"Glueing" a track together techniques

MusicManiac

New member
Hello ,

So , i just want to know what ways you sometimes/always use to glue tracks together .

For example 1) EQ cut to one instrument = EQ Boost on another
2) Send Reverb tend to make tracks feel more like one
3) Sidechain compression

What else do you guys use ?

Thanks in advance :D
 
Hello ,

So , i just want to know what ways you sometimes/always use to glue tracks together .

For example 1) EQ cut to one instrument = EQ Boost on another
2) Send Reverb tend to make tracks feel more like one
3) Sidechain compression

What else do you guys use ?

Thanks in advance :D

I generally don't want so much glue, but the glue I want is to get good balance between tracks, I do that through many small steps and maybe in particular I use various temporary filters that assist in forming the kind of sound I want. For instance when I balance and get to a point that I cannot balance anymore, then I might exaggerate some element in the mix to see how it reacts and dig through that mud, this I do during gain staging as well. Once the filter is removed I re-balance the tracks that can now be balanced closer to each other which causes glue. So to me the glue I create is mostly by being able to mix the tracks closer in volume to make the mix more cohesive, yet maintaining a desired volume difference between tracks, such as for instance having vocals at the right level. Other than this I also get a little glue from the two stage reverberation chain I have in parallel and a little glue from whatever compressors that are applied on a rather big scope.
 
I generally don't want so much glue, but the glue I want is to get good balance between tracks, I do that through many small steps and maybe in particular I use various temporary filters that assist in forming the kind of sound I want. For instance when I balance and get to a point that I cannot balance anymore, then I might exaggerate some element in the mix to see how it reacts and dig through that mud, this I do during gain staging as well. Once the filter is removed I re-balance the tracks that can now be balanced closer to each other which causes glue. So to me the glue I create is mostly by being able to mix the tracks closer in volume to make the mix more cohesive, yet maintaining a desired volume difference between tracks, such as for instance having vocals at the right level. Other than this I also get a little glue from the two stage reverberation chain I have in parallel and a little glue from whatever compressors that are applied on a rather big scope.

Thanks for the answer !
I would appreciate more oppinions on the matter :)
 
For example 1) EQ cut to one instrument = EQ Boost on another

Isn't this the opposite of gluing sounds together = separating them?

Anyway, to answer your question, I picked up this multiband compression technique some time ago that some well established mixing engineer seem to use on the mixbus (can't rememver who), which according to him instantly can turn a regular mix-project into a more CD-feeling track if done correctly.
Pick a multiband compressor, preferably 4-band, set the bands so the 2 middle bands cover the "musical region" i.e starting at perhaps 250-300 Hz and ending around 3500-4000 Hz.
Then do regular peak compression to these 2 frequency bands (set the threshold to where the RMS ends and the Peak take over), with perhaps 2 dB of gain reduction, and do some manual gain compensation. Try some A/B-comparison and see if you like the results.

Otherwise some regular glue compression is something you coul look into. There are even compressors dedicated for this task. I won't dare to go into any detail on this though as I don't use any "glue compressors" more than the multiband technique that I mentioned.
 
I think gluing is a natural result of good mixing as well as good composing. For example, a part might sound out of place if it's simply too loud.
Also, if the composition doesn't have enough transitions between elements some people will complain that, "such and such sound came out of nowhere".

One of the simplest ways to make things more smooth is to make sure that your synth release envelopes are long enough.
That way, you can get a clearer direct sound which still fades away nicely and blends into the other sounds as well as into itself.
This is a better choice than using reverb in terms of clarity of the sounds. You can then still use reverb only in places that need it instead of washing out the whole part in reverb resulting in muddiness and lack of clarity. If you do extend the synth release sounds you will need to keep an eye on the polyphony because there will be more voices lingering.
In some plugins, this uses up more CPU unless you limit the polyphony down to something smaller than unlimited or 32 or 16. Usually 8 voices is just fine. Some sounds will even sound OK with just 4 voices, and of course plenty of basses will sound just fine with 1 (monophonic).

The other thing that helps "glue" a track together is to EQ the master track before it goes into the brick wall limiter. This is where it's handy to have plenty of headroom so that you don't overload the limiter and lose your thumpiness (dynamics). With the right combo of both graphic and shelving and parametric EQ you can really make the tune shine. That's also the same stage where you might want to add a moderate amount of New York style parallel compression for more fullness and a more centered image.

Good luck.
 
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Compression sends.
Maybe some more info ?
Thanks all of you for your time

Isn't this the opposite of gluing sounds together = separating them?

Anyway, to answer your question, I picked up this multiband compression technique some time ago that some well established mixing engineer seem to use on the mixbus (can't rememver who), which according to him instantly can turn a regular mix-project into a more CD-feeling track if done correctly.
Pick a multiband compressor, preferably 4-band, set the bands so the 2 middle bands cover the "musical region" i.e starting at perhaps 250-300 Hz and ending around 3500-4000 Hz.
Then do regular peak compression to these 2 frequency bands (set the threshold to where the RMS ends and the Peak take over), with perhaps 2 dB of gain reduction, and do some manual gain compensation. Try some A/B-comparison and see if you like the results.

Otherwise some regular glue compression is something you coul look into. There are even compressors dedicated for this task. I won't dare to go into any detail on this though as I don't use any "glue compressors" more than the multiband technique that I mentioned.

I think by cutting some freq that "clash" , the overall mix "glues" a bit .

Maybe its just me or i just didnt make you understand what i meant , either way thanks for your input :D
 
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Looks like dark red gave you some great advice in this thread.

What is your level of sound engineering? you seem fairly informed and I want to know how much you know before I hand out more opinions but generally I find the back of the mix is what makes things great. I was saying in another post that less is more and having things in the front of the mix is cool, but putting things in the back of the mix for people to discover on the 2nd 3rd or even 4th play. Anyway what is your experience?
 
Looks like dark red gave you some great advice in this thread.

What is your level of sound engineering? you seem fairly informed and I want to know how much you know before I hand out more opinions but generally I find the back of the mix is what makes things great. I was saying in another post that less is more and having things in the front of the mix is cool, but putting things in the back of the mix for people to discover on the 2nd 3rd or even 4th play. Anyway what is your experience?

I have been studying and learning about sound some years now as an amateur on my free time ( Mostly reading topics , watching tutorials on youtube and experimenting with sounds ) .

Havent thought of what you said . I think its a nice way to keep someone pinned more to a song .

Thanks :)
 
I have been studying and learning about sound some years now as an amateur on my free time ( Mostly reading topics , watching tutorials on youtube and experimenting with sounds ) .

Havent thought of what you said . I think its a nice way to keep someone pinned more to a song .

Thanks :)

In modern music glue is also a warm round big sound where you don't have lots of transients cutting sharply through the mix. Again, for this to be possible to achieve you really need quite a good monitoring situation, much is possible by reading meters well, but it certainly helps to have good monitoring to achieve this kind of commercial sound. If you have a monitoring system that exaggerates harsh transients it is much easier to soften the mix. The sound sources that remove this softness are: vocals, bass, kick, snare and electric guitar. It is when the combination of these are producing much too loud peaks typically more on one side that you'll produce a sound that is not "glued". When you have compressors in the mix that are set at a very fast release, which is quite common, then an undesired bi effect is that some of these loud peaks cut through too much. It can therefore pay off to adjust so that you have short release times overall, but at certain frequency ranges you set the release times a bit longer so that the compressors have enough time to actively keep those transients softened.

Another technique for glue is really softness itself. Soft mixes in terms of loudness/low volume, should be avoided, because they lose depth in the ears of normal listeners. Depth is the result of a combination of great gain staging and great low end. The art of glue is to make it loud enough to have enough depth yet maintaining great transient control so that the mix remains soft at that volume. And that it takes time learning to do well, you solve that issue as early as in the recording process. This is how highly professional music production works, you solve the issue as soon as possible, in fact in the early parts of the recording process.

A common misunderstanding in mixing, especially among people mixing in home studios, is that sound quality is achieved late in the overall production process. It is true that you can do a lot in both mixing and mastering to improve the production quality, but sound/mix/production issues should be dealt with as early as possible because else they will negatively impact on the engineer's sound quality standard in regards to the production, in other words great sound makes you more sensitive to bad mixing moves and that's a very important thing to be aware of. This is also why a great sounding monitoring environment helps a lot - do not only focus on translation and frequency balance when it comes to your monitoring setup. Make great sound come out even greater sounding in your monitoring environment, so that you have extremely great sound that will be memorized before you make your mixing moves. In this way the bar is set high and is kept high because the greater the initial sound is, the greater is the sensitivity to signal loss.

If you receive a recording that does not sound good and you are forced to mix it, then your only focus initially should be to make those frequencies by themselves as good sounding as possible first of all, so that you raise the bar, then take a long enough break, so that you forget the bad sound. Once the better sound has been memorized, it's much easier to make more mixing moves, because you are much more sensitive to sound quality degradations. Glue is therefore, when we're talking about big and pristine, the efforts of establishing good enough sound early enough in the overall production process. For this reason I'm a fan of spending a lot of time on the rough mixing process and I'm not afraid of applying temporary filter constraints on top of it very early to make me have to find ways of improving the sound even more. So try to make it sound the way you want the final sound to be, as early as possible using as little "mojo" as possible, so that you get a very good sounding dry sound to mix. Keep in mind that once you are mixing in the land of poor sound, you'll not going to notice how much the signal has already degraded. A/B as early as possible, not only late like most do... Another thing is that when you evaluate this, do so per sound source in solo at maximum gain. That is where you have the potential. It is this potential of each sound source, you have to remember, so that once you mix the sound sources together which forces signal loss, you will have a good frame of reference - especially when your monitoring environment sounds really sweet. So get yourself great sounding monitors and headphones, not only "flat" ones.
 
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In modern music glue is also a warm round big sound where you don't have lots of transients cutting sharply through the mix. Again, for this to be possible to achieve you really need quite a good monitoring situation, much is possible by reading meters well, but it certainly helps to have good monitoring to achieve this kind of commercial sound. If you have a monitoring system that exaggerates harsh transients it is much easier to soften the mix. The sound sources that remove this softness are: vocals, bass, kick, snare and electric guitar. It is when the combination of these are producing much too loud peaks typically more on one side that you'll produce a sound that is not "glued". When you have compressors in the mix that are set at a very fast release, which is quite common, then an undesired bi effect is that some of these loud peaks cut through too much. It can therefore pay off to adjust so that you have short release times overall, but at certain frequency ranges you set the release times a bit longer so that the compressors have enough time to actively keep those transients softened.

Another technique for glue is really softness itself. Soft mixes in terms of loudness/low volume, should be avoided, because they lose depth in the ears of normal listeners. Depth is the result of a combination of great gain staging and great low end. The art of glue is to make it loud enough to have enough depth yet maintaining great transient control so that the mix remains soft at that volume. And that it takes time learning to do well, you solve that issue as early as in the recording process. This is how highly professional music production works, you solve the issue as soon as possible, in fact in the early parts of the recording process.

A common misunderstanding in mixing, especially among people mixing in home studios, is that sound quality is achieved late in the overall production process. It is true that you can do a lot in both mixing and mastering to improve the production quality, but sound/mix/production issues should be dealt with as early as possible because else they will negatively impact on the engineer's sound quality standard in regards to the production, in other words great sound makes you more sensitive to bad mixing moves and that's a very important thing to be aware of. This is also why a great sounding monitoring environment helps a lot - do not only focus on translation and frequency balance when it comes to your monitoring setup. Make great sound come out even greater sounding in your monitoring environment, so that you have extremely great sound that will be memorized before you make your mixing moves. In this way the bar is set high and is kept high because the greater the initial sound is, the greater is the sensitivity to signal loss.

If you receive a recording that does not sound good and you are forced to mix it, then your only focus initially should be to make those frequencies by themselves as good sounding as possible first of all, so that you raise the bar, then take a long enough break, so that you forget the bad sound. Once the better sound has been memorized, it's much easier to make more mixing moves, because you are much more sensitive to sound quality degradations. Glue is therefore, when we're talking about big and pristine, the efforts of establishing good enough sound early enough in the overall production process. For this reason I'm a fan of spending a lot of time on the rough mixing process and I'm not afraid of applying temporary filter constraints on top of it very early to make me have to find ways of improving the sound even more. So try to make it sound the way you want the final sound to be, as early as possible using as little "mojo" as possible, so that you get a very good sounding dry sound to mix. Keep in mind that once you are mixing in the land of poor sound, you'll not going to notice how much the signal has already degraded. A/B as early as possible, not only late like most do... Another thing is that when you evaluate this, do so per sound source in solo at maximum gain. That is where you have the potential. It is this potential of each sound source, you have to remember, so that once you mix the sound sources together which forces signal loss, you will have a good frame of reference - especially when your monitoring environment sounds really sweet. So get yourself great sounding monitors and headphones, not only "flat" ones.

Really thanks for the tips and the time you spend explaining :)
 
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