The 7 Deadly Sins of Mixing ("The mastering engineer's pet peeves")
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2022
- A listener asks: "Justin, what are your pet peeves as a mastering engineer?" Hear his full response, with the complete list of the "7 deadly sins of mixing".
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This man is good like crazy. The Mixing Breakthrough course completely changed how I approach a mix. I guarantee it’s worth the money.
So awesome to hear Magnus! So glad it's been useful and so glad to have you as a member.
-Justin
Coincidentally I did my first mastering job the other day. Well, it was the first time I’ve mastered for another guy who knows what he’s doing. The file he sent me was basically mastered. Nothing I did to it made it sound any better. The thing was cooked(limited and all). My first inclination was to be annoyed, because like you said, I wanted to try some stuff to make his track sound better than it already did, but I quickly remembered that he has always done his own mixes and masters so I let it go. I ended up doing one thing that I thought might add something. I sent him that and I sent him his untouched mix with a stock limiter turning it up to commercial volume. I volume matched them and didn’t tell him which is which. He chose his mix. Didn’t bother me at all. I’ve learned long ago that once something is cooked it’s cooked. I expected him to pick his mix. I still helped him though because he had a problem with the low and high end dipping out at the end of the song, which I suggested he fix in the mix. He did, so I still did my job. His track sounds better for having come to me.
Short version: balance, check excessive highs and lows, use volume envelopes, keep reverb subtle, see if use of stereo image actually does make things better, adapt vocals to style of song and section
I agree with everything Justin said exept the reverb tips.
Well of course I will eq the reverb, but on some genres a big beautiful lush reverb is paramount to the style.
I've produced 3 cds for a Swedish band. They play "stadiumrock" like it was in 1985.
They don't want "sparse and subtle" reverb.
They want my Bricasti hall preset set to maximum LOL
@@kimchristiansen2397 💀💀😭 literally thoo
I look forward to listening to ur podcast episodes and UA-cam vids almost everyday! Thank you!🙏🏼
Justin and Dan Worall must be the two most insightful people I've ever seen on the internet.
THE PAN KNOB! I love it
Excellent Video. Thank you for these great tips and suggestions!
Great video! I mixed my bands first single and I sent it to my friend who is an audio engineer and he was kind enough to be patient and sent a list of things I should try to fix before mastering. Most important were low end buildup and all kinds of clicks and pops that I didnt even notice. He timed me the one's he heard and told me to get a frequency analyzer. Now my ear hears it better that I have practised but it takes a lot of time to get used to hearing those kind of things. I hope I do it better when we make our album.
Your podcast is amazing. I listen to it while at work, and you seem like a great charismatic guy probably living his best life. I’m happy for you!!
Yes I’m weird and will likely pay your course when I have the extra funds ❤️
So glad to hear it! Thanks for saying hello :-)
-Justin
Thanks for all this advice.I really need to buy that Compression Breakthroughs course. Salute!
Thanks for the professional information in getting a better mix!
I'm new to mastering and I appreciate all the tips you discussed. Like and subscribed!
Hi there Justin.
These tips must be the best I've ever heard.
Especially those about too loud or too hyped cymbals or overheads.
I am a producer/musician/mixer at a semi pro level myself and I have noticed so many times that when my mixes go through the mastering stage that the hihat and the ride that were barely noticable in my mix suddenly comes creeping up to slap me across both ears.
OUCH! :D
After this videotutorial I'll be even more judicious when it comes to cymbals in my mixes.
Thank you for some great insights Justin.
Kim Christiansen.
Nice one, Justin, very helpful 🙌
great work !!
Great video mate!
I like your approach. You’re like my dentist telling me I should quit smoking (but know I’m going to anyways). People all love to say they won’t smash their levels - but everyone does.
But please don't smash em.
I've done a two mixes of a song that are both on spotify...
One that had a rms of -9,5 db and one that had an rms of -13 db.
Guess which one that sounded the best after the algorithms of spotify kicked in?
There are so many wonderful fun delicious tricks for widening mixes without ever touching a stereo widener!
Hi there I’m really digging your Videos, they help me a lot at the beginner stage which I am currently at. You talk a lot about “knowing your monitors” or “really knowing the room you mix in”. Could you maybe cover this topic in a future video? How does one understand their room/monitors?
Thanks!
Would be great to learn more about master buss compression and side chain filtering. Thanks!
This!! Vocals + instruments 🔥
Question: isn't there a high degree of subjectivity when it comes to balancing choices? For example, I mostly do rock music. You might even call it indie rock. However, I find that many rock songs I listen to have the vocal way too quiet for my tastes. So for my genre, my vocals are probably "too loud." But for my own tastes, they're not. If I tried to match my reference mix, I would be dissatisfied with where the vocals were sitting (and the snare and the kick drum). It turns out I like indie rock music, but I like pop mixes. Why not marry the two? Won't the result be more unique if it doesn't fit neatly in a box?
Sure, you can do that. Just don’t use the things as references that you think you “should” use as sonic references. Use the things you actually like the sound of as your sonic references instead!
If you want to do indie rock music that’s produced like a pop record, then use pop records you love the sound of as your sonic references.
In that case, the indie rock records are your spiritual references, and the pop records are your sonic references.
Just be honest about what you want your records to sound like, communicate that with your mastering engineer and you’ll be in good shape!
I did a quirky indie pop record a few years back that used a big mainstream Justin Bieber track as a sonic reference (among others), even though it had nothing to do with the genre or style. But still, there were elements in the mainstream pop production he loved.
I took that reference, and the other mainstream pop references, pretty seriously.
We listened to things a few ways, and against a few more “normal” indie rock and pop references, but that mainstream pop reference kept us going in a different and better direction.
That record I mastered that way ended up going gold. So I guess it was a pretty good choice!
In this case, the “spiritual” references were indie rock and indie pop, while the “sonic references” were mainstream pop.
Hope that makes sense!
-Justin
Another gem of a video, thankyou for everything you do brother! You’re appreciated I hope you know that!❤️
Very nice!
Thank you
Amazing!
Excellent
Number 2 is a mistake I make often, mixing super levels for one section, and then noticing later (usually in the car) that something is way too loud or soft. I think that problem is the same I often have when designing graphics on the computer. You are so much into detail, that you often forget the bigger picture. Even a break doesn't help very much. In audio the only thing that helps is listening "outside of the actual mixing). That could be in the car when my mind is more in a consumer mode, or even better if there is somebody else listening along. There I seem to catch most of the mistakes. In graphics I usually have to print it out
Yes! I often says that we do our best mixing when we are not mixing.
There are things you can do during the process, such as doing a listen through with a notebook, lying down on a couch in the back of the room, where you are not allowed to touch any knobs.
I have a whole episode on this theme here: ua-cam.com/video/4KtLNOtEKDo/v-deo.html
With modern PCs its stupidly simple to copy your tracks ad infinitum. Use it to copy your dialed in track for the verse, chorus, bridge, intro etc. Change some parameters like volume, stereo width (very simple in reaper), saturation, simple tilt eq. Copy for each section. No need to automate and you have liberty to change the sound of all identical sections at once
@@micindir4213 Good tips there.
It works the same in Cubase
This video is fantastic -- I'll rewatch it right before the next time I send something in-- also, is using a stereo widener in the reverse way annoying? A couple times, I've used one to narrow the stereo field about 20%before the drop-- ought I avoid that?
soMic-scoop, huh? Do the soNic scoop people know what you're up to? I'll put you in touch with them if you like
Thanks for the video and it helped coz I got some ideas for my remix of an old album. Be safe and skilful. Pinge
good stuff. i wish there were chapters with time stamps though
IMO: The test of a good mix is it not NEEDING a lot of work on the mastering. A good mastering engineer knows when NOT to do stuff and is able to make few subtle changes really count. As far as the 7, my rule of thumb is, unless you have an amazingly good room/monitors/engineer, ALWAYS check a real time spectral analyzer to make sure high end, mid range, and low end elements are all balanced with each other within the context of the tune.
Díky!
Loudness is so subjective. Your master doesn’t have to be loud and sometimes getting it as loud as possible only makes it sound worse. Some songs can just sound louder than they really are, maybe because the genre lends itself to more mids, like big band jazz. What else sounds like Jazz? Ska, some reggae, etc…
Hi-hat solo. For the whole track. Really need those hihats to pop out front 😂
I really enjoy these talks. I get a feeling you're a great guy to go to for mixing, but I have a question: would your mixing course be applicable to metal music? In my brief amateur experience as a producer, I've found metal lives in a world of it's own, and has it's own rules. I enjoy your style of teaching and take to it well, but would your course on mixing be applicable to metal?
Thx.
Absolutely! The courses are made to apply to all genres, with specific notes on how the norms differ across genres. We even have some pretty heavy music audio examples in the courses.
At a certain point, it could be helpful to supplement with additional training that is genre specific if you work in a very niche genre, but the principles and frameworks given here will be useful even in that context.
If you take the course and disagree, you get your money back.
Hope that helps!
-Justin
Justin, what is the login page for the Compressionbreakthrough course? I somehow misplaced that info... thanks
The balance mistake is the one I fall for a lot. It’s surprising because it’s the big basic mix decision but I all the time end up pushing the drums way too loud. So the beat ends up being huge and punchy but you can’t hear anything else.
That’s exactly how hip hip sounds now,you can’t hear nothing else but the kick and 808 lol…
@@kenzoblytheproducertv4934 Haha TRUE! I wish I was making hip hop or trap but my music is more like rock and country - where you should hear the other stuff too :D
@@amusik7 I love rock and country!!!Im really getting a lot more into other genres as well,my favorite is smooth jazz,that’s my dream music to produce a whole smooth jazz record where you can hear all the sounds lol but I haven’t gotten there yet my man…Hopefully soon,I can go on and on about where hip hop is right now,the sampled loop packs a million producers use has truly ruined any form of creativity.SMH
@@kenzoblytheproducertv4934 Sounds great! I hope you will do it and add a link here one day for us to hear it :)
Yeah, music-making is tricky. You fix one thing and something else starts sounding different - sounds play hide-and-seek with the producer.
i mix and master my own tracks and what tends to happen when i get to the mastering phase is that i realize the melody sounds too quite in comparison to the drums or other volume/mix adjustments of that sort. i go back to the mix and make changes. should people mixing their own tracks do a quick master to see how their track would sound louder and more compressed, before sending it to mastering? or is that something the mastering engineer is supposed to take care of, but due to my limited expertise i have to go back to the mix?
I do that too. I have the mixing session and the mastering session open , when I render a mix, I put it into the mastering session and listen there. The Limiter and Compression on the Mastering often changes the mix relations of soft and loud.it brings up the quieter parts. So I have to go back to the mix and automate volume quite a few times
@@treborretlaw yeah same process i have going on. it works, so no reason to change it i guess. thanks for the input!
It depends on your budget...
EQ before the reverb plugin or after? Thanks!
I love the #AURATONES!
"What have you done to your cymbals?!" Is something I ask myself on a regular basis 🙄😂 Great video, thanks
HAHAHAHA!!! I'm weird ...busted at the end of the video!!!
Would like to see a video about stereo mixing with good mono compatibility
Yeah sort of. But then again listening in mono is so dull.
If people choose to listen in mono on a small telephone speaker; they are not really into music are they?
So I say: I don't care about mono, listen to music on big systems that can handle stereo plus subwoofer.
Your life will be better for it :)
@@kimchristiansen2397 listening in mono is dull as you make it, depending whether you have hifi and maybe using too many speakers! Some albums like classic beach boys are only in mono. Fm radio with bad reception collapses to mono. Am radio is only mono. And yes many people listen to music on their phone speakers which is also only mono. Maybe the vocal sounds good in stereo but disappears in mono. Maybe your stereo drums sound great but also disappear in mono due to phase. There are lots of reasons to make sure a stereo mix sounds good in mono, not at all due to hifi reproduction.
@@StephenAnderson98403 I see your point. But I don't mix for people that listen in mono on their Iphone 5.
Music is bigger than that ;)
@@kimchristiansen2397 I've got great memories of listening to tunes on some tiny, tinny speaker. I bet iphones sound better than that ..
@@StephenAnderson98403 Again; I see your point.
But let me give you an example of what stereo really is:
The song "kill the king" by Rainbow from 1977..
Ronnie James Dio sings the song twice perfectly.. then they hard pan those two performances to L and R and in a stereo mix it sounds great.
In a mono thing on am radio it would probably sound dreadful, but listening on a stereo system it is absolutely amazing
Martin Birch did the mix, if he thought it sounded great, who are we to "complain"? :)
Great video. One peeve of mine, if you really care about the track, don't use a de-esser. Take the time to use volume automation instead. A de-esser doesn't care care about your vocal or whatever you're using it on. It only cares about the frequency range and the threshold you set it to. Not all plosives and esses are bad. Sometimes they even need to be pushed up. Your ears are much better and more musical at adjusting the volume on an individual basis.
I agree, but the Lindell Audio 902 de-esser is so good that I many times don't care to edit my vocals for sibilance
The insane thing is that it does this without introducing extra latency.
Honestly, I get the best results when I do a bit of both. I get obsessive about editing sibilance but I need some frequency specific volume ducking too.
I haven't mixed or produced a record in about 2 years. Would love to hear about master bus compression a bit more as I get back into it. I vaguely remember filtering lows on the master comp mainly because I made Hip Hop and they would just dominate the triggering like crazy. Was using the master bus compressor for glue and punch in the rest of the frequency range.
I prefer doing mix bus compression similarly, adding some kind of internal filter sidechain so the comp reacts less to the lows. can squeeze some extra mixbus compression out that way without it feeling too suffocated
Love this man, thank you! If you ever need anything from Vintage King, feel free to reach out! Always happy to hook it up with some discounts 👍
Thanks for the invite Eric!
Great lesson, thanks. I must be one of those weirdos, lol
Thanks Justin - I think that's just the sort of thing that creators want to know, I know I do! I want to learn about anything that helps me become a better mixer...👍
what ive come to realise is that im pretty darn good at mixing and have a basic understanding of mastering... But what the hell is a textric circuit? what did you say at 26.49minutes? haha cheers champ!
Sidechain detector circuit.
So....in a nut shell....don't send the mastering engineer a crappy mix. 😁
LOL
Video starts at 4:15
best
if your here itsvalid
7 Deadly sin 😂😂😂
Offtopic but hands down u have to be some cousin of George Clooney, idk could be me but u look kinda like him xd
Miss the long hair bro. Roots
Too much hype in all that nonsense, first and most important aspect is a good song, with attention on the "WOW" FACTOR. 2. Is using quality sounds, EQ every sound according to its place in the mix, then you can concentrate on the rest. Remember, you can’t polish a turd, it will always be a turd.
Oh my Gawd do you talk just to hear yourself.. jesus holy christ! .. UNSUBSCRIBED
Dude, it’s a PODCAST. What am I supposed to do, dance? 🤗
-Justin
@@SonicScoop A hand-knit yarn blanket tutorial would be great.
@gorf first time on the internet or UA-cam? Probably the dumbest comment I’ve seen all month and that’s saying a lot
Maybe just stare at the camera in silence for a while. It’s the space BETWEEN the notes.
Actually, I find your talking to be very engaging and informative. Cheers.
Might have been a bad joke?
Thanks!
Thanks!