Getting your vocals to sit right on top at the front of your mix is desirable for any vocal focused song. Lackluster vocal production is like a glowing neon sign that says, “home studio recording!” This tutorial covers a simple mix recipe for getting your vocals right out there in the front of your mix with clarity and presence. Show me the recipe
There are many approaches to mixing heavy guitar tracks. Striking a balance between clarity and thickness is a constant struggle. There is a general tendency in the recording of heavy music to layer many guitar tracks, but how do you maintain that razor’s edge clarity of a single track? Here is a mix recipe to take a double tracked rhythm guitar, give it the thickness and stereo spread of a quad tracked guitar but the clarity of a single tracked guitar. This technique will also work on guitar styles other than metal.
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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. No matter which role they are filling in your track, it is important to get a sound that will allow them to cut through the mix and be noticed. Here are some helpful mix recipes to get you started with EQ and compression on your tom tracks. Get mix recipes for toms
Here is another stereo mixing trick to go along with the Haas, cross, and panned delay tricks. This technique creates a stereo sound that fills the room and appears to come from all sides of the listener’s head at the same time. The basic idea is to start with a mono track panned dead center and invert the phase one one of the channels. Your digital home recording setup is quite likely already equipped to perform this trick. Show me how to set it up
Here is another trick for using a delay to create a bit of a stereo effect on a mono track. The basic idea is to pan the mono track slightly to one side (one to three o’clock should do it) and add a delay that is panned about the same amount to the other side (nine to eleven o’clock). Adjust the delay time to produce a sound you like for your mix, and there you have it! It is a fairly simple technique that can be used to push something like a supporting keyboard track out of the center of a mix but allows you to still keep it turned up in volume. Following is a description of how to do this trick in REAPER and more details on what kinds of delay settings I think sound good. See the details
Reverse reverb is an interesting technique that can give some extra power to well chosen song sections. In the days of reel-to-reel or cassette recording the effect was somewhat involved, requiring flipping the tape and careful calculation of which track you would record to in order to avoid overwriting another important track. In the days of the modern home recording studio we are a bit more spoiled with our computer powered DAW and software plugins. To illustrate this effect, I’ll show you how to apply it to make a simple 4/4 drum part sound much more dramatic. Show me the reverse trick
Mixing is certainly a specialized craft but I believe in learning all I can about my craft. Much of my time is occupied by reading about mixing, talking about mixing, thinking about mixing, and actually mixing. This page is intended to serve as a resource for finding some interesting mixing related material to help you hone your own craft. Our home studio is our playground and there are many books available to help us learn the ropes. Show me some mixing books »
Cross delay is a trick that can be used on a track having different information on the left and right channels to enhance the lushness of the stereo image. You can use this trick on drum overheads, chorused guitar sounds, stereo keyboard patches, or any other non-mono audio track in your home recording. Here is how to make it work. Show me
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 you have a basic equalizer and compressor. Show me how
There are a lot of little noises that can sneak in between phrases. These extra noises are not noticed while the vocalist is singing but you don’t want to hear bleed from headphones, rustling paper, or any other distractions in between. It is quite common in the home recording studio world to put a noise gate on vocal tracks to eliminate these types of problems. Tuning a noise gate to correct this can be a time consuming process which is prone to creating one or two unnatural sounding words here and there. I prefer a more natural sounding approach. Show me how to do it »
