Mixing 101 - where to begin?

[goroth]

Yeah, this is just for demos. Preproduction. Anything serious I would do in a studio.

Re rooms speakers etc. I'll be doing everything on my laptop with headphones in bed after the rugrats have gone to sleep. That's the kinda level I'm at.

[Chankgeez]

You think most people will be listening to your music with headphones?

[goroth]

Do kids even buy hifis anymore?

[Chankgeez]

I know some people used to bring a cassette of the mix into their car and throw it in the tape deck to hear how it sounded because (the theory went that) most people listen to music while driving in their car.

So maybe you should mix to how you think most people are gonna listen?

[goroth]

I'm not sure anyone is going to listen. In the end I just want to start getting better at this stuff given the relatively many restrictions I have (livin arrangement/life-wise). If and when things change down the road I'll get more serious gear but now it's about doing the best with what I've got and learning the ropes sorta.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

headphones can be really hard to mix on accurately. but like most things you can adjust your ears to what you're hearing.

headphones tend ot make everythign sound awesome, then u listen on the speakers and it sounds like a bad k-hole. \

be aware of your phones and how they translate

[rustywire]

Exclusive headphone-mixing is a bad idea for one basic fundamental reason: headphones couple the left channel to your left ear and the right channel to your right ear. That isn't how we hear sound in the real world. The resulting soundstage is typically extreme & exaggerated and the tendency is to hardpan .
Whether sound originates from *your* left or right side, it can be heard with both ears. This is how we perceive depth and can isolate the source in a 3d space, similar to how 2 eyes provide depth in the field of vision.
It's possible to achieve a headphone mix that translates well to monitors/hifi speakers etc...but it's unnecessarily difficult and kind of putting the cart before the horse.
Ideally, (as it's already been mentioned) you want a mix that sounds good on any type of playback equipment. Hence, primary mixing is best done with a good pair of near field monitors in a treated room and auditioning it numerous ways on home system, in car, computer speakers, headphones, with and without subs/speakerbox etc.

[goroth]

Auditioning is no problem - I can do that on the home stereo etc when the children are awake. It's just recording and mixing is done at night when I get some peace and quiet, and it necessitates that I'm quiet. Sad face.

[D.o.S.]

I know some people used to bring a cassette of the mix into their car and throw it in the tape deck to hear how it sounded because (the theory went that) most people listen to music while driving in their car.

So maybe you should mix to how you think most people are gonna listen?

That's how I do it, but I wasn't mixing, really. Just listening to field recordings of bands + 4 track experiments.

[AstralFeedbackM]

You don't need awesome gear to get a decent mix. If you want or have to use the headphone, then do so. The issue everyone is trying to convey is that you will mix at night on the phones, wake up the next day and throw it in your car (or whatever) and it will probably sound like shit. If you have laptop speakers I would use those on low volumes. Better than headphone, not great, but better. Also you don't want to mix at high volumes. It mask a lot of shit, and we have a perception that if it's loud it sounds good. Not the case one bit and with the lowness wars going on right now everyone thinks this is the answer. Mix low on your speakers at a volume that you could have a conversation with someone.

[KaosCill8r]

I know some people used to bring a cassette of the mix into their car and throw it in the tape deck to hear how it sounded because (the theory went that) most people listen to music while driving in their car.

So maybe you should mix to how you think most people are gonna listen?

Phil Spector back in the 60s had a single car speaker in the studio so he could check his mixes. His theory was that most listeners were hearing his songs in the car.

[AstralFeedbackM]

I know some people used to bring a cassette of the mix into their car and throw it in the tape deck to hear how it sounded because (the theory went that) most people listen to music while driving in their car.

So maybe you should mix to how you think most people are gonna listen?

Phil Spector back in the 60s had a single car speaker in the studio so he could check his mixes. His theory was that most listeners were hearing his songs in the car.

Yes that is very True about Spector.

If you want to make good mixes, get a good book, like the one I stated in my first post. It also gives you access to free material from bands that are unmixed. You can actually mix them and then post them on Mike Seniors website for others to give you advice. This is actually really cool because it's full band shit and it's not your music so you don't feel bad when someone says change this volume or used a different effect on this part. As in anything thing in life your at the point of mixing 101. With that your first mix is gonna be pretty shitty because you haven't learned things yet. It's ok and we all have to start somewhere. We all weren't Hendrix when we started guitar, and you won't be George Martin on your first mix. Practice, practice, practice. I started really getting into recording when I got sick of spending $10,000 on studio recordings. I also just want to record a few things for my own enjoyment, probably like you. That turned my world around and totally changed the way I listened to music. I would go back to things I heard a million times (The Beatles - I was a walking, talking, Beatle fanatic), and hear things I never would of ever heard without the power of understanding mixing.

My main point is practice your ass off if you want to make good mixes, or pay someone to do it. If you decided to do it on your own you will be surprised to see how fun it is, and how it changes the way you look and hear music. PM me if you want to send me a copy of your mix. Trust me I won't judge one bit. I actually bet my first mixes are way worse than what you could be doing right now.

[goroth]

Alright, I had to actually create some material to mix...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H55dYclb2cw[/youtube]

I've been pimping this everywhere else haha.

Now a few notes on what is going on:
1) Drums are done in Addictive Drums, programmed by hand in GuitarPro. I'm still getting to grips with the Addictive Drums interface, and to be honest I think I understand around 10% of what I can actually do with the drum sounds.
2) This is a new tune for my band, but I presented it as an effects demo, so I've added in more leads than I would and given them a fair bit of prominence in the mix.
3) There is no bass. I wanted to see what I could achieve using just a guitar and the Dr Scientist BitQuest (it being an effects demo and all). Anyways, the tracking of the pitch shifter isn't fast enough to play it like a real bass (limitation of the Spin FV-1 chip) so I mixed it quite low and played pretty simply just to fill out the sound a bit.
4) All guitars recorded direct with a cab sim. Panned relatively hard left and right, but not 100% panned.
5) Only stuff I've done to the mix, apart from levels, is some selective high pass filtering.
No compression or limiting or anything. All levels mixed really low so I have plenty of dBs of headroom.
Mastered using LANDR's quite competent algorithms. www.landr.com

Recorded and mixed with 15 year old 30 dollar Sony headphones. Auditioned it on my computer (yay for computer speakers), through the iphone (with iphone headphones) and through a relatively nice hifi in my loungeroom.

Given that humble approach... um... whaddya reckon? My disposable income says that this is going to be the approach I have to take for a fair while... on the other hand it's just a youtube effects demo. When the band eventually records we'll head down to a nice studio in Stockholm.

Thanks for all the ideas and help thus far dudes!

[rfurtkamp]

Would need to hear outside of YT to really analyze.

The YT mix sounds a bit flat with an overpresence in the high-end (not good clang on the faux drums), and not a whole lot of depth of field.

[goroth]

Nah, that's about how it sounds

How do you correct those things?