy part of the drop. I just did the full goal
a bit louder and added some adjustment on the
base and third base. Let's listen to the
before and after. And the difference, these simple level changes
made student Trek. Let's listen to that before
first and then the after. Simple Jane chairs. But if you would ask me, I would say it's really, really powerful and
it's so easy to think that you need to drop then plugins on every channel
and stuff like that. But this course really, really is based on
the fundamentals. Make sure that your
levels are right. Make sure that you
feel your trick. Makes sure that every
element is loud enough. And make sure that it's balanced in a way that sounds
super, super powerful.
4. EQ'ing the individual channels: Now that we've got a
powerful barons going on, it's time for the
next step which is queuing all
individual channels, of course, only if they need EQ. And what we're going to do is a simple method that you can use for
your tracks as well. We're going to solo the kick first and build
it up from there. And whenever a
sound gets added as where you feel it needs a boost in a specific
area of eagles, it's lacking some loudness
only in that area. Then we're going to
increase that with EQ. If you feel the auto way around That's some
frequency range, is adding dirt or making
yourself blurred. Now we're going to decrease. That's, of course you can use reference wrecks in
your own session. But in this course, I really want to focus on making it specific
for your trek. Because every production
is different. And this is a very, very structured way to work
on EQ in which a trek, I'm not using a third
party plugin for this. I'm using the built-in
stock blogging by Ableton vehicles. It's a plug-in that
everyone has in their DAW so that you
can use it as well. Let's start by
building up the track. I will do some EQ most. So you can tell from how I
go about this. So let's go. Now that we did our EQ most, we're going to listen
again to before mixing an after leveling any
queuing Gaussian, a difference already is so big. I'm excited to present
it to you. Let's go. Now you can see that
the queuing and leveling are two of the most, most fo for mixing and
mastering techniques. And couple of things I want to dive into a
bit more only cueing. I use only simple EQ hair and I didn't really go into moving
q and all that stuff. Because I want to
show you that you can get great results
with a simple EQ, which are building
stalk free plugin. You can already got so far. A couple of things. If you are boosting an area, try to listen to the area that makes you feel like it's the area that you
want to adjust. So if for example, here, Aris, like here, I felt that's ripping crisp
on top. That's dope. That's what you want to have ripping through to
Speaker. What did I do? I did a high shelf all the
way from monkey and up. Let me bypass this and you can exactly understand
what I mean by tackling the area that you want to make you feel like it's the area that
you want to adjust. It's subtle, but all these
subtle things make big, big differences on your trek. We're closing this chapter, we are going into the next, and that's super
exciting as well. It's been so cool, showcasing the
effect of leveling and dequeuing simple moves. But often overlooked and social importance to really have a proper
understanding of the EDM, mixing them offering
Fundamentals. Let's go into the next chapter.
5. EQ'ing the groups: Now that we've got detract, balanced and all the individual
channels EQs where needed. We can focus on the groups
because the groups to get her, again really benefit from adders and reductive EQ as well. So let's have a listen
to, to drop again. And let's try to enhance the overall track by queuing
the groups. Let's go. Loving what I hair is just
a really powerful way. And EQ into groups makes the group sound
more unified as well. Let me explain that a bit more. If you EQ or at any processing
on one specific sounds, it changes that sounds. But if you apply it on an
entire group, this way, you shape the sounds of the
entire group of instruments, which is super beneficial
for a more unified group. And you can really hear in this example that it
does a lot to the trek. Let's listen to two before
and after one more time. Then go into the next chapter. Huge difference. I think it sounds
really, really amazing. But we're note that
the angioedema. So let's get into
the next chapter. We're going to talk about
compressing the mart service. Let's go.
6. Master compression: It's time to head over
to the master bus. Right now on my mouse to bars, I only got a glue compressor. This is a compressor, but you can use any
compressor and follow these settings to get
about the same results. This is the building
one for able to, but I'm sure that your DAW also has a compressor
like this built-in. Let's go over to settings. I'm using slower tech. This means that's if this
signal goes over the threshold, the compression hits slowly. This results into
three sections. So the spiky energy
of the waveform, the stuff gets through steel. If you do it like this, it will totally smashes. Let's listen to the difference. If you can hear that the
attack is very important, wouldn't get that ten hair. It's a great setting because
it's still leaves a lot of the bunch and it's still compresses a lot
as well. So that's nice. Release fairly quick. The slower you put the release, the slower your trek sounds. And that's what we note
one is in dance music. So we want to grab the trench ends up till a point
that it's still sounds. But when she released out
quickly than the ratio, it means the amount of
decibels that needs to go in for one dB of gain reduction. So right now it's set at four, would just pretty extreme. But in EDM we want
to have a bit of an extreme setting here
because we want to have extreme bunch for
pop music and stuff. It's a bit different. But in EDM, I at phi to go with a ratio of four if that's too extreme for you, go with two. It means that for
decibels over to threshold gives us one
dB of gain reduction. Same for to do decibels
over the threshold, gets one dB of gain
reduction simply puts, the higher your ratio, the more extreme
your compressor. What we're going to do with our den weren't one
for setting here. We're going to dial back
on the threshold until we hit about five decibels of gain reduction
here, Let's go. Now, our master is compressed
and we're going to make up by the amount of gain
reduction that we're having. Let's AB. It's quite a lot of compression. You can dial it
back a bit up delta H. But we're going for
this setting beagles, it's kind of one size fits all for having
powerful compression. In this EDM mixing and
mastering fundamental scores. When you get away to mix a monster trucks to
sound super fat. This specific Glue Compressor enabled and has a
dry wet function. This is the function
that you can use to make it parallel. This means edit blends
the original signal without the processing
width, the process signal. This is super nice because
you can decides how much of the original signal
you want to keep and how much of the affected signal
you want to blend in. It's not needed to use this, and not every
compressor has this. And it's gonna be a bit
complicated to explain. And this is the
fundamental course. But I wanted to give you a taste of how it affects
this compression. So let's try and blend in
some of the compression. That's the compression. It's right now set at 58%. I think it still,
and it sounds good. Use your heirs. What does compression
needs to do in EDM? It needs to glue
the overall Tareq. It needs to make it more punchy and EDM needs to
be loud as well. So if you have
uncompressed signal, there's less peaks and it's
a bit more controlled, which gives you a
better starting points for your limiting later. Easy boots. It means
that if you already have a tight sounds
before limiting, you can easily push it
into a louder master. This was the
compression kept there. Now we're going into
the next stage, which is finalizing the mix. Let's go.
7. Finalizing the mix: So in this stage, we're going to
finalize the mix with the techniques we
have learned in this course. What
does this mean? It means that we're
going to play back a bit of the break, the build and the drop. Going to listen and go
back into recession if needed to make any
adjustments here. Let's go. Super dope. What I did
is change the top cake. I put it a bit louder. I think it's Dover, like that. It's more punchy. Acts to dads. I increase the level by 1.5 dB of the effects group because I felt that they
were a bit behind. Then what I did, I tried to increase
the focal on the drug, but it made it stick out the
bear, which I didn't like, but I did it because I
increase the folk winter break as well, which sounds dopey. And I decreased the focal
refers a fixed into break because it was a bit yeah. Pulling away from the attention
on the focal into break. That's more important
and small changes. But this stage is very, very important to
make sure that you're ready for limiting as well. I'm not using any references, but you can definitely listened
to references as well. I hope you understand that
they negotiate cannot just play famous hits, songs and stuff like that. But for your own projects, make sure to definitely utilize reference
direction as well. That said though it's important
to keep them leveled. Two sounds, the
same loudness wise, so that you're not fooled by listening to
way louder treks. Pull them down a bit
and make sure that they're not going
through your processing. So now whenever we got
them mixed, find that ice. We're going into the
next stage. That's cool.
8. Master EQ: So in this stage, we're going to EQ
the moss syllabus. We're going to put the
EQ after the compressor. So we're not affecting the
way to compressor works. And we are really shaping the overall sound of the master. Makes sure to never really make extreme moves in this stage because it's most likely better to do it's in the
individual channels. Then we'll want to do is enhance a bit of the good
stuff, get away, a bit of the stuff
that we don't want, and make sure that
the overall total, the master sounds cool. We're going to start
with a low good. We're putting this at 30 hertz. So discuss away some of the sub frequencies that
we get old really here. Let me AB, how does sounds? He cannot really hear it, but it definitely helps
because you don't really need this specific information and it gives us a bit more headroom, which means that the overall
signal gets a bit less, halts, basically, for the limiter to do his
job as good as possible. Now let's try and
find some areas that we can increase or decrease. What we think is needed in
the Master Don't, right here. We EQ the master. Let me erase it truly
move that we made. So we first have the low gods. Then we got a really small
increase because hair, you've got filled out low mids, the base, It's dope to
push it a bit more. Distractors really built
on its baseline as well. Then we got some more precedence
here to make the song sound a bit more
presence and exciting. And we edit some air to make
it a bit more crispier, feel a bit better. Let's AB days and
it's really powerful. I'm first a being the EQ
width and weighed out. And then I'm a being
the actual premix with where we add right
now, it's pretty extreme. So brace yourselves. Let's go. Baked dear friends. You
can really hear that all the exciting stuff now
bumps through the speakers. You can feel the trek better. The threat steel
is the same trick, but you can more feel it. And that's the entire focus and mixing and mastering is
not to change the track. That's something you do
in a prediction stage. But it's still make
the production feel as good and
powerful as possible. That's fundamentally what EDM mixing and mastering
is all about. Now, we are closing this stage. We acute the master bus and it's ready for the next stage
which is limiting. Let's go.
9. Limiting: So we're now in the final stage of mixing
and mastering is Trek. And this stage we're
adding a limiter. And the limiter will
basically limit everything that goes above
the threshold or simply puts. It will enable us to push the mix and to make it
as loud as possible. But very important thing to
keep in mind is that we not, after destroying
the sounds there, we want to push it up to a point that it's
still sounds good. Not too far where it's
getting this storage. You can use your
stock limited here. In this situation here I'm using Ableton built in limiter. And let's go over to settings. When you put it up in Ableton, I only changed the
ceiling to minus 0 then I think that
that's a good ceiling. What we're now going to do
is basically push the Game. Boy, that it still
sounds good. Let's go. So 7.25 in this case feels to me like a great setting because
it's really bushes. This sounds a lot, but still the overall
sounds crisp, clean enough and
of a high-quality. This very important if you
hear that your limiter is crushing the sounds and it's
really changing the sounds, then you're probably too far. Right now. A couple of
things are important. We can say that this
makes monster basically is finished in the fundamentals of EDM mixing and mastering. What we now can do is
a couple of things. We can export the master. Send this trick of
as a demo to labels. Or you can export his
master, call it rough, and add it onto the stems that you're submitting to
a professional mixing and mastering studio
so they can hear your flavor and your
preferred sound. This is something
that's very common for professional mastering
studios to half a rough of the clients so
they can hear what the client likes and
take it from there and try to create a
fabrication that's as professional and as good as possible for the final master. But that sets this should
give you a grades. Sounds really two. Have a track that sounds
good enough to play in your sets of blow to
SoundCloud sense to your friends since two labels as a demo submission and
basically make impact. So that was the final stage limiting hope that
you enjoyed this one. Let's go over to outro and talk a bit more about
what we just did.
10. Course outro: So here we are. We've finished the EDM mixing them, offering
Fundamentals. Let me go over a couple
of things that are fairly important for who
is this course? This course is perfect if
you are looking for a way to simple in this
stage of the trach, be strategic because if you
don't know what you're doing, then it's very easy to just
drop a lot of plugins, a lot of unnecessary things in your session to
try to make it mixed. I highly advise to go over the fundamentals if you
are struggling with this. Because the
fundamentals really are leveling EQ and compression. If you really Neil those, then you can mix
any records in the world's basically you don't need extremely
advanced techniques. Of course they can help. But first, neil, these fundamentals makes sure
that you know what to do. Couple of things. I didn't use references
in this course. You can use references for
your own tracks, of course, make sure that their levels so that it's an
honest comparison. Or if you feel insecure. This is a tip from de facade. Oh, legendary mix engineer. He said if you're
insecure with references, just lower your references so your own Trek
sounds a bit louder. This can help you
still feel confidence and enable you to learn
from those references. And just focus on nailing
the fundamentals. And Dan deciding, okay, do I want to mix my own tracks? Is it good enough if
you just want to do a quick mix or have to
trek in that sense, ready to play out in
your mixed tape or in your live sets than yes, of course you can
do it yourself. Or maybe you want to work with a professional
mastering engineer. In that case. Still very, very
beneficial to kneeled each fundamentals and it's
great as well if you can, for a fight or rough mix to your engineer and have him or her figure it out
from their own words. I hope that this
Skillshare course brought you a lot of failure. It was great for
my aunt's to do. My name is Brown feeder, mastering engineer
here at this mix is sick and I'm doing
EDM mixing them all stirring for lots and
lots of big trucks on all labels basically
that are out there. Next to that I'm a DJ
and producer assigned to labels such as mixed mash, spinning records, hexagon,
and a whole bunch more. I hope that you had a lot
on this course and I'm excited to go more in-depth as well with upcoming courses here. Thank you so much for watching. And I hope that you all have a wonderful time mixing and
mastering your EDM tracks. Go.
Bram Fidder, EDM Mixing & Mastering
