Mixing & Mastering tips? (Logic Pro X)

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ls2013

New member
Sometimes when I listen to peoples music on various websites I can here that some people have a professional sound to their songs like what you would here on an album or a TV show.
Others have good sounding music but you can tell it was made by someone on their computer and not meant for professional use.
Right now the music I make does not sound too professional because I am not too good at mixing and mastering and I would like some tips to help me get my music sounding like it could be from an official source.
I generally make videogame arrangements & original pieces which can range from being rock, synth, orchestral, or ethnic sounding songs.
Can anyone give me any tips or links to tutorials that will help me achieve this on Logic Pro?
 
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the DAW has absolutely nothing to do with this. techniques work across all DAW's. that being said, the biggest thing to getting a professional sounding track, is by picking instruments that all work together. make sure your frequency spectrum is nice and full, but at the same time fairly balanced. use a reference track of something you consider to be professional sounding. analyze the heck out of it. listen to all the little details. pick instruments and make choices based on what you hear in the reference track. mixing and mastering are a very small part of what make a track sound professional. instrument choice is number one. then mixing, which should be fairly easy if you've done a good job at picking the right sounds from the start. and then mastering should be super easy if you've done a good mix.
 
mrduder said:
the DAW has absolutely nothing to do with this. techniques work across all DAW's. that being said, the biggest thing to getting a professional sounding track, is by picking instruments that all work together. make sure your frequency spectrum is nice and full, but at the same time fairly balanced. use a reference track of something you consider to be professional sounding. analyze the heck out of it. listen to all the little details. pick instruments and make choices based on what you hear in the reference track. mixing and mastering are a very small part of what make a track sound professional. instrument choice is number one. then mixing, which should be fairly easy if you've done a good job at picking the right sounds from the start. and then mastering should be super easy if you've done a good mix.
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The problem is that some instruments might sound too loud while others can't be heard at all, but when I try to balance them out they start to sound muddy.
I actually took a track that I considered professional and remade a section of the song to try and make it sound exactly the same. From what I can hear my version of the song itself sounds the same as the original however the original version still has that professional sound to it while mine doesn't.
In the original the guitars, bass, drums, and synths all sound clear without instruments colliding with eachother.
In my version it either sounds like it is unbalanced, or when I try balancing it out it sounds muddy and unclear. I'm almost sure this is a problem with the EQ and Mixing in my version which is why I need tips on how to get a good mix.
 
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ls2013 said:
The problem is that some instruments might sound too loud while others can't be heard at all, but when I try to balance them out they start to sound muddy.
I actually took a track that I considered professional and remade a section of the song to try and make it sound exactly the same. From what I can hear my version of the song itself sounds the same as the original however the original version still has that professional sound to it while mine doesn't.
In the original the guitars, bass, drums, and synths all sound clear without instruments colliding with eachother.
In my version it either sounds like it is unbalanced, or when I try balancing it out it sounds muddy and unclear. I'm almost sure this is a problem with the EQ and Mixing in my version which is why I need tips on how to get a good mix.
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It's a lot like anything and requires putting in lot of time to learn the craft and gain experience. Having a good monitoring system and room is crucial to having the sound you hear translate to other systems. Leveling and learning how to eq using wide bells and shelves are a couple of the first things to concentrate on. gl
 
learn to clean the useless frequencies on every instruments. Keep your hi frequencies for high hats, crash,cymbal, etc, keep your mid frequencies for your string, piano, brass, etc and keep your low frequencies for the bass and kick.

the reason why their song sound professional, is because every sound has been stripped of useless frequencies that takes musical space thus creating the muddiness and collision of your sounds.
also their music is probably 1 - made in a professional studio that let your ears hear the true sound without delay from bouncing on the walls and 2 - they probably compress it to give it the illusion of grandeur !

also try playing with your panning, don't let all your sounds with the same frequencies clash in the same spectrum range.
 
Agree, a lot of compression going on to control the sound, you have to control it in order to place it in the image, then EQ is a big deal also. The biggest thing is actually hearing whats there though, if the speakers and room (mainly the room) aren't right, they won't translate no matter what.
 
yeah you really just need to learn how to choose your instruments wisely and how to eq them properly. compression will help, but you should never rely on it. learn to choose things correctly form the start and eq should be pretty minimal. compression will only really be needed on dynamic things like a drum bus with live drums. it really depends on the material. sample based music, like edm stuff shouldn't need much compression. it's not dynamic material. but learning how to eq properly and learning why and how and when to use compression will change your life.
 
How to mix: Keep levels relatively low, EQ unwanted frequencies, apply needed compression, and never pan too far right or left.
 
the beat needs to sound wide, but not too wide, or else it won't sound as one song, just multiple instruments playing at the same time. I try to keep my kick and 808 in the middle, the snare could be in the middle or like 10% left or right, just to create a wider space, high hats about 60% left or right and a technique you can use , is hard pan your crash on both side, but put them at low levels, barely capable of hearing them, by doing that, it's like you create a sandwich. The crash are the bread and the rest in the middle are the ingredients... think of your music as 3d, the louder a sound, the closer. Imaigne your music inside a box, and now you have to fill that box completely so that there is no empty space and all sounds clean. Or if there is an empty space, it's because you wanted it, not because of bad mixing.
 
Yeah, you typically want a nice full image. Of course a shitty room will keep you from ever seeing this image anyways but yeah. Anything low end, mono, snares mono with verb on the sides, ect ect ect... i keep forgetting this forum is mainly producers, when you mix and engineer panning is a very common thing to create space.
 
BeatbyAS said:
learn to clean the useless frequencies on every instruments.
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This!

Once you become comfortable with getting rid of frequencies, your mix will automatically sound much cleaner. You'd be surprised, but the little leftovers from a bunch of synths stacked on top of each other starts to muddy things up pretty quickly.

Also, I suggest getting a spectrum analyzer so that you can also get a visual of what you're hearing. Always take frequencies away, and if you think you're done, keep taking them away until it starts to sound bad. Your sound will start to get cleaner and cleaner.
 
Thanks for all the answers, where can I find a good guide on how to EQ & Compress properly? Can anyone recommend any books, videos, or internet links? I also want to understand frequencies better.
 
ls2013 said:
Sometimes when I listen to peoples music on various websites I can here that some people have a professional sound to their songs like what you would here on an album or a TV show.
Others have good sounding music but you can tell it was made by someone on their computer and not meant for professional use.
Right now the music I make does not sound too professional because I am not too good at mixing and mastering and I would like some tips to help me get my music sounding like it could be from an official source.
I generally make videogame arrangements & original pieces which can range from being rock, synth, orchestral, or ethnic sounding songs.
Can anyone give me any tips or links to tutorials that will help me achieve this on Logic Pro?
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DAWS do have different sounds indeed. Pro tools is the most commonly used DAW when mixing or mastering. Unless their using Wavelab, etc for mastering. I use Logic to produce in but I always drop my track in pro tools. I know it sounds crazy but anyone that is actually in a studio in Hollywood or wherever will tell you that they don't use logic to mix or master.
 
Indecent said:
DAWS do have different sounds indeed. Pro tools is the most commonly used DAW when mixing or mastering. Unless their using Wavelab, etc for mastering. I use Logic to produce in but I always drop my track in pro tools. I know it sounds crazy but anyone that is actually in a studio in Hollywood or wherever will tell you that they don't use logic to mix or master.
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They do not have different sounds. The only way this could evenbe remotely true is by saying they encourage different workflows, which may have a very indirect and subtle impact on sound.

Anybody can get a harsh/warm/full/thin mix in any DAW. I don't know what you mean by DAWS do have different sounds indeed, so unless you have evidence of that, don't say it.

It's true, Pro Tools is used a lot for mixing and mastering. That has nothing to do with it's sound. I'm guessing it's because it was such a big standard when DAW's first came out, and now it's like a common language for the production world. I don't know this for sure, but I assure you it's not for the sound.

But there's nothing about logic that would make it less suitable for mixing and mastering. Hell, Pro Tools didn't even have clip gain for an absurd amount of time.
 
I should of been more specific. All DAWS use different summing engines. so when you start mixing more than one track, they will sound different.

But if you simply record ONE track and play that ONE track back by itself without any volume change/panning/processing then you are correct: all DAWs simply place a stream of samples made out of 0s and 1s in a computer file called "audio file". When you play it back, the DAW just send the same 0s and 1s back to your converters, without having any effect on the sound quality.
 
I have read pro tools has better headroom. I imagine any benefits this may offer are minimal when you gain stage correctly. But I don't know that for a fact.
 
Indecent said:
I should of been more specific. All DAWS use different summing engines. so when you start mixing more than one track, they will sound different.

But if you simply record ONE track and play that ONE track back by itself without any volume change/panning/processing then you are correct: all DAWs simply place a stream of samples made out of 0s and 1s in a computer file called "audio file". When you play it back, the DAW just send the same 0s and 1s back to your converters, without having any effect on the sound quality.
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this is not true. some dude actually tested this on youtube. you can look it up. he summed and bounced audio from different DAW's and then imported the files back into the DAW and inverted the phase on one of them and they completely canceled each other out. total silence. this wouldn't be possible unless they were exactly identical.
 
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