V
Vaether
Guest
Hey, guys. I've been a member of the forum for about three months but this is my first post because this is the first time I've felt the need to post. This is about my doubt when it comes to mixing anything. Like, I've gotten into this whole music production thing six months ago and I've learned a lot, but I don't feel like I've learned enough. My dream is to be a big-time DJ/producer like Swedish House Mafia or something along those lines. And it stuns me how they make their mixes so clear and powerful. Like, is there some sort of secret that is kept from us wanna-be producers that makes these tracks so huge on the charts? I have all of these great ideas for house tracks but I feel like I'm wasting time because I don't know how to mix them or master them properly. So, this is my cry for help. Whenever I mix and master a song, it just doesn't have that quality that your house tracks today have. I've taken advice from many online articles about mixing and mastering. Heck, I even ordered Sample Magic's, "The Secrets of House Music Production." Nothing seems to contribute to that "perfect mix" I'm trying to achieve. Let me tell you some of the mixing things I do to point out some possible flaws in my mixing. I'm using Logic Pro 9 as my DAW.
- First of all, I EQ all of my instruments and put low cuts on everything except for the low frequency instruments like my bassline, sub-bassline, and kick drum.
- I pan my instruments as followed: My bass drum, bass line, and sub-bass line, and snare drum are in the center, hi-hat panned +15, toms panned -15. Should I pan my lead synths and pads as well? And if so, how far should I pan them across the spectrum? Should I also pan my white-noise wooshes? Is there some limit to panning in Logic to keep it from being panned to hard and sounding cheesy?
- How important is automation when mixing? Is it ok to use volume automation in your tracks or does it make more sense to bounce a region to an audio file and use a fade?
- How important are submixes and how many should you have and what instruments should each submix consist of?