How to keep sound from getting to overwhelming when all the elements come together

[marc32123]

Basically, I have a song that starts with one guitar for the first measure. When the third measures hits a new guitar part comes in on top, and at the fourth measure and the start of the 5th, probably like 6 or 7 new elements come in.

I am just wondering, what techniques do people use to keep the sound from getting to loud and overwhelming when all these new elements are added? I have an idea, but I just want to get a new perspective on this, as it is really important in my opinion and something I really am not to sure about...

 

[rhythmgj]

An audio example of an "overwhelming" mix would be very helpful. But "sound-unheard"/off-the-cuff, if I were to guess, I'd say one thing that will probably help is to _turn everything down_ (assuming by "overwhelming," you mean volume, rather than something like harshness caused by bad EQ). Many people seem to think that mixing means turning each individual track or channel up as loud as possible before distortion, then "balancing everything out" by using the master faders to control overall volume. The exact opposite is true. Turn your individual tracks _down_, _then_ you can bring your overall volume up.

If by an "overwhelming" quality, you mean too much reverb/FX, or EQ issues, that can also have a detrimental effect, and their are different fixes for those problems.

Posting a audio clip of the track would be very helpful in diagnosing a problem!

GJ

 

[marc32123]

An audio example of an "overwhelming" mix would be very helpful. But "sound-unheard"/off-the-cuff, if I were to guess, I'd say one thing that will probably help is to _turn everything down_ (assuming by "overwhelming," you mean volume, rather than something like harshness caused by bad EQ). Many people seem to think that mixing means turning each individual track or channel up as loud as possible before distortion, then "balancing everything out" by using the master faders to control overall volume. The exact opposite is true. Turn your individual tracks _down_, _then_ you can bring your overall volume up.

If by an "overwhelming" quality, you mean too much reverb/FX, or EQ issues, that can also have a detrimental effect, and their are different fixes for those problems.

Posting a audio clip of the track would be very helpful in diagnosing a problem!

GJ

I am basically just wondering about the technique I thought that was used but you guys didn't mention was that of a master limiter. What I did before, and was going to do before I learned a new technique tonight, was to start at the beginning of the song, where the guitar and drums are playing alone together. I then tried to get them to sound right level wise in the beginning, and added the other elements on top without changing the volume of the guitar of drums when the other elements came in on top. To compensate for the rise in volume that happened when the other instruments etc. came in on top, I was just going to throw on a compressor or limiter on the whole song. Is this a common technique, or not really???

 

[rhythmgj]

It is to a degree, but you still have to manage individual volumes, panning, EQ, and FX on each track, and in relation to the whole... In other words, you need to do a good mix, before considering how necessary or unnecessary a master limiter ("2-Buss limiter") would be on the entire track.

Compression and limiting applied properly can enhance the overall sound and volume consistency of a track. They are not cure-all medicine or replacement for good mixing!

GJ

 

[Underminded]

It is to a degree, but you still have to manage individual volumes, panning, EQ, and FX on each track, and in relation to the whole... In other words, you need to do a good mix, before considering how necessary or unnecessary a master limiter ("2-Buss limiter") would be on the entire track.

Compression and limiting applied properly can enhance the overall sound and volume consistency of a track. They are not cure-all medicine or replacement for good mixing!

GJ

That's correct. Unless you re going for a creative effect, leave your master channel alone until you are done with mixing. Its very tempting to stick a compressor on the master channel to glue everything together (I do it too sometimes and its a bad habit).

One trick I learned to keep elements of a mix clean and give them their own space is to work track by track. Mute everything as is and bring in each element one by one.

Start with the instrument that TO YOU is the main focus, like the guitar in a rock song or the kick in a hiphhop song. Tweak it until it sounds good and bring in another element. Repeat this process until all the elements are unmuted and sound cohesive. This technique works best for songs with very few elements playing at once. More complicated tracks require more time and effort. The most important thing to remember is no matter how good something sounds by itself, that is irrelevant to how it sounds in the mix. So even after tweaking something on its own, feel free to go back and adjust.

It does not matter how you get to the final product as long as it sounds great. The best producers and engineers didn't get to where they are by following a rule book. They experimented and made mistakes!

 

[DarkRed]

I am basically just wondering about the technique I thought that was used but you guys didn't mention was that of a master limiter. What I did before, and was going to do before I learned a new technique tonight, was to start at the beginning of the song, where the guitar and drums are playing alone together. I then tried to get them to sound right level wise in the beginning, and added the other elements on top without changing the volume of the guitar of drums when the other elements came in on top. To compensate for the rise in volume that happened when the other instruments etc. came in on top, I was just going to throw on a compressor or limiter on the whole song. Is this a common technique, or not really???

In mixing you don't have to work on the master bus scope. All you have to do is to ensure you are feeding the right rms and peak level relationships and levels on each frequency band on each speaker, into the summing. It is very very important to be able to gain the mix at the stage where the overall frequency balance is the best without doing so beyond the clipping point - that is after the final process, but before mixdown/bounce. Most engineers don't do that (pros do it though) and it's a big mistake. You have to be able to apply enough gain on your final master. It should be sweet, going into nirvana. The final dBs are what makes a mix come alive. This is not done by faking headroom, it is done by ensuring enough headroom before clipping, it's purely in the choice of hardware.

It's optimal if you during recording and mixing have a few totally separate output chains to check against, setting the right rms and peak level relationships and levels, actually requires that you have that because you have to produce against the entire spectrum of audio playback, not only against the most ideal playback situations. When you A/B your mixes against your references, those references have been created with that in mind. Flat yes, but also very compatible to the overall playback frequency response spectrum.

Keep in mind: 3 seconds of playing your mix, on any location in the song, on any playback system, by anyone. Within a few seconds all quality needs to kick in.

 

[BigDrost]

It's all about your mixing. When all elements are where they should be (volume), then you start using compressors, EQ's (Use eq's to remove the low end on snares, leads, etc, and remove the high end of your bass, maybe kick. Sometimes is good to remove a little bit of the low end your kick too so you can have a better sounding sub), sidechain (Use sidechain to "highlight" few elements above other ex: kick and bass). Anyway, there's no preset or exact technic that you should use, it all depends on your goal, and these are your tools to achieve it.
A good mix will save you a LOT of time trying to master something that isn't quite right.
One thing that I like to do is: Turning the master limiter on and off as I go on. It helps to get some perspective on what is sounding good.
You can also play around with pan, but it's a little more complex to understand what should be on the left or right