How do you mix brass sounds?

caycay

New member
I have the most trouble mixing brass sounds because they seem to cover so many frequencies. How do you mix brass sounds or how do you eq them? and how do you eq them if its competing with another sound? Any help apreciated
 
I have the most trouble mixing brass sounds because they seem to cover so many frequencies. How do you mix brass sounds or how do you eq them? and how do you eq them if its competing with another sound? Any help apreciated

Yeah they do cover a wide range and its a pain. The way I approach it personally is try and mix the brass at the very end of the mix once you've gotten your lower frequencies for your bass and the higher frequencies of the other lead frequencies settled and then just sort of fit it in wherever it sounds best.

Even still it gives me a bit of trouble and I feel like I'm compromising the actually sound of the brass just for the sake of getting it fit properly.
 
I'm far from expert in mixing, but if the brasses you are using are clashing with another instrument, you should try to pan the brass sound to the left or to the right, or work in different octaves.
 
I'm far from expert in mixing, but if the brasses you are using are clashing with another instrument, you should try to pan the brass sound to the left or to the right, or work in different octaves.

Panning is in interesting suggestion. Wouldn't that throw off the sound of the song in itself? I mean from a listener's perspective would an individual say "Oh this sound is coming from only one headphone, that's weird."
 
Panning is in interesting suggestion. Wouldn't that throw off the sound of the song in itself? I mean from a listener's perspective would an individual say "Oh this sound is coming from only one headphone, that's weird."

To be fair, that depends. In my last tune, I had a clashing between 2 distorted guitars and my kick, snare and hats. I solved the problem by panning the guitars 100% to the left and right, and panning my hats like 10-20% to the sides, while leaving the kick and snare in the middle.

I believe it depends on what instrument you want to be the leading instrument, and what you want just to be in the background.

As I said, I'm no mixing expert. The example I gave worked for that song in particular, could not work for my next one.
 
I support what ddream has said about panning - 99.9999% of the time it is the first step to the solution (i.e. 1 in 1 million times you might want to do something else first).

Then you need to consider whether you are dealing with a single brass patch or a group of brass instruments (by which we also include the saxes which are woodwinds, not brass).

With these, you want them to be panned slightly away from each other anyway.

Send the output of the individual instruments in the section into a stereo group buss.

Use the stereo group fader to set the general level for the section. You may need to adjust the relative levels for the individual instruments, but use the group fader to bring the section up or down.

Then eq the section rather than the individual instruments.

There are no hard and fast rules about what to do to the section with eq as every track requires different responses. simply make sure you don't lose the bottom end and the top end of each instruments playing range nor ignore the need for air in the group as a whole (high freqs above the playing range).

Have fun, experiment and remember to pan first ask eq questions later..........
 
The thing I find with panning is that its not really a mixing thing because if you pan something one way you have to pan something else the other way to balance it out. So in mix terms I pan to balance left and right.

So say you pan a high frequency range instrument to the left, say a high hat or whatever, you have to have something in a similar frequency space panned in the opposite direction to make the mix sound balanced. Or not and leave it intentionally unbalanced. So the left and right spectra need to be a similar shape overall. So panning in mix terms is, to me, is about making the overall sound central and balanced left to right....stereo spread. The more frequency space a thing takes up the more you have to compensate when you pan it off centre. Brass takes up loads of frequency space, unless you EQ it. Full brass is such a thick sound that to pan it off centre you would need something just as thick to balance it on the other side...or you'd have a weird mix where you're moving lots of things right to balance the brass on the left. If you EQ it then you reduce the space it takes up in the mix and therefore reduce the mix balance displacement of panning it, but then before you think about panning you have to think about EQing... so you are back to square 1: EQ. Which, combined with Gain, is really 95% of mixing.

I think you have to think about what is important. How much of the brass' frequency content do you have to have? If a lot, then you will have to sacrifice somewhere else. You also can EQ things differently at different parts of the track so you can let the brass through completely at relatively empty parts of the track or during accents but use more EQing when you need to make room for other things. The standard approach is to chop up the stems and use different treatment on each one. Its also very easy to set up EQ that transitions smoothly too. For example in Live the EQ has a scale (IIRC) knob that you can automate to reduce/increase the effect of the EQ over time.

Also, often, the point at which two things clash is very specific. If its specific in frequency then you want EQ. Sometimes its specific in time. For example a long sound like brass might clash with something stabby now and again, so you can set up side chain compression so that the brass ducks just at those times. Or you can just manually automate it's gain. Maybe you need to think about riding the gain of the brass across the whole track? One of the drawbacks of in the box production is that we tend to forget about moment to moment gain decisions made by performers. Anyone interested in orchestration knows about this. We tend to forget about it in electronic music.
 
Tough question to answer b/c it's seriously dependent on the mix.

I never mix only brass.... or any instrument by itself for that matter.... always comes out with bad results for me.

I just focus on what the "main driving instrument" is going to be, and compliment it.



Sorry... i know I talked around your question... but I look at mixing in a different way. I try to stay focused o nthe sum of all parts, and only adjust single sounds based on how they sound w/ other elements of the song.
 
I like to pan them slightly left, add a little reverb to push it back, and high pass it so it won't interfere with my kick, bass, cello's etc. etc.

I've also noticed it's incredibly hard to mix brass if it's a cheap sounding plugin or sample... even more so than just about any other instrument besides acoustic guitar... so make sure your brass sample is high quality and it won't be nearly as hard.
 
oh.... (^got my brain churning)

it can be nice to have a good detuning plug... or a doubler/ chorus type of plug. Brass benefits from this a lot... b/c in live situations you can have multiple horns playing the same note but each sounds ever so slightly different. +1

That's moreso shaping the sound than it is "mixing" though. probably why i didn't think of it.
 
Here's a thought that hasn't been mentioned yet .

Do consider your choice of sound , especially if you are finding problems with mix space .
Do you really need a full brass section all playing the same notes , or would a single muted trumpet still carry the melody/riff , cut through the mix and leave plenty of space for other things in the mid/lows .

I have seen this mistake sooo many times , people choosing lots of full-fat , huge impressive sounds , then just can't bring them to sit together and the song sound like a fight broke out at Guitar Centre !
 
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