Need advice on mix settings

[BlackOctopus]

Hi - i am doing a first mix of a friends song on LE...i have done a basic mix after arranging a few things here and there, but the song still doesn't shine...or sparkle enough.

Can someone give me a few pointers?

The track has 2 mono tracks of acoustic guitar panned hard left and right.
ditto for the vocal...with a reveresed vocal that drops in here and there on the song on another track...
Drums parts are all seperated on mono audio tracks too..kick, snare, hats.. shaker sounds..

I have set up 2 auxillary tracks and put compressor on aux 1 and D-verb on aux 2...
I am sending part of the signals to these..

I would be grateful for any advice settings..just to get an idea of what the hell i'm doing!...It sounds ok..but not great..

The song is at 106bpm...nice uptempo acoustic song with male vocal...similar in style to 'Badly Drawn Boy'.....i have about 3 days to finish it. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[ghostman420]

there is a time and a place for hard panning. Don't use it on everything. try putting things in there own space in the stereo image, this can help little things jump out at you that you might have missed before. also try a multiband compressor in the master fader. this can really polish a mix, more than you might think. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[bassmac]

This will help you.

http://www.audiomelody.com/Tutorials...troduction.htm

[BlackOctopus]

Many thanks [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[supercell]

A book called "The Mixing Engineers handbook" by Bobby Ownens will help you greatly. I know you probably don;t have time to go out and get it for this project, but I highly recomend that you pick it up..

As far as your current mix..

Think of your mix in 3D

Pan so your stuff is not on top of eachother.

EQ to bring clarity - I.E. Make your Kick and bass guitar have different frequencies going do they do not compete in the same frequncy.

Lighlty compress to even things out.

Effects to add some surpises.

Have fun and don;t be to hard on your self.

B.p.

[JEdmunds]

if youre working with a 001, i almost always needed a little high eq boost on the master to give it some 'sparkle'.

try 1 - 2.5 db's @ 12-15k with a low q.

i use to use bf's pultec plug, but if you dont have that you can use waves, mcdsp, etc.
im not sure if i would recommend using the digi's eq on the master fader though...

good luck,
je

[Polosul]

I found out that Drum overheads make a tremendous difference in the song bringing the song alive, also I happen to like the Maxim on the master bus along with S1 and a nice reverb using the S1 (Stereo Imager) top of chain then EQ, reverb and your Maximizer either Maxim or L1 at the end, you'll see miracles on your mix, this is my opinion, It worked very nicely for me [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Polosul]

Also forgot to mention, On your final EQ experiment cutting 4 to 8dB aroung 200 to 250, that usually carried most of the mudiness out of the mix, and dont over pan
My second opinion [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[BlackOctopus]

Many thanks guys!
I finished the mix..the drum parts were created in Reason, so i tweaked the EQ a little bit on them, recorded in a better Kick drum and added reverb to all the vox and guitars, medium delay onto this synthy sound and compression onto the master fader for the overall mix....

it definitely sounds better than before to my ears...i wish i had better plugins though! All i have is the ones that shipped with 5.2....are there any essential plugins that i should get ??

Or should i wait until i switch to 6.0 and buy plugins for that? Or can i use 5.2 plugs in 6.0???

Thanks again...really appreciate it [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[Polosul]

Hey Black Octopus email me
[email protected]