Making beats presentable

S

StanleySteamer

New member
Hey guys, I have a question about making my beats presentable. So I use maschine and Pro Tools and I have a lot of beats done. I am sample based hip-hop genre based and my biggest problem with making beats is the mixing and mastering. I have been making beats and mixing/mastering(to a certain degree on fl studio when I used to it) for almost 6 years now so I'm not an entire rookie. On Pro Tools I do my own sort of mixing and what not but somehow I am never 100% comfortable with the mix and status of the track. Whenever I compare it to other tracks I like to listen to I always feel like my mix is off. I spend more time going back and mixing tracks then I do actually finding samples and start chopping them and making the beats. I wanted to know how accurate and well polished does my mix/master have to be for me to start being able to present and show people my beats? I feel like my beats are really good and my mix isn't terrible, its not 100% amateur just god awful, I know a lot of guidelines and key things that I need to know I just want to be able to put my beats on soundcloud and other places so other artists and people can hear my stuff but I'm not sure if I aim to overachieve the mix/mastering process too much or if I am cutting myself short. Basically how well does a producer have to mix and master their beats to made presentable? Thoughts, advice, and tips always appreciated!
 
For presentation purposes I usually just get my mix exactly how I want it and make sure its peaking no higher than -6db on the master. Then I throw a waves l1 on the master with a -0.3 Db ceiling to prevent clipping and I bring it up to a competitive loudness level. I'd take it off when you send it to an artist so they have some headroom to work with but I'm not paying to send beats to get mastered so that's what a lot of dudes on soundcloud and soundclick do even though pro engineers say its a no-no. Also let it be known I'm mixing into an ssl bus compressor with a 2:1 ratio giving me about 2db gain reduction because I like the way it glues things together a bit.
 
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if you focus
1. on having decent sounds to begin with that also complement each other
and

2.structure of the beat

3. relative levels for instruments in the instrumental

more than half the battle is done


for loudness
you only need to add a limiter on the master on a preset

this is what I call LOUDNESS MASTERING for presentation ONLY
 
hey thanks for the responses guys really appreciate it. I was curious about how much compression u guys use in ur mix when mixing before mastering to make it presentable. Do you guys use alot of compression on ur hip-hop drums? I am using it currently on my bass drum, kick drum, and snare in my current track and it kind of is diminishing it and idk why. It sounds kind of weaker when compared to other songs I like to listen to and how they are mixed. Any advice always appreciated thanks.
 
If ur using samples from sample packs and what not or from vinyl a lot of times they've already been compressed. They're losing punch because you are over compressing or not using the compresdor right. That's what I've learned. Instead, some saturation can do the trick as well and a transient designer on kicks or snares if you want more punch, less punch, more sustain or less sustain. You can do this with a compressor as well if you set the attack and release times appropriately but I try and only compress if a track needs it and I find most tracks don't because I use midi and can control the velocity instead of having to use a compressor. The thought process behind this is that I'm compressing something that has already been compressed and then probably being compressed again on the master so that's too much. I try and use compression sparingly and it's usually maybe a dbx160 on kick and snare if I need a little punch and the samples are raw and unprocessed.
 
i don't really compress the sample, i sometimes sidechain it to the kick and it definitely helps. But as far as compressing the drums how do you go about it? Do you think since I use the max 127 maschine velocity that I even need compression? It seems to just be squishing my stuff honestly but maybe I am using it wrong but I don't think that I am. Most of the videos and forums and stuff I watch and read about using compression on drums its always live drums or rock drums. I am wondering how much compression is really needed for hip hop drums. Any tips on this?
 
It's not necessarily needed however people do it sometimes to for sound design or if the drums are raw and not really processed. I can bring out the punch of a kick or snare and make it pop easily with compression. I can also decease the attack of something and bring up the total volume and make it fatter sounding using a ccompressor. I feel like rarely in hip hop are comps used for dynamic control and are more used for sound shaping and sometimes for the color they add to a sound if it's a comp that mimics a vintage one.
 
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StanleySteamer said:
i don't really compress the sample, i sometimes sidechain it to the kick and it definitely helps. But as far as compressing the drums how do you go about it? Do you think since I use the max 127 maschine velocity that I even need compression? It seems to just be squishing my stuff honestly but maybe I am using it wrong but I don't think that I am. Most of the videos and forums and stuff I watch and read about using compression on drums its always live drums or rock drums. I am wondering how much compression is really needed for hip hop drums. Any tips on this?
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If you feel the compressor is squishing your stuff, it will be due to a combination of settings which may need easing off. I'd start by reducing the compressor ratio and making the knee a bit softer.

Send your drums to a mix bus (by an amount appropriate to your ears) which has a compressor on it dedicated to the drums. The technique is called parallel compression, a summary of it can be found here;

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug11/articles/qanda-0811-4.htm

Another technique following the same idea as parallel compression, is to set up another bus and send your drums to an overdrive, make the settings on the overdrive quite extreme so that it sounds quite over the top compressed, then faintly mix in this bus so it it's not really audible but will still fatten up the sound.

Regarding being unsure whether to put your beats up.. I used to have this deliberation all the time in my head.. To get round it i had the realisation of ' why am i making all this music to show the world, only to constantly criticise it and show it to no one'. I got a bit more faith and confidence in the music i made after that and am now quite excited to show it to people. I can't remember the exact quote, but Miles Davis said something along the lines of ' Constantly moving forward with music, Don't get hung up on the past going over old things time and time again trying to improve them, just mark a line under and say this is the best i can do with this at this time, and then free yourself to create new music'. He definitely said it much better than that though haha.
 
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great responses guys definitely learning a lot appreciate it. So I went ahead and did some parallel compression and I can definitely tell the difference I think. I am wondering what kind of settings you guys use on your compressed drums?

And my last question is about gates and compression on individual drums. If all my drums are sent a parallel drum compression track and then being mixed back into the track, do I still need individual compression on each drum? For example do my kick and snares need their own single compression settings on their own track also or does parallel compression take the place of all that?

As for gates do you guys use gates on your individual hip hop drums as well? Sometimes it kind of cleans it up for me when I use it but then sometimes I feel like maybe it takes too much away and separates the drums. I sometimes feel like gates are better for live recording due to everything being in different mics versus hip hop drums just being straight sound waves.
 
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