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A Well Balanced
Mixdown: Thinking Multidimensional.
Making a good sounding mix is not just about getting
the levels right. If only it would be that simple. You
sometimes might find yourself not being able to point
out the problem in a mix while knowing something just
doesn’t sound right. In that case it can be helpful
to analyse your mix on the following five dimensions:
- Stereo spread
- Dynamics
- Distance
- Frequency
- Volume
Let’s assume that you have all your musical elements
in place and you’re happy with the way they sound.
Problematic frequencies of individual sounds are eq’ed
out and all that is left is fixing the balance within
the mix to finish off the tune. Let’s start out
with the first one.
Stereo spread
Stereo spread is a relatively easy one to get right. It can be
achieved in several ways like having a sound with slightly varying
pitch or harmonics across the speakers, splitting a sound in lots
of frequency bands and panning these left and right or simply
delaying the sound on the left or right channel slightly (I’m
talking milliseconds here). More conventional ways are panning
with our without modulation. Reducing the stereo spread can be
done by merging the left and right channel or by panning the stereo
channel and sending the result to a mono bus.
The point is to determine which sounds in your mix should be wide
and which should be narrow. As a rule of thumb lower frequencies
such as the kick drum and bassline should have no stereo spread.
The sounds in mid and high frequencies, like vocals, pads, guitars,
fx and leads, are suited for stereo spreading.
How much for each of these sounds is up to you to decide. The
choices should be lead by giving them different amounts of stereo
spread and not alienating them too much from the others.
Dynamics
Now this is a tricky one. Lots of dynamics in a mix makes it sound
alive, breathing and punchy when played loud. However putting
it next to a mix where all dynamics are squeezed out of it will
probably sound quiet and weak.
To get the best of both worlds it would be a good idea to look
at an audio file or volume indicator and compress or overdrive
so that relatively large volume peaks are reduced. That would
remedy occasionally peaking sounds or sounds that are too clicky.
While reducing dynamics is usually done with overdrive or a compressor,
increasing dynamics can be done by modulating the volume with
an envelope, lfo, expander or certain compressor settings.
Reducing dynamics with a compressor can bring a sound to the front
of a mix and this is sometimes a good idea for leads, drums or
basslines in Dance music. However, for pads or other more subtle
sounds it is probably better to use some kind of distortion or
saturation to reduce dynamics if necessary.
Too much compression can make a mix sound fatiguing and too busy
when monitoring at high levels while it may sound right at low
levels. Take into consideration that reducing dynamics is an irreversible
process (unlike eq) and overdoing it is very tempting. There will
also be some sort of compression in the mastering process, signal
chain and the human ear (at loud levels) and compression ratios
will be multiplied, not added up.
Getting the dynamics right makes the track sound alive and breathing
on one side and upfront and energetic on the other.
Distance
Distance is about a sound being perceived as upfront or far away
in contrast to the other sounds. Volume will only go so far in
positioning your sounds along this dimension.
Compression can be a means to bring a sound to the front without
literally increasing the volume. Reverb or short delays are the
more common ways of sending a sound to the back. However, you
will have to be careful not to make the mix sound muddy by giving
too many sounds a fair amount of reverb. Also, try using different
reverbs for different sounds to avoid a one-dimensional sense
of space. Usually short reverbs work better on short and busy
sounds like drums, long ones work better on long sounds like sweeps.
The goal is the give the mix a sense of space or depth without
loosing the articulation that grabs the listener’s attention.
Frequency
The frequency dimension helps to determine in which
frequency band a certain sound should be represented.
Tools for this job include filters and equalizers. An
important step in getting it right is to low cut and
high cut each sound to get rid of unnecessary frequencies.
This should make the mix more clean and open. For instance
cutting unnecessary low frequencies out of leads or
hihats can make huge improvements in the clarity of
your mix.
Also make sure the sounds playing at the same time don’t
have overlapping frequency peaks. This is where a spectrum
analyser comes in handy.
The frequency peaks of a sound are largely determined
by the note pitch. Pitching up or down is a good way
to remedy such overlaps. The resonance of a filter or
phaser can create frequency peaks or cuts, but a more
subtle way of assigning different sounds in the frequency
spectrum is boosting or cutting with an equalizer. A
few db’s should be enough to get it right.
Ideally, the sounds in the mix all have their own dominant
frequency and the entire frequency spectrum is covered.
Volume
This one comes last because the first four dimensions
have to be right before adjustments in levels can lead
to the final mixdown.
Getting the levels right is not a very difficult thing
to do. A trick to check if you got it right is to step
outside your studio and hear if any sound in your mix
jumps out. Another one is to monitor the track at different
levels and correct individual levels where necessary.
The right levels make the leading elements of a track
come out without neglecting any of the backbone elements.
These dimensions cannot be seen in isolation, they are interlaced.
Besides, other factors may influence your mix too like your speakers,
room, hard- and software architecture, environment for which the
music is produced, personal preferences, genre standards and all
that.
This might seem more difficult than it is. The more experienced
you are, chances are you will get these things right automatically.
If not, try referencing your mix with other, great tunes. Also,
take a break every now and then to prevent bad decisions due to
listening fatigue and try not to overdo things. A mix can be ruined
by trying to disguise or polish a turd.
Take these 5 dimensions into consideration before making your
final mixdown and you might not have to do it all over at a later
time. Otherwise I hope this helps bringing a bit more analysis
into mixing.
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