Pro Mixing Tricks!!

[John A]

When I was a kid in this business, (not too long ago!), one of the coolest things was to be able to watch a big shot mixer do some cool trick on a mix and then later try it out myself. Having said that, I thought I'd start a thread about mixing TRICKS that are cool. I'll start.

Here is one that is rumored to be a Tom Lord Alge trick. Regardless of that, it works great!: Mult off the bass to another track. Take out all the low end, like everything under 400Hz. Now put a stereo chorus on it and mix it to taste with the original bass track. Within the mix it shouldn't sound "chorused" like an effect, it should just make the bass sound bigger and thicker. This can be cool on vox too. The reason you roll the low end off the chorused track is so that it doesn't get muddy.

One more: mult your snare track off to another channel on your console. Send it out to a compressor like an 1176 and distort it (push the input gain up a lot). I usually like to then eq a lot of upper mid crack on this distorted track. Tuck it under the real snare drum track for some added crack and balls.

Another: This works great for heavy rock stuff: Put a compressor on your bass track and sidechain in a copy of the kick drum track so that the bass track ducks a db or so when the kick hits.

I'm sure plenty of you guys know these tricks but a lot don't. Lets here more! What do you got?

[Masternfool]

OK, this is not for the standard radio ballad REVERB. Track your main vocal, then mute it and have singer sing the whole track again slightly different,obviously this will happen. When you mix mute one vocal and use the reverb send from that vocal.(pre fader) Very strange reverbs happening out of nowhere. some vocalists worse than others..

[tubedude]

"Very strange reverbs happening out of nowhere. some vocalists worse than others.."
Now thats pretty interesting, I may try that, it could be good for some spooky effects, too. I dig that kinda shit.
I do the multing thing alot, only I'll do it on damn near everything in the mix, and I'll pitch shift one up or down a few cents. High cholesterol fatness.
Heres one, for the bass track idea, similar to above, only roll off the bottom, leave only the upper mids and highs, anddistort the hell out of it with a amp-sim program, and feed it in behind the bass. Works well on snare, too. Compress the dog shit out of it, though.

[sign]

Mult the lead vocal to another channel of the board and give it some heavy compression and add it in the mix to the uncompressed lead vocal.

If you don't like it mult it to a second extra channel and give this one some light compression.

[digital_vox]

thanks! i'll try that later

[schahley]

Okay, here's one for sorting out weedy snare sounds - this was suggested by a drummer when we realized the snare sound was unsuitable at the mix stage (too thin and not enough snare rattle), and I didn't think it would work......... but it worked bloody great!!!!!

First, we sent the snare signal from the multitrack out one of the tie lines and into a bass amp. We put the speaker cab on it's back (speaker facing up) and placed the snare upside down (batter side to the speaker) on top of the cab. We used the EQ on the amp to remove all the high and mids, and boosted low end. Turned the amp up until the gushes of air from the bass cab (with each snare hit from tape) were triggering the snare to play as though it were being hit!!!

We then tuned the snare and fiddled with mic positioning (close to the snare bottom) until we were happy with the sound (remember to try reversing the phase of this signal when you combine it with the original snare track).

I couldn't believe it, new life in a badly recorded snare track, and it follows all the original dynamics and fills the drummer played to a T!!!!

It saved the mix!!!! This is a cool thread - let's keep it going!

Steve Chahley

[Dave McNair]

That snare remike thing is an oldie but goodie.
Here is a good mix trick. Once in a blue moon, you might be mixing a slow tune and find that the drummer played the kick drum very well, but a little light. On top of that, the snare was hit kind of loud and when you eq the bass drum to sound good, it sucks up too many weird frequencies from the snare, and makes the backbeats sound too brittle. You've tried gating the kick but the snare hit is louder and still opens with the leakage. Try setting the gate to duck, and feed the snare to the external sidechain. Presto, no snare leakage in the bass drum and no loss of edge from trying to gate a soft signal.

[sign]

Hey hey! great tricks with snare and kick!

You can have good results on gating the kick when using a gate with EQ on the trigger side, so it opens only on the low end of the kick sound.

[iluvansg]

Great Thread! Here's another for fixing badly recorded sounds. Next time you have a bass track with too much pick noise try running it through a de-esser. This trick also works on acoustic guitar with too much finger squeak (but not as well). I often find myself trying to fix recordings of badly tuned drum sets. Any suggestions besides triggering?
Thanks!
Bob

[osmuir]

fat vox: copy lead 2 times. pitch shift 1 3% up, other 2% down [though i did an octave down recently and it kicked ass]. put reverb LIGHT on the main vocal if need. than hard pan the two fx tracks, and put a delay on each one, in time with track [something longish, high feedback] one is longer than other [just divide by 2 on the orig time...or, if you want something ****ed up royaly, do triplets...]

than you hard pan these delay returns to the opposing side from the fx tracks
thus you have

1. main vox, light verb
2. fx L, delay R
3. fx R, delay L

you can even initialy push the fx tracks one 25 ms forwad or so, and the other back.

mix them in really low, but feel free to go to town with the automation foe fx maddness.

--owen