Music Production Bootcamp For Beginners - Module 5: Mixing The Beat

1. Intro to Mod 5: be making basis. Right now. We're in module five, where we're gonna be talking about how to mix your beats, some basic mixing tips, the mixing process, etcetera. Go ahead in a row. My name is Joseph Evans. I'm happy to have you here. And also in rolling all the other modules. If you haven't had a chance to do so, They're all in the class description or search for music production. Boot Camp four begin. 2. Mixing The Beat: be making basis. All right, So in this lecture, what I want to do is cover some basic tips that you can use when it comes to mixing, you can use these tips and any doll. Right now, I'm using GarageBand. And if you follow your steps, you'll be able to get some pretty good mixes. Um, as a beginner. So they're five things I want to cover before we cover those five things. I want to talk about the purpose of mixing. Okay. Now, a lot of people, when you're first starting out, you think the purpose of mixing is making your track allowed as possible when Cressman clear right now that's actually mastering. Okay, So mixing is basically the process of making sure everything is balanced and everything is working together. Okay, so you have different instruments. You want to make sure those instruments are working together based on their different different frequencies, based on the different effects that you use based on the different levels based on where they're sitting in the track, making sure everything is balanced is the whole purpose of mixing. Let's take, for example, when you're baking a pie. Okay, If you add too much sugar is gonna The guy is going to be too sweet. So the same thing when you may be adding effects. Same thing when you're getting, you know, getting the right levels if you're kick drum is way too high, is gonna throw your mix off. Vice versa. If you don't have enough sugar in your your mix for your pie, for that example, you know is going to the taste of the pie is gonna be offers. Well, that's That's the same thing in your mix. So say, if there's an instrument that's way too low, it could told them into the mix off. So it's all about blending those instruments and adjusting things to make it Sure it's well balanced. The word balance is key. OK, so that's the purpose of mixing. Let's go ahead and get into with those five things. I have five things or five tips that you can use to get a better mix. The first thing is organization. You want to make sure that all of your tracks are properly labeled named and an organized from top to bottom. Um, you know with what they are. So, for instance, I have all my drum sounds a top. That's how I do do it. You can do it the opposite way. If you want to have all your drum sounds on the bottom, that's cool too. But do you want to have it all grouped together so you can easily find out what's what? You don't want to have your snare down here and in your piano, the top and you're trying to figure out where everything is and adjust everything and you just get lost. So make sure you have all your drums together and make sure you have all your melodies together. Okay, the next thing you want to do is get a reference track. Well, what is the reference track? A reference track is a track that's already professionally mixed and mastered that you use as a reference or something that you can aspire to when you're mixing your track. Okay, now, I've already have some music out of release right here. Sorry. Makes the master this is attractive will be using in the next example. Our next lecture is going to be an example lecture of how to do this. But what you're gonna be doing when you use using this. Ah, his reference track is listening for certain things listening. Okay, well, where is their house? Their kick Drum said it's sitting in the mix. How's their snare sitting in the mix? What kind of you know affects that they have over here? Is it pan to the left or pandas? All right. These particular instruments, those type of things they're gonna be listening for. The third thing is getting the right levels. Okay, that's very important. Going back to our example with the pie if you put all your ingredients in the bow and things air off Okay, so you have too much of this ingredient and not enough of this agreement, and it's in the whole thing is going to be off. Same thing which a mix if you kick drum is way up here and your snare drummers way down here is going to sound horrible. So you want to make sure you get two right levels and you do that do to your your several different ways. Really? Do your reference track and do trialing air. Okay. The third thing or four thing we want to talk about is e queuing Now what e que. In is is basically all of your instruments have different frequencies. What's called frequencies? They have high frequencies and low frequencies. Okay, You know, I don't want to go to exhaustive into this, but they're high frequencies and low frequencies. Some instruments like your friend's sister synths and your leads. Your high hats are, like, really high up in the frequency range chart, and you're drinking. It smells like a kick here. Your, you know, your base, their lower on the frequency range started and the whole purpose of using you know, queuing is balancing out those frequencies and helping those frequencies to work together with other, you know, instruments that have other the same or like frequencies, so it can get very complicated. But this keep it simple. I'm gonna tell you one more thing is about using effects. Um, same thing with effects and eq Ewing. And really with anything you want to kind of keep in mind that less is more so on. Lee added, if you need it. So people ask all the time what type of key Hugh or wet type of, uh, you know, compressor or vice versa. All this type of stuff. Listen to that reference track and see if maybe the drum sound over compress or not. You know, and I'm talking about really find some professionally mixed tracks. Not this from other producers. You know, less. They've improving your some saying listen to some tracks, has been on the radio and listen for certain things, and then you can know. Okay, maybe I should add reverb here. Maybe just a touch of it. Less is more. Remember that now, as a beginner level mixed earlier. You know, I always recommend and even as you know, intermediate or even experts even do this, um, use presets. So say if you want to add a compressor to a track, Okay, What you want to do is come over here and use the process that they already having in the program to start off with. You can always adjust, Does. But there's nothing. No rule that says you can't do that. I promise you some of the greatest people that you hear on the radio and engineers and everything like that. They use these presets, and I probably should just that's what you you know you want to do as well now last thing I forgot to mention when it comes to getting the right levels is make sure that you don't, um, mixed, you know, pushed. You're drunk, you're tracks up above negative six db. Okay, the reason wise, you went when you go to give your track toe a mastering engineer, you want to master it yourself. You don't want you want to give some head was called headroom. So when you master it your track, they have room to bring the tracks levels up. But if your tracks are already pushed up to the max, then there's no head room, and you're basically gonna have a messed up sounding track again. Remember, the purpose of mixing the purpose of mixing is creating balance in the mix balance in the track, balancing all the instruments out, making sure they all sound good together and work good together. Mastering is the process of bringing levels up in putting that polish on the mix. Okay, are published on the track. Thanks for watching in the next lecture. I'm gonna give you a brief example of how to mix your track 3. Mixing The Beat - Live Example (Part 1): be making basis. All right, So what's going on in this lecture work? Basically, what we're gonna do is a live example of what I taught you about the five mixing tips, okay? Or mixing steps. OK, I'm not going to fully mix this track. I don't have in preference that for you. I'm really gonna point out some key things that you could use to, you know, mix your track as you're going along. OK, so it's not gonna be a full fledge, you know, to our long mix, you know, saying really gonna be about five minutes, But let's go ahead and jump into it. The first thing I'm gonna go ahead and talk about is getting the proper levels. We already have everything organized as we talked about before. But usually what I do is I always start off with the drums. The kick is is really that that main part that you want to start off with. So I just go ahead and play it and listen to it. And before I even do that, I go ahead and get a loop. You know, you're saying you want to get a loop where all your instruments are pretty much gonna be playing during that section. Two song. Usually that's during the hook or the course. So I go ahead and get that Luke going, and then I just start with the kick first. Now, obviously, for some reason, I have, um, these lefties affects on there, so I want to turn those off. But you want everything to be dry on that kick. Now, remember, about the negative six db rule. You don't want it to go over negative 60 b. So I turned that kicked down, and then I'm gonna mix everything based off of that kick. So next time when you really don't bring in the snare, all right. Now, after you get your drums on point, that's when you want to start bringing in the other instruments. Volume wise. Now, before we do that, though, I want to point out something that when it comes to the reference track, All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and bring up this reference track. There's actually attract already mixto whatever. And I want you to listen to where the drums air sitting and where everything is sitting on in the mix. Okay. And so the things you want to listen to. All right, I hear that the kick is coming in strong, and it's balanced well with, say, the base has bounced. Well, with these other instruments, you want to be just kind of going back and forth on that reference track. Whatever track you choose, that's similar to which your view mixing and go back and forth and listen to based on certain instruments. All right, where is this track? This is instrument sitting in reference to my mix. Okay, something cold cut and counter to start bringing these instruments back in here. And I was just doing that to show you that when you put put, bringing certain instruments up too high, it doesn't work well with the mix. And this is based on the e queuing. And if the frequencies here the kick drum has low frequencies in that bass instrument has low frequencies. So if you have both of these instruments up real loud, that's gonna be competing. So what you want to do is turn that bass instrument down and let that kid come out, you know? So let's listen to it now. All right? So keep on adding 4. Mixing The Beat - Live Example (Part 2): be making basis. One more tip is basically to listen to your mix at a very low volume. So turn your speakers down very low your monitors down very low and then turned on your mix and start beating the levels. That way, you'll hear you'll be surprised. What you hear when you actually turn the music down instead of up were allowed. Sometimes when it was up, were allowed is everything is air getting drowned out in the mix? And so when you turn it down, try that you'll be able to get a better, you know, understanding how everything's to sound. All right. So, like, let's talk about the E queuing, for instance, on this base instrument, there's there's an annoying, um, frequencies. And so I'm gonna uses a process called So attractive e que and where I'm gonna cut some of the frequencies that are annoying. And, um, it's gonna help clear up the mix, and it's also going to sound better on a year. So let's go ahead and open this up here, and I'm gonna go into my e que. Is that on this? This push play now? I don't know if you hear that But like somewhere in the mid range to high range, it's of some very annoying sounds. Let's just say right here. I'm gonna pull that down and let's check it out and it takes a little bit of a little bit to find it. But you saw like that. What I was doing was moving. This left the right to kind of find where that annoying sound is and kind of Take that out of there. All right, so now let's listen to it with the rest of the mix. And I put brought in some more of these highs because I still wanted to hear the base that little grid sound. But I just didn't want that annoying part of it in there. And you could do that with some of the other instruments is well, now again, remember that less is more so. Please don't go in here and do too much to your track It sometimes you're tracking sound really great just the way it is. And as you know, you keep on and keep on and keep on Adam and it becomes this too complicated and mess stuff up. So keep that in mind. Now let's just talk about some quick things here. Um, let's talk about actually effects. All right, let's talk about effects. Um, for instance, you know, adding like a compressor. You know, everybody is worried about the compressor and the kick drums and all that type of stuff Go with the presets, like I said, and you just want to try out certain names and see what's works best for you and see, I like that compressor better. It just kind of felt better, you know? I mean, it wasn't as compressed. You don't want something to be too compressed. So that's why I used that compressor. And so I just wanted to kind of give you some brief things here issue we're gonna pay attention to. You can ask him reverb. See, maybe on the piano lies . You can add the compressor, too, on some of these other things. Other tracks to it doesn't have to just be on drums. And remember, just use the presets. And that's the thing about mixing is sometimes again, less is more. Sometimes you might ask something on there and be like, Well, it sounded good, but then our might sound good by itself, but then when you listen to it with the mix, it doesn't work well with the mix. Don't be afraid to take it off. You can just easily take it off or put it back on. As you wish. Do your basic job is to do whatever your track meets, you know, saying Don't do what you feel. Uh, it's because you know someone said to do this, you know, in a course of whatever you do, what you track needs some tracks, some of some of the instruments don't needy queuing Some of the instruments don't need compressing. Some instruments don't need certain things, but some do. So you is your job as the producer to figure out which ones does which ones don't. And that is all based on practice, practice, practice And, of course, also learning Maura, Maura, Maura about it. But these are the basics. Thanks for watching. OK, 5. Mixing The Beat (Action Step #6): be making basis. Alright, guys. So in this lecture, where we're gonna talk about is an exercise of mixing. OK, we've already talked about some basic principles of mixing five different techniques or tips that you can use to, you know, take your mixes to the next level and make some goods quality sounding tracks. Now, let's go ahead and apply it. So now we're coming back to the beat that you've already arranged by this time, you know, everything is pretty much how you want it again. I'm going through this process with U S. So what you want to do is go ahead and get the right levels. Okay? Make sure everything's organized at the right levels, you know, get your reference track. You know, do everything that we said to do in this section. As faras mixing okay is concerned. And one key thing here is keep it simple. And don't worry about trying to make it sound perfect. The main point of this is to get you to finish, you know, finish a track. Okay, So finished the track and you will get better as you mix it and there's you practice it, but go ahead and do that. So that's desk. Your action step for this section is to go ahead and mix this record. Okay. Mix the track that you came up with using the four stems after you built the beat after you arranged to beat and made it, you know, put into different sections to intro The versus the Hooks, etcetera. Now mix it all right. 6. Thank You!: be making basis. All right, so we made it to the end. We're almost at the finish line. All you got to do now is finished this class project, and then go to module six, where we're gonna be talking about how to bounce down your track and do it more so with the proper audio settings.