If you had mixed this

[icemadila]

Hi I am new to this forum, and still relatively new to this music thing but I have been trying my best to get a good mix out of this instrumental.

I only have one piece of gear so far which is my interface, still saving up for monitors...my room also sounds like the abyss.

So in essence I would like to borrow your experienced ears and monitors, please tell me what changes you would make to this instrumental if it had been you mixing.

Thanks in advance

[SoundProofStudio]

Is this a beat you produced or just an instrumental ( Industry beat )????

[icemadila]

sorry if i didnt put things in the proper terminology...its a beat that I produced

[staudio]

For this style of music you need a much bigger kick drum and snare. Use an equalizer to
add more low frequencies to the kick, around 50hz to 120hz, find something in that range that sounds good to you. The snare is a little small sounding, add a little 100hz to 250hz, experiment, you want a meaty fat sound. The snare needs more " crack" too, try somewhere between 2khz to 4khz. Also try adding what is sometimes called "air" to the snare, between 8khz to 20khz.
The string melody needs some reverb and is too loud.
The bass could be fatter too. Add distortion and low frequencies.
To make things sound more like they are in the same space, add a small amount of the same reverb to all the tracks. Also, create a level change between the verse and chorus. The chorus of every song is almost always louder. When mixing it is often helpful to check things at very low levels. If you can barely hear anything then thats the right level. Listen to what pokes out, it is usually too loud. Try balancing the instruments at this low level, then turn it up and see what happens.
Good luck and have fun.

[MYAMS]

Yo don't worry about eq'ing and shit jsut try to learn some more about music...learn how to play some instruments and take apart your favorite tracks and record them urself using what you got.

And most importantly, listen to music all long! Really listen critically to what producers are doing.

You might wanna pick up some better drum samples once you learn some more.

[icemadila]

Thanks for the feedback, especially staudio, because i could hear the things you pointed out but I wasnt too sure if they were really problems...I'll strip out the drums and start replacing them with bigger ones. I really need monitors

peace!!

[WhyBe]

Originally Posted by MYAMS

Yo don't worry about eq'ing and shit jsut try to learn some more about music...learn how to play some instruments and take apart your favorite tracks and record them urself using what you got.

And most importantly, listen to music all long! Really listen critically to what producers are doing.

You might wanna pick up some better drum samples once you learn some more.

I have to agree with MYAMS on this one. You are not at the stage where mixing is going to make a difference. You need to work on your beat making skills. When you make a hot beat, it will damn near mix itself.

Use a really good set of headphones until you get some decent monitors.

[mattssons]

I like this!


Just some personal thoughts..

I would use just a tiny bit more reverb to the strings and other keys.

Dry beats are important i think, there will be reverb in the big clubs and too much and you would loose level /impact.

Impact comes from perspective, like a really low hi-hat makes you feel like the drummer is really smashing it. in order for something to sound BIG, something else would have to be Lower / Thinner .

Like thinner( Eq/frequency-width)+ lower volume Strings and keys and rimshots.

..So i would play around with the levels of stuff and "lag" the snare a bit.

Get the base up in frequency a bit. (So it can be heard on smaller speakers as well.)

Paralell compression on bassdrum and bass, perhaps snare together.

Make sure there is nothing clashing frequency wise like muting bass and bassdrum and make sure there is nothing else spilling away down low. Low cut is key!

Checking with a frequency analyzer that nothing else clashes to much.

For me bass, snare and kick are the most important in this style.


/Toby