Mixing tips for beginners

[Alexey Soloviev]

Hello! My name is Alexey, I'm sound engineer from Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
I've been mixing for 2,5 years now. And on April 2020 created my Youtube channel where i share my knowledge and experience in english. My channel is mostly for beginners.
Starting from today I'm starting my new series on my channel "Mixing Tips For Beginners"!
There will be many episodes on different mixing tips topics to help beginners to make their mixes better.
All of my mixing tips videos are based on my free Mixing Cheat Sheets you can download here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z35UltOlSOknazalRkpWJ3pOmoqDX6_M

Here it is the first episode in my "Mixing Tips For Beginners" series on Mixing Vocal Tips:

Hope you like the video and find my free mixing cheat sheets useful for your production!

 

[pcrecord]

I would suggest to mix any instrument including vocals in context of the song.. I would solo only to do surgical adjustments, but always mix with all the instruments..
If you don't do that, your vocal or other instrument will sound good alone but probably not in the song...

Just my 2 cents

 

[Alexey Soloviev]

I would suggest to mix any instrument including vocals in context of the song.. I would solo only to do surgical adjustments, but always mix with all the instruments..
If you don't do that, your vocal or other instrument will sound good alone but probably not in the song...

Just my 2 cents

Great point

 

[paulears]

I hated that - in isolation it got rougher, not better. I've no idea how it sits in the mix - and it is titled vocal MIXING tips, but there wasn't actually any mixing, just swampy reverb and distortion? A very odd video. Is the guy in the video the same guy in the photo?
I have never distorted my reverb path, ever - I just can't imagine this as an improvement.
The advice seems genre based, and wouldn't work for me at all.


TRY TAKING THE REVERB AND MESSING UP THE SIGNAL GOING
INTO IT; DISTORTING, FLANGING, PITCH CHANGING, ALSO YOU
CAN SIDE-CHAIN YOUR REVERB, SO AS SOON AS A VOCALIST
STOPS SINGING THE REVERB COMES UP.
SO YOU CAN BLEND A REVERB SIGNAL WITH A DISTORTION
SIGNAL.
YOU CAN BLEND A REVERB SIGNAL WITH A PITCH SIGNAL.
OR YOU CAN BLEND A REVERB SIGNAL WITH A FLANGER SIGNAL.
AND AFTER ALL SIDE-CHAIN YOUR REVERB.

 

[audiokid]

Hello! My name is Alexey, I'm sound engineer from Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
I've been mixing for 2,5 years now. And on April 2020 created my Youtube channel where i share my knowledge and experience in english. My channel is mostly for beginners.
Starting from today I'm starting my new series on my channel "Mixing Tips For Beginners"!
There will be many episodes on different mixing tips topics to help beginners to make their mixes better.
All of my mixing tips videos are based on my free Mixing Cheat Sheets you can download here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1z35UltOlSOknazalRkpWJ3pOmoqDX6_M

Here it is the first episode in my "Mixing Tips For Beginners" series on Mixing Vocal Tips:

Hope you like the video and find my free mixing cheat sheets useful for your production!

The vocal sounds over processed. This is a terrible example on how to process vocals or mix vocals.

Many people think they can record, mix or master music. Unknowingly.... they come to a professional recording forum like recording.org (which is filled with all kinds of very knowledgeable engineers) and drop a link to their youtube video channel in hope our members will add likes and traffic. Thus... they will become successful with their “how to”videos.

As usual...

The moment their "How to record, mix or master like a pro" video's are fact checked by our members...I’ll get a request from the new member asking me to delete his/her post and membership because they didn't like hearing that there was something they could improve upon.

To those thinking about posting a video on how to mix music for beginners... don't expect professional engineers here to stand by and let questionable information slip by without comments and questions. If you post your stuff to the world... expect to be criticized too. And most importantly, learn from our comments.

Being said,
I hope you stick around, learn and share with the rest of us. Ultimately you will gather valuable information and in turn be able to share better audio in videos that have been proofed by the best.

 

[kmetal]

When i was 2.5 years in, my instructional would be titled "how to make terrible recordings on your 4- track." Lol.

 

[paulears]

Me too! I really didn't mean to upset him, and if he reads this, I hope he'll accept my apologies, but I don't think that 2 and a half years is really sufficient to put yourself in the position of teaching others how it is done. Clearly, in whatever field of music he works in, he's doing OK - this is great, but some of those techniques are balmy! If I have trouble making a vocal sit in a mix - I do lots of things, and putting distortion on reverb and using a side chain to make the reverb go up and down is simply not on my list. They might work, I don't know, but my vocals are a quest for clarity, and clarity helps mine sit in the mix, not distortion and flanging effects? It's kind of like joining a club and then telling everyone they've been doing it wrong.

I'm biased of course - I'm a proper, qualified teacher, and it simply makes me cringe to hear people teaching badly, and promoting unsound practices, especially when they are likely to be taken as total fact by absolute beginners.

I really would have liked to hear how this audio track fitted into the mix, but we never got that. You never know, maybe he's invented something amazing?

 

[Kurt Foster]

when you're his age 2 1/2 years is a long time .... to me it's a news cycle.

 

[pcrecord]

I also bugged on the 2.5 years and said to my self "Oh boy in that short time my mixes were so bad..."
They I listened, the instructionnal voice is so agressive in the high frequencies, I just thought this is going to be bad.. Then I heard the voice in his project and went, that's better !!
But at the end of the video, I didn't why any of the mix moves were done because you need music to determine what needs to be done (or not done) that's why I commented.
When I post a video here, it's always with an open mind of learning from my mistake and exchanging ideas..

 

[bouldersound]

You lost me at "for beginners."

 

[DogsoverLava]

I'll allow the possibility of 2.5 years being enough in the same way I allow the possibility for extreme talent and an unusually accelerated learning curve.... prodigious talent so to speak --- but that's super super rare -- and those guys are not making YouTube videos for beginners -- they are still burning through the upswing on their own learning curve and getting even further ahead.

 

[Davedog]

I grew a very thin and not very attractive mustache in 2.5 years....jus sayin