How Much Do You Spend Mixing And Mastering?
- Thread starter JaeOracleBeats
- Start date
Free Spirit
College Dropout
No matter how simple of a beat I make, sequencing takes short amount of time comparatively. But i spend the majority of time mixing and mastering my beat. It's exhausting. But if you want your beat to be taken serious, you have to mix and master well
Man... ABSOLUTELY.
I almost resent the fact that I spend so much time on the technical side of things (mixing) and less on the creative side (producing/sequencing). But that time spent is what will separate you from everyone else.
Producers will make an incredible beat but slack off on the mixing. Then anyone who hears it will turn it off after 10 seconds even though it's better than anything else on the mainstream radio.
Mix it & master it until you're ready to punch a hole in the f*cking wall.
Then take a gravity bong hit and go at it again.
Shit takes WAY TOOOOOO LONG.
Seriously, mix it until it sounds PERFECT to you otherwise you'll regret giving up on it so soon. It's a character building experience.
Work on other songs/beats intermittently so you don't drive yourself crazy mixing & mastering one song over and over.
Now, unless you have the most perfect underground mastering room to exist, I would leave that to the pros and pay someone else (or something else - like an online mastering website) to handle it.
Balancing was meant to take time and if you're getting frustrated at how hard you have to work at it then just know you're doing something right
Best of luck!
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bandcoach
Zukatoku - Mod Scientist
No matter how simple of a beat I make, sequencing takes short amount of time comparatively. But i spend the majority of time mixing and mastering my beat. It's exhausting. But if you want your beat to be taken serious, you have to mix and master well
what do you want to know?
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sswmastering
New member
You are working backwards if you are putting all of that effort into finalizing a mix on a BEAT and then moving onto the mastering process before someone has recorded vocals over the beat. What happens when it comes time for the person to mix the song thev've just recorded? Will you then do all of that work in vain only to turn over the session files to the beat so they can finally pull off a proper mixing job only for them to send it off to get properly mastered which is how it should be done anyway????
Beats should never be fully mixed nor should they EVER EVER EVER be mastered. Working this way is WRONG and the evidence has shown time and time again that the results of working this way only leads to amateur sounding production work for all involved.
Beats should never be fully mixed nor should they EVER EVER EVER be mastered. Working this way is WRONG and the evidence has shown time and time again that the results of working this way only leads to amateur sounding production work for all involved.
Adrian-MarQ
New member
The part on mastering makes sense, however, I can't say that I agree with the mixing part. Could you elaborate a bit on why a producer should not fully mix a track. I'm just curious since when I mix for producers, I provide a mix that vocals will likely be easily mixed in with (based on my own experience with mixing full projects with just 1 instrumental and a few vocal tracks, mixing from scratch, & through using reference tracks)
And to answer the question from the topic, it depends. If you are mixing your own track, you could cut down on mixing by selecting or designing sounds that work well together. I usually take between 3 - 48 hours on a mix, but that depends on the length of the track, the amount of sounds, the quality of recordings, and the number of other projects that I'm working on (not an extensive list).
A word of advice would be to make a rough mix and get a mix engineer to make a final mix. While an engineer works on the mix, you could technically work on other projects. In addition to this, you could use the engineers mix as a reference to sharpen up your own skills! This is a cheap & shameless plug, but I'm currently running a free mixing service to expand more portfolio and client list. Feel free to take advantage of that in the near future if you'd like.
sswmastering
New member
To answer Adrian Marq's question and to rant a little bit. A producer should not go any further than mixing for the sake of giving the artist an idea of what the beat should sound like with all of it's included elements minus the artist's vocals. When vocals are recorded to an instrumental the vocals NEED to be included in with the rest of the tracks to give the song the proper balance in order to make it sound like everything was meant to go together and not forced to fit with one element or the other. ie music & vocals.
This method of mixing vocals in with a premixed 2 track instrumental is a very cheap and amateur way of working that was given birth to and grew up on message boards like this amongst those who are miseducated about audio production in the hip hop genre specifically. This way of working is kind of like a disease in the hip hop genre that has robbed the music of good production quality because the shortcuts taken simply to get a song done can be heard clearly. Working this way also is cause for the extreme misuse of compression in this genre specifically with the multitude of artists who get their misguidance on production and reside with their music here on the internet. You have to compress to squeeze the vocals onto an already overcompressed beat only to add a limiter to add that super duper loudness.....Lord have mercy how wrong how wrong
Oh what about putting in those necessary breaks/drops in a hip hop song to highlight a specific part of the artist's performance? This cannot be done with a beat that has been mixed prematurely. What about adding something like a reverb for example to an instrument in the beat that may help the vocals fit in better with everything else going on? This cannot be done if someone is recording over a 2 track stereo file and no matter what has been done to it in hopes to make the vocals fit better with it it will never be as good as doing it the right way. ie multi track mixing
Listen to an artist who actually took the time to have their music mixed in the proper order and then have it mastered properly. Now listen to someone who recorded over a premixed instrumental that was sealed off with mastering style processing and took things completely out of their proper order and attempted to handle the mixing and an attempt at mastering all in one process. You'll hear a huge difference.
There is a certain order that must be followed when producing music point blank period. It would be nice if people who work like this would start to realize that turds cannot be polished but turds definitely can be stopped before they fall from a-sholes.
Compose/write it, record it, edit it, mix it and finally get it mastered. There is no other way to do it right and this is how it's been done since before message boards and the internet
This method of mixing vocals in with a premixed 2 track instrumental is a very cheap and amateur way of working that was given birth to and grew up on message boards like this amongst those who are miseducated about audio production in the hip hop genre specifically. This way of working is kind of like a disease in the hip hop genre that has robbed the music of good production quality because the shortcuts taken simply to get a song done can be heard clearly. Working this way also is cause for the extreme misuse of compression in this genre specifically with the multitude of artists who get their misguidance on production and reside with their music here on the internet. You have to compress to squeeze the vocals onto an already overcompressed beat only to add a limiter to add that super duper loudness.....Lord have mercy how wrong how wrong
Oh what about putting in those necessary breaks/drops in a hip hop song to highlight a specific part of the artist's performance? This cannot be done with a beat that has been mixed prematurely. What about adding something like a reverb for example to an instrument in the beat that may help the vocals fit in better with everything else going on? This cannot be done if someone is recording over a 2 track stereo file and no matter what has been done to it in hopes to make the vocals fit better with it it will never be as good as doing it the right way. ie multi track mixing
Listen to an artist who actually took the time to have their music mixed in the proper order and then have it mastered properly. Now listen to someone who recorded over a premixed instrumental that was sealed off with mastering style processing and took things completely out of their proper order and attempted to handle the mixing and an attempt at mastering all in one process. You'll hear a huge difference.
There is a certain order that must be followed when producing music point blank period. It would be nice if people who work like this would start to realize that turds cannot be polished but turds definitely can be stopped before they fall from a-sholes.
Compose/write it, record it, edit it, mix it and finally get it mastered. There is no other way to do it right and this is how it's been done since before message boards and the internet
SwagProductionz
@SlurRty on Twitter
probably 20 minutes.. i don't want to be the best mix and master'er .. i just want a decent mix and that's what I usually achieve... plus I don't want it driving me crazy which could easily happen....
UncleDutch
Record. Mix. Repeat.
All I do is basic pan, filter, EQ and level setting with a touch of verb/delay to fill things out. Then I'll insert a limiter on the master just to bring the overall volume up a little. I'll normally have between 12-24 tracks (not including groups and effects). So a rough mix usually takes an hour or 2. Hope this helps.
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southparkbeatz
New member
You can mix something too much keep that in mind never add too much on your track as well. But mixing is important
sorry maybe i didnt understood your post but :
Beat idea/Beat musically 3x > Mix of the same beat
you have 30242242 people who know to mix and master like i dont know who, but why when the beat is shit...?
so from me: ~80% beat elements , 20% beat production
mix <
Most of that mixing and mastering time should be mixing. Mastering shouldn't take you an hour if the mix is good, its a pretty formulaic process. The creativity and time spent is all in the mix. Hard to say how long, I somewhat mix as I go. Lots of experimenting that adds a lot of time that is hard to judge since I'm not really rushing myself.
nerdfactormusic
Producer / Musician / DJ
Nice post mate, i really think i should spend more time on my mixes myself