Hot mix tips from the hot lab!
I'm mixing this prog house song while sweating my ass off, and wanted to share these two tips:
1) Fixing an awfully distorting kick (I've posted a video about this before, but I've become more critical about this technique, as I'm always looking for the cleanest way to do things)
2) A panning tip. I've become increasingly conscious about automating panning in the past year, and I really love doing it.
Hope it's warm in your country…if it's hot in Finland, it's gotta be steaming elsewhere!
Comments (5)
Out of curiosity, is there ever a situation where you say “I can’t work with this kick, so I’ll replace it?”
If there's an element as important as kick in a client mix, I'll suggest a new one. I won't promise to replace it by default, as that can be a rabbit hole trying to find a kick someone else fully likes. Quite often now I actually help drumsounds with Snapback, to give them more body etc.
Hey Fanu, I wanted to ask if it's a good idea to work on a production with a master chain, then take it off to do the mix and master. By the way, I wanted to ask if you turn on your master chain from the start and mix within it, or do you do the mix first and then the master? Thanks.
I do it all in the same project for both my own music and client mixes. I’ve always had that workflow. I aim to get the mix as good as possible and on master, mostly just shaping EQ (nothing big, or else I’ll return to the mix I see boosts bigger than 2 dB), mild resonance control, honing stereo image, possible slight transient tightening, shaving off possible transients of side signal, and limiting…roughly that. As long as the mix doesn’t fall apart when you disable the master chain, it’s ok to have.
That is a phenomenal trick! I also like using Kick 3's analysis mode to separate the sub from the top layer, you could then filter that separately. It works really well for kicks that have been sampled or ripX'd from other tracks.