How to Record At Home - Producing Guide
ON THIS PAGE:
How to record electric guitar in your home studio *video
How to record electric guitar in your home studio *video
Mixing Down Songs *article
Music Recording : How to Produce Techno Music
Posted June 20, 2010
Level: Basic to Intermediate (some pro knowledge helpful but not necessary)
...tips and tricks for recording electric guitar. Simple mic choice and placement ideas.
Music Recording : How to Produce Techno Music
Posted June 20, 2010
Level: Basic to Intermediate (some pro knowledge helpful but not necessary)
To produce techno music, keep the tempo around 120 beats per minute to match the elevated heart rate of techno music listeners, and counterbalance really intense sections with more rhythmic sections. Incorporate varying energies when producing techno music using advice from a recording studio engineer in this free video on music recording... Expert: Brad Winslow
Mixing Down Songs
There's as many processes for mixing down as there are musicians, but in general you must adress these basic steps:
- creating the initial tracks
- mixing down the song
- and then mastering
Usually, each one of these stages is done by a different musician or technician, each one a proficient in their field. A musician/songwriter creates the song, a producer/engineer mixes the track, and a mastering engineer will master the track to full production quality.
With independent labels on the rise a lot of these jobs are done by the same person, you! I highly recommend, however, hiring a mastering engineer if you can afford it. But, if like most musicians, your struggling... lets go over a few tips to help you create a production worthy mix down, but on a musician's budget.
Mixing Levels
Two of the biggest problems with mixes today are; the levels of instruments, the muddy mush of frequencies in the mix.
When mixing with software, the ceiling of your mix is 0db (no exceptions)! Anything louder than this will clip the audio signal and cause bad distortion (clips) to your sound.
The following are guidelines to what levels some of your tracks might be placed at and these can be altered as your mix evolves...
- The kick drum should be set to 0db this is the loudest sound in music today.
- The bass should be set to -10db or a little bit louder.
- Your percussion should sit at -20db and keep your cymbal at this level too
Now at these levels you should notice how loud and punchy your song sounds when comparing your song back to back with a professionally mixed CD. You should also notice that your percussion, although sounding quiet, gives more drive to the song and a less quantisized feel.
Frequency Placement
The human ear can hear between 20hz (low) to 20khz (high) illustrated in the diagram shown above. Now we know the frequency limit in which we have to span our instruments across, anything outside of this should be eliminated with an equalizer. Proper frequency placement is done by proper equing and instrument selection. In the song each instrument should cover a different span of frequencies and peak at varied frequencies. When mixes are done right each instrument occupies its own frequency space without overlaying too much on another sound, and that no peaks are canceling each other out or causing severe muddying within a mix.
Onto adding effects to the tracks. You may have already added different effects to each track when you were in the initial song creation stage. Now during mix down you want to make sure that all of your instruments sit right within a 3 dimensional space. This is achieved by both panning the instruments and the added use of reverb on some of the tracks. The bass and kick drum are usually centered and without reverb. The high hats are panned to the right or left fairly hard. Depending on the style of mix your doing may depend on the panning placement of other instruments in your mix. A good tip is too cross reference the seating arrangement of an orchestra and pan your instruments accordingly as if you were hearing it from front row center. I have also heard of specific note panning for pianos where each note is panned high to the right and low to the left and the amounts vary according to how high or low on the octave scale you are.
You can buy songs above from our Amazon affiliate and use them as your "reference" mixes or I've hooked up with a free week of music from eMusic. Just click here or on the banner below to get your free week and start finding reference songs now!
