Hi, Zakk, yeah Im still here following your mixing journey, just a bit busy that prevented me to go on as a daily basis this week. I shoot here a few questions, I lack some space in my head to fill new ones. Hope you dont mind. Please keep in mind the following concerns mainly Metal genre where I struggle the most to get a coherent mix. 1. I have seen through these series that you high pass the bass to make room for the kick, and you high pass quite high the guitars to let room for the bass. But in Metal genre low end of guitars are quite important. How would you do so that the bass dont fight with the guitar there ? 2. For these synth, you scoop at around 3k to make room for the voice. I suspect this is because it is a female voice right ? What would you do differently if it was a male ? (I suspect a different freq scoop and I am afraid of a fight with the bass again). 3. I am surprised you scoop only this instrument to let room for the vocals, I was expecting to see a scoop also somewhere in the electric guitars with distorsion. With heavy guitars I feel it is hard for the vocals to stand out. Would you scoop the guitars in that case or what makes your vocals not be burried within your distorted guitars if not ? Compression ? Multiband compression ? (I saw you use that in a previous video of this session but it was so brief I didn't understand what it was for). 4. You use 2 verbs: 1 for the band and 1 specific for the vocals. I have seen some "drum plate reverbs" exist. I know to many types is bad, but when would you use a specific verb for the drums ? 5. I saw you scoop at around 250-300hz quite a lot to deal with muddiness. I am not sure I saw you NOT do that on some tracks. Beside high freq only tracks, are there any instruments you don't ? I stop there dont wanna overwhelm the comments sections. I'll go in another one ;)
1. When it comes to the low end of metal guitars you have to ask yourself. Is it really the guitar's low end that youre hearing or is the bass actually providing that low end? 2. In my experience mixing synths, especially pads, always fight with the vocal and muddy everything up. I don't know if I'd change anything for a male or not because my placement at 3k for this song might not be perfect. Vocals don't only sit at a specific frequency so a cut at 3k might cut muddiness for a male too. OR if it didn't, then I would adjust until I liked the sound. 3. On this one I felt like I didn't need to adjust the guitars for the vocals sake, but if someone sends me guitar tracks that are super high in the mid range, that might be a different story. 4. Reverb is purely subjective and the way I do reverb is totally just MY style. It would be totally ok to use another reverb for the drums if it sounded good in your mix. I actually had to pull up a song for a client that I did over a year ago and I noticed that I DID give the drums their own reverb lol. My mixing style is always changing and adjusting. 5. Speaking of my mixing style "changing and adjusting", I think I've been guilty of "removing muddiness" too much and have adjusted my style a bit... even since these videos. Some of the character is in the 300-500hz range and I was always a little trigger happy to scoop it out. Hope that helps! And again, I'm pretty happy with my mixes, but I'm not perfect. You don't have to take anything I do or say as law. It will always just be my style ;)
@@MixChecks Thank you for your answer, really appreciated. I guess if you change over time, this is not a science right ? I think there is even a book called the Art of mixing. I do agree mixing is certainly very subjective and that is why it is very hard for a beginner: rules only applies, well... when you actually apply them... or not :D on the title "killing road" from Megadeth, the guitars are alone at the start of the song, you can definitely hear they have a lot of low end I think maybe some boost around 160Hz or so. The whole album is unique considering mixing, even for this band career, with a lot of low end. It should be very interesting for you to check even if you do not like the genre, so much low end without muddiness, I dont have much success for now to reproduce that
@@johanjof5613 I'm not saying they did this on the Megadeth album, but there's a trick I do for pianos that might address that: when I get a track that has piano, if the piano is ever playing by itself, I automate my hi-pass filter so that it has more low end when it's playing by itself. Then when it's playing with the full band, I turn the hi-pass back on to avoid the muddy low end of a piano. It tricks people's ears into thinking that there's a lot of low end on the people for the whole song. Our brains/ears are very interesting. And yes there is some science to mixing, but also a lot of subjectiveness.
@@MixChecks Hmm sounds quite tricky, one needs to leverage that very carefully after in order not to let the space too empty. I am not sure I have the skills yet to really change the eq over time (beside mb compression). But this is an interesting idea thank you. I am gonna first redesign my drums or your gonna hate me ;) I think I also need better "sculpting eq" on the guitar sound too, I heard there are many annoying frequencies with huge distortion. I probably need to boost something after that so that it does not sound thin.
@@johanjof5613 That's the trick lol. The piano doesn't sound thin when the bass guitar is playing underneath it and providing that low end. Low frequencies are very unclear to our ears. All we hear is woo woo woo woo and it's very hard to distinguish what instrument it's coming from, you just know that it's there or isn't there.
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Hi, Zakk, yeah Im still here following your mixing journey, just a bit busy that prevented me to go on as a daily basis this week. I shoot here a few questions, I lack some space in my head to fill new ones. Hope you dont mind. Please keep in mind the following concerns mainly Metal genre where I struggle the most to get a coherent mix. 1. I have seen through these series that you high pass the bass to make room for the kick, and you high pass quite high the guitars to let room for the bass. But in Metal genre low end of guitars are quite important. How would you do so that the bass dont fight with the guitar there ? 2. For these synth, you scoop at around 3k to make room for the voice. I suspect this is because it is a female voice right ? What would you do differently if it was a male ? (I suspect a different freq scoop and I am afraid of a fight with the bass again). 3. I am surprised you scoop only this instrument to let room for the vocals, I was expecting to see a scoop also somewhere in the electric guitars with distorsion. With heavy guitars I feel it is hard for the vocals to stand out. Would you scoop the guitars in that case or what makes your vocals not be burried within your distorted guitars if not ? Compression ? Multiband compression ? (I saw you use that in a previous video of this session but it was so brief I didn't understand what it was for). 4. You use 2 verbs: 1 for the band and 1 specific for the vocals. I have seen some "drum plate reverbs" exist. I know to many types is bad, but when would you use a specific verb for the drums ? 5. I saw you scoop at around 250-300hz quite a lot to deal with muddiness. I am not sure I saw you NOT do that on some tracks. Beside high freq only tracks, are there any instruments you don't ? I stop there dont wanna overwhelm the comments sections. I'll go in another one ;)
1. When it comes to the low end of metal guitars you have to ask yourself. Is it really the guitar's low end that youre hearing or is the bass actually providing that low end?
2. In my experience mixing synths, especially pads, always fight with the vocal and muddy everything up. I don't know if I'd change anything for a male or not because my placement at 3k for this song might not be perfect. Vocals don't only sit at a specific frequency so a cut at 3k might cut muddiness for a male too. OR if it didn't, then I would adjust until I liked the sound.
3. On this one I felt like I didn't need to adjust the guitars for the vocals sake, but if someone sends me guitar tracks that are super high in the mid range, that might be a different story.
4. Reverb is purely subjective and the way I do reverb is totally just MY style. It would be totally ok to use another reverb for the drums if it sounded good in your mix. I actually had to pull up a song for a client that I did over a year ago and I noticed that I DID give the drums their own reverb lol. My mixing style is always changing and adjusting.
5. Speaking of my mixing style "changing and adjusting", I think I've been guilty of "removing muddiness" too much and have adjusted my style a bit... even since these videos. Some of the character is in the 300-500hz range and I was always a little trigger happy to scoop it out.
Hope that helps! And again, I'm pretty happy with my mixes, but I'm not perfect. You don't have to take anything I do or say as law. It will always just be my style ;)
@@MixChecks Thank you for your answer, really appreciated. I guess if you change over time, this is not a science right ? I think there is even a book called the Art of mixing. I do agree mixing is certainly very subjective and that is why it is very hard for a beginner: rules only applies, well... when you actually apply them... or not :D on the title "killing road" from Megadeth, the guitars are alone at the start of the song, you can definitely hear they have a lot of low end I think maybe some boost around 160Hz or so. The whole album is unique considering mixing, even for this band career, with a lot of low end. It should be very interesting for you to check even if you do not like the genre, so much low end without muddiness, I dont have much success for now to reproduce that
@@johanjof5613 I'm not saying they did this on the Megadeth album, but there's a trick I do for pianos that might address that: when I get a track that has piano, if the piano is ever playing by itself, I automate my hi-pass filter so that it has more low end when it's playing by itself. Then when it's playing with the full band, I turn the hi-pass back on to avoid the muddy low end of a piano. It tricks people's ears into thinking that there's a lot of low end on the people for the whole song. Our brains/ears are very interesting.
And yes there is some science to mixing, but also a lot of subjectiveness.
@@MixChecks Hmm sounds quite tricky, one needs to leverage that very carefully after in order not to let the space too empty. I am not sure I have the skills yet to really change the eq over time (beside mb compression). But this is an interesting idea thank you. I am gonna first redesign my drums or your gonna hate me ;) I think I also need better "sculpting eq" on the guitar sound too, I heard there are many annoying frequencies with huge distortion. I probably need to boost something after that so that it does not sound thin.
@@johanjof5613 That's the trick lol. The piano doesn't sound thin when the bass guitar is playing underneath it and providing that low end. Low frequencies are very unclear to our ears. All we hear is woo woo woo woo and it's very hard to distinguish what instrument it's coming from, you just know that it's there or isn't there.