@ The Horse

Everyone wants to be VIRAL.  Everyone seeks the LARGEST drums sound.  Everyone needs the WIDEST synth sounds.  Everyone wants to do it at home in their underwear.  Here are some ways you can achieve these goals.

Making beats is an artform that has changed dramatically over the last 15 years.  I hope these tips help you make better beats!

Logic Pro

ONE:  Remember that you cannot possibly achieve the volume in your production as you hear on polished, final releases.  Doing so will cause unnecessary limiting, or even distortion.  Keep levels well under digital “0″  for all tracks and at all stages of the plug-in chain.  Creating a good blend is most important, compression and limiting can always be added, but cannot be undone.  Make it louder LATER!

TWO:  Drums, like everything else, deserve a place in your mix, and how you approach this will affect your music tremendously.  Drums take up the area closest to digital zero, as their transients are huge and getting them loud enough tends to cause many people’s music to distort.  Although it is true that music sounds better to our human ears as it is increased in volume, but distortion will cause listening fatigue, and actually make drums sound smaller.  Make sure the loudest spike is still below 0.

Pro Tools

THREE:  Bass can be the trickiest item to fit into your mix.  The trick is to make it sound deep and fat, but you don’t want it blowing out big systems either.  Tight bass can be delivered in many different frequencies, so depending on the sound, or even key of the song, can change how it should be EQ’ed.   With 808 sub kick drums, many times the trick is to actually remove low end in the bass, so the attack can be FELT hitting your chest, which gives the illusion of bigger bass.  The speakers can only handle so much energy, so if the low end stuff isn’t aligned and compressed properly, it will be scattered and sound ‘muddy.”

FOUR:  There are many ways to make your synths wider – delays, chorus, reverb, even EQ!  Sometimes separating the left and right channels of a synth can give you more control.  Many of the spacial enhancement plug-ins only throw your stuff out-of-phase, and in the long run makes the mix sound less wide.  If you split the channels, you can delay them differently – many times it only takes about 200 to 600 samples of delay between sides, or 15 to 40 milliseconds.  ALso note that the delayed side will SOUND quieter to our dumb human ears.  You can compensate by adjusting gain by .5 to 1.5 db only.

FIVE:  Mix the entire time with whatever plug-ins you need or want on the 2-mix.  DON’T run the wheels of your chair in to the ground for 5 hoursand then thrown on a “quick compressor at the end”  PLEASE don’t do this.  Compressors with improper settings or compressors worked to hard is the biggest mistake I see with young producers.

SIX:  Figure out what you want to hear differently before you pull up that plug-in!  Why pull up an eq if you don’t need to eq at all?  You don’t look cooler by having the most plugs in your session!  Decide on a path and then figure out HOW TO ACHIEVE IT.  Pulling up random, terrible, plug-ins for every track will most likely muddy up your mix.

SEVEN:  Would you want your mechanic cleaning your teeth?  Would you want the pool boy doing your taxes?  NO?!?  Then don’t be the mixer, the artist, the technician and the mastering enngineer… AT LEAST NOT IN THE SAME DAY!  Everyone needs to cut corners to save money – I get it, but don’t sell yourself short by taking a process that could be done professionally and replacing it with something less.  You can still do things yourself, but be smart about it.  If you don’t have experience mixing, then bring the session into the studio when you cut the vocals, or split up some of the jobs with people who are BETTER at them!  Perhaps even work out a trade – we do this all the time in the studio between musicians and projects.  That’s why people love hanging out in the studio.

Ableton Live!

EIGHT: Sleep once in a while!  Check your mix in the morning with fresh ears.  It’s usually either, WOW that’s awesome, or WOW I Suck!

-Eric “YO.M.G!” Nelson Yoder