Audio engineering: house music
Let's go through the processing of a house music song that's quite close to a mix + master (parts of it lean towards a stem master).
I'll talk about where I think the song needs some help and where the producer's own mix is slightly lacking. This is what I have to assess daily before making mix decisions.
I am showing all the processing too, and let you hear the on/off on all the plugins on tracks and master and explain all my mix decisions.
I'll also talk about what stem mastering is (compared to mixing + mastering, and simple mastering) and what its challenges are here and how I overcome them.
Once again changing the kick, too.
This is "piano house", somewhere between tech house and classic house, with a strong vocal that has to cut through.
Let's do some engineering!
Comments (19)
Do you ever autmate the with whit the side widener or its only the utility you do that whit?
I only use SW to give it the desired static width and then control the overall master width with Utility.
Thanks! I found that it's really necessary to do the Kick and Sub compression before passing the signals to Limiters. But do you actually have a preference of the settings for that too? I tried to push down a smaller amount of threshold, the relationship of the kick and sub acted softer and maybe cohesive which better for Melodic tracks, the more I push down the threshold, the pumping of the kick will be harder which better more Low End focus tracks maybe? By using headphone to mix the tracks, it's very hard to understand what is correct and what is wrong. Happy to listen your opinions about this.
First, I mostly _limit_ those, so wanted to be clear or that. What I primarily aim for with that is 1) simply less stress for master limiters and 2) no audible change. This once again is something I never have fixed values for, but then again limiting is fairly simple, and I mostly use Ableton stock limiter to limit those. Most of the time I only limit the bass, for around 3 dB, give or take. A lot of times I don't touch the kick: it can be really tough to dynamically restrict it without the kick losing something (audible level, weight etc). (I will soon-ish post about drums compression and different types of it btw)
Cheers for this, just joined the Patreon since I found your stuff on YouTube so helpful and can't wait to improve my skills.
Thank you for joining - way more coming!
If you have a top bass layered with a sub, do you usually cut the low frequencies completely out of the top bass so they don’t clash and the sub has enough space to stay clean? Or do you just do sidechain w soothe for example on the specific low frequencies ?
If the top bass does have subs, I will cut those: cleanliness matters there. Layered subs = mess. And yes I have soothe 2 doing SC on bass bus.
I feel like every time you uplode a video i get so mutch more knowlege, Thx so mutch agian fanu
Hey really loved the videos and the depth you explain with. Can tou olease make a video on phase and(mainly kick and bass). Thanks fanu
Hi man, glad you like it. Phase stuff in kick and bass I have covered - these two videos below might help. If not, feel free to ask! KICK/BASS: https://www.patreon.com/FanuFatGyver/posts/kick-bass-phase-148350567 KICK LAYERING (same issue/topic in a way): https://www.patreon.com/FanuFatGyver/posts/how-to-layer-158440912
Hey brother. This is great. Have a question regarding the ableton limiter. Why do few ever use M/S mode? I would think that we’d usually be limiting mid peaks and want to treat the sides independently…or am I wrong here in my assumption?
Funny, I've never even thought of trying the different modes, but it's because I never do anything really demanding with it, e.g., master limiting, as it's not good enough for that. Seems Ableton says L/R mode "can be useful for preserving the dynamics of stereo signals" but yeah, I rarely do anything heavy with it, so thats why I havent put it thru any extensive tests (like Ive done with my master limiters).
I love the way you teach, simple and honest. Appreciate all your effort put into the videos, maybe in the future I could send you a project of mine :) love from Mexico
Thanks Paco! I'm up for checking out your project for sure :)
Thanks heaps for this, easily the best subscription that I pay for hahahah, appreciate all your stuff but especially the house/tech house stuff, cheers from Australia mate
Thank you!
Nice! Was waiting for some more house stuff. Thanx for all the info you share! Been very helpfull, happy to have seat at you're knowledge.
My pleasure! Hope you like it :)