Mastering The Mix Free Ebook

Tom Frampton who is the man behind Mastering The Mix has produced a free ebook called Preparing For Mastering - The Essential Checklist in which he guides you through how to prepare your tracks so that any mastering engineer can get the best of of your music. We are also running a deal where you can save 33% on Tom's stereo and stem mastering services. 

To help even more Tom has written us some notes, suggestions and thoughts to help whilst mixing. Over to you Tom....

Gain Staging

When I first started making electronic music I wanted everything to sound HUGE. Thats the idea right? Well, I wish someone had told me sooner that the most effective way to achieve a huge sound is with dynamic range and proper gain staging.

Want your bass to sound louder? instead of pumping it up a few dB try turning everything else down. Select all the channels in your DAW, deselect the bass, Output and Master fader. Then bring the channels down until you feel the bass is where you want it to be in the mix.

A mastering engineer will always ask to receive a mix down with between 3dB to 6dB of headroom. So with this in mind, always try to have the output fader peaking around -6dB during the loudest point of your track.

Here is an effective way to create headroom when you don’t have any. To start with, the Output and Master bus should always be set at 0dB. The Image below shows a mix that is clipping. The red peak reading of ‘0.4’ on the output bus displays the clipping.

To fix this select all the channels in your DAW, but deselect the Output and Master bus to leave them at 0dB. Once all the individual tracks are selected bring one of the volume faders down. They will all move down together which means that the balance of your mix will not change. Bring the levels down until the output fader shows the peak level of roughly -6db as seen in the image below.

Mike here - Note that in Pro Tools you can just bring the master fader down if you have the later versions of Pro Tools with floating point bussing as long as the channels aren't clipping.

Creating Space

Low frequencies can creep in to your track unnoticed when recording vocals and guitar using a microphone. Below you can see the frequencies that are present on a vocal recording and the eq I used to cut out the unwanted low end. This doesn't change the sound of the vocal as I don't cut into the frequency range of the singer. You can apply this technique to any of your tracks but be sure to not cut the frequency range you actually want to hear.

Stereo Image 

Panning is a useful tool for creating space in your mix. Utilising mono signals can help free up stereo space and increase focus on high energy elements. In many scenarios it is recommended to place your kick, bass, snare and vocals in mono. These files may already be in mono but if they're not you can use the gain plugin to sum them from stereo to mono. This helps the fundamental elements of your mix become the focus of your music. This also minimises changes to these instruments when you hear your mix in mono. You can use reverb and delay to enhance your vocals without affecting your mono signal. An effective way to do this is by employing a process called parallel processing. This is where you send your audio to a bus and place the reverb on the newly created auxiliary channel. You can then mix in as much reverb as you want without altering your original mono source.

What Is Mono?

Mono is one single channel of audio. The left and right channels of your stereo mix are combined into one signal and sent individually to both of your speakers. A surprising amount of listeners will experience your track in mono. A lot of portable speakers are mono and all car FM radios automatically switch to mono when the signal is weak. Most nightclubs and venues also play music in mono.

How should I check my mix in Mono?

Mike here - There isn't a mono check button in Pro Tools so you need to implement a work round. One way is to use a great free plug-in from Plugin Alliance called bx_solo. 

bx_solo not unsurprisingly has a number of Solo Buttons, which allow you to individually listen to all components of a stereo mix or stereo signal. These include; L (Left channel), R (Right channel), M (Mono sum, mid signal) and S (Stereo-Difference, side signal). It is the Mono sum that we are interested in. If you insert this in the last slot on your session's Master Fader, then you can use this plug-in to check your mix in mono. 

Listen and hear how your mix changes. Some instruments may be quieter or even disappear completely from you mix. This happens due to the sound waves being out of phase. For the true mono experience, you should only listen in mono through one speaker. If you use two the bass can be hyped potentialy giving you a false balance of your mix. Use your reference tracks to achieve a good balance between your instruments whilst listening in mono.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these little tips will help you to translate your musical ideas into your DAW the way you envisioned and give you a better final result. Ultimately, the most important part of production is having a great song. But as artists, I believe we must strive to give our fans a fantastic listening experience by presenting our music in its best possible form. Sometimes imperfections in a mix can add to the mojo of the music. On other occasions a track is praised for its impeccably clean production. Having the wisdom to know what to take out and what to leave alone is what will define your sound as an artist.

If you would like to learn more then you can sign up and download Tom's free ebook which goes into much more detail than he has been able to cover in this post. 

Don't forget you can also take advantage of the deal we are running with Tom where we are offering his stereo and stem mixing services at 33% off.