About to mix my first ALBUM...

[Mr Peete]

I've done little mixes here and there. A song here a couple there. Now I'm getting the chance to mix a whole album. Normally, we go to a mixing facility equipped with an SSL Board, great effects, great compressors, etc... but financial constraints have destroyed that possibility this time around. So, now I have to mix this album on DIGI.

I know there's NO WAY IN HELL that I can duplicate an SSL quality mix on DIGI. I wanna make sure this album comes out as clean as it can. I do hip hop so the vocals are aggressive and the tracks are aggressive sounding as well with a few female vocalists here and there. From a technical standpoint I need to buckle down and do things as perfect as possible.

Any general pointers out there?

[Kickin.da.speaker]

Keep your ears open [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[where02190]

Originally posted by Mr Peete:

I know there's NO WAY IN HELL that I can duplicate an SSL quality mix on DIGI.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Why not? Lots of music, particualrly pop music, including hip hop is done completely in PT.

Good monitors (at least 2 pr) and a good room are key. Reference familiar CD's with sounds you like. Don't rush, take a break every few hours, and limit your total mixing time to 8 hrs a day. Do multiple mixes, vocal +2db, vocal -2db, etc, for comparison.

Have faith. Confidence in your abilities to both learn and achieve your goal is vital as well. If you don't believe it can sound good it never will.

Hope this is helpful.

[sugarfuzz]

When eq'ing, use your eq's to take away what you have too much of, do not boost a bunch of frequencies.
i.e. If a vocal is muddy, instead of boosting between 5k and 10k, try cutting around 150hz-300hz.
Remember recording digital is allready going to allready sound a little harsh, or brittle, so I would not boost much between 3 and 5k.
GOOD LUCK!

[Targon]

Do loads of pre-production on all your beats. Edit each drum sound individually, use hi-pass filters on hats,snr's rides etc. Create a few drum loops out of these hits and hipass them like 2k or higher, use these to layer over programmed kik/snr/hat patterns u have created. This helps to create separation. The Digi rack hi pass is fine here. Top an tail all your sounds, do nice automated volume fades an bounce the individual sounds down. Don't go too overboard compressing your beats tho, u want the kik an the snr to still have loads of dynamics to make em smash up the place. Not too fast a comp attack...5ms maybe , to let a brief transient of the attack thru uncompressed....helps to give it some krack. RenComp sounds good.

Bass, hmm well low pass it at around 150 maybe 200 but dont let it seep into the 250-400 range....can get muddy an ya may loose the kik. Play with that Max bass thing to on your basses.

808 kiks slightly overdriven with long decays make sik subs

I like that black bomfactory universal audio replica thing for male vox, an the silver one for female vox. LA-1176 , LA-2A respectively? (can't remeber names of them) Pretty smooth. Prolly a good idea to do some hi-passing on the fem vox as well and spread em around so she dont clash with the rude boyee on the mic.

Try not to mix with a sub woofer first time around...can really throw you off. For hip hop music, make sure you check out the mixes in your car if u have a dope system init. As long as you get the beats an bass sounding hot the rest is pretty easy.

Laiterz
Targon

[Mr Peete]

thanks for the replies

*taking notes*

[WorldOfWiz]

I'm taking notes as well.

Wiz