A great drum track is at the core of most modern popular music. Other mix recipes have covered the snare drum and kick drum, and now it is time to talk about toms. The toms can be used to add texture to particular drum fills and section transitions or they can drive an entire song. […]
Category: compression
The bass guitar is an important element of every contemporary mix even though it rarely plays a prominent role. Sometimes the bass is felt rather than heard while other mixes have the bass in a much more audible sonic space. Your home recording studio is well equipped to shape your bass tracks as long as […]
A great snare drum sound can really drive a mix. If you start to listen critically to a lot of dance, rock, metal, modern country, pop, funk, and other kinds of popular music you will notice the next loudest thing to the vocals is typically the snare drum. No matter how much is going on […]
Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools price check UPDATE: This book is now available. A new book on mixing techniques is coming out in January 2008. The press release on the book makes it look like a potentially valuable resource. The book promises to cover techniques from basic to advanced and should appeal to home […]
There is no reason to settle for lackluster kick drum sounds on your home recording. This article explores some great mix recipes for equalizing and compressing your kick drum tracks. While every kick drum has an individual sound there are some general guidelines you can follow to get a great start in shaping your drum’s […]
Continued from New York Style Parallel Compression (Part 1) Step 3: The parallel drum compressor Waves Mercury Bundle price check The API plugins from waves sound great and are used to create the sounds for this article. They are a bit pricey but well worth every penny. Time to have some fun and add the […]
Drums are one of the hardest things to get right in a “home” recording. Big studios have plenty of outboard gear and a cabinet full of microphones. They often have the leisure of tracking drums to analog tape and later bouncing to digital. In light of this all, you may be surprised to learn drums […]
Taming vocals can be a very tough job. I have a few techniques that I use based on the song I’m mixing and the vocalist on record. A few ways to tame a vocalist are “riding” the fader, compressors, other dynamics processors, EQ, and even reverb. Sometimes you will use a combination of all of […]
Continued from Getting The Late 80s CD Sound (Part 2) Step 8: Boosting Levels Using Multiband Compression The master should be sounding pretty good at this point. The only thing left is to get a little more consistency across frequency bands. Add the Waves L3 MultiMaximizer to your track right after Ozone 3. The interface […]
Continued from Getting The Late 80s CD Sound (Part 1) Step 5: Mastering Reverb In Ozone 3 A mastering reverb can really help tie your mix together and put a nice polish on it. Mastering reverb is quite a bit different from track reverb. The goal of track reverb is typically to add an audible […]