Hi and welcome back.
Before we dive in, I just want to take a moment to admire this comment.
I'm listening on my phone and can't hear the bass at all? Do you know how to mix?
Isn't that a masterpiece?
As it happens I'm reasonably secure with respect to my mixing abilities. But that's more than
can be said for this guy, who emailed me recently with some questions.
I have been making music for only 5 years. At first I did not really care about the values
of mixing and all that stuff, I was just making music. But after some time, I started to notice
my tracks were sounding worse compared to others.
Sometimes it felt like I couldn't achieve the right dynamics or volume for my genre,
in fact my songs sounded much quieter than others and less dynamic.
I know, I don't want to compete in terms of loudness, I just want to improve my music
in terms of dynamics first of all.
Ok, I'll come back to the dynamics point in a moment. But my first observation would be:
5 years is not that long. I think it took me longer than that to shake off the imposter
syndrome, and feel justified to call myself a professional audio engineer.
It takes years to learn to play a musical instrument to a professional standard. And
probably just as many years to learn the production and mixing skills required to mix a song to
a professional standard.
So, don't feel like you're doing something wrong, and try not to get disheartened: what
you're experiencing is perfectly normal; no-one has those skills until they've put in the
time to develop them.
The most confusing thing for me is that when it comes to mixing, I never know what values
I should go for. I never compress too much, yet I still feel my music isn't as dynamic
as my genre should be…
I never know what level should my drums hit, what level should my final mix hit, both in
terms of LUFS and simple dB or peak levels and so on.
This is the question I paraphrased for my video title: How Loud Should My Drums Be?
I'm going to offer three different answers to this: pick whichever you find most useful.
Now, I'm just going by this email. But I'm guessing that, if you have to ask the question,
your drums are too quiet.
My reasoning: if they were too loud you'd probably spot that yourself and turn them
down. If they were at the right level, you'd probably be happy and the question wouldn't
arise. So they're probably too quiet, and this is indeed a common beginner's mistake.
Perhaps people are thrown off by the peak metering?
Peak meters are useful for telling you how close you are to clipping, and really nothing
else: they give almost no information about how loud something will sound. You should
expect drum sounds to peak much higher than other sources such as synths or guitars, when
they sound balanced. But I can't even tell you how much higher because that totally depends
on the nature of the drum sounds you're using.
So my first answer to the question How Loud Should My Drums Be is: louder than they are
now.
My second answer is actually the correct one: there is no answer.
First of all, absolute levels don't matter at all at the mix stage. It doesn't matter
how loud your drums are, so long as they're well balanced with the other elements of the
mix.
And of course, "well balanced" is a subjective, artistic judgement. I can't give you any numbers
for that. That doesn't mean there isn't a correct answer however: just that its different
for every mix, and you'll only know what it is when it feels right to you.
Mixing is an artistic endeavour after all: there's no right or wrong mix, any more than
there's a correct melody, or one proper way to harmonize it. But when it feels right to
you, that's when it's correct. And if it feels right to you, hopefully it will feel right
to other human beings as well.
Ok, now we've got the correct answer out of the way, I'm going to give you the practical,
useful answer that will help you to stop worrying about it and move on.
Start by muting everything except your drums. Then set their level so they're hitting about
-23 LUFS short term on the master channel, with your master fader at unity.
You can use RMS levels instead if that's easier. The main thing is you're using average signal
levels, not peak levels, which are useless for this purpose. But there are free loudness
meters available these days, so anyone can use Loudness Units even if they're not built
into your DAW yet.
-23 LUFS will be a lot quieter than the music you stream from Spotify or wherever. But that's
fine: you can leave the overall loudness to the mastering stage. Just turn up your monitors
to compensate. I'm talking about the output level on your interface, or the big knob on
your monitor controller, not the master fader in your DAW.
OK, now your drums are at a level you would normally listen to music at. Next step: assuming
you can do so without waking the baby or having your neighbours call the police, turn it up
some more. I want you to be feeling the drums, not just hearing them.
There are a few reasons for this: first of all, our hearing is flattest and most accurate
when listening fairly loud. Not so loud that you damage your hearing of course: seriously
don't do that. But loud enough that you have to raise your voice to talk over it.
Also, of course, its easier to hear subtle details when it's turned up loud. I mean,
that's obvious, right? I don't need to expand on that. So it's going to be easier to judge
reverb parameters, compressor settings, EQ: every change you make will be easier to hear.
And, its the best cure for the biggest problem most people have when they start mixing: that's
when you just keep turning everything up louder, till eventually you start clipping the master,
so you turn that down, or turn all your channels down, and you're back where you started.
Monitoring nice and loud helps you to focus on what's too loud instead of what's too quiet,
and helps to train you in better mixing habits.
There are downsides to mixing loud of course. Well actually, excluding crying babies or
unwanted visits from law enforcement, just one really: your ears wear out much quicker.
When you have more confidence in your mixing skills you'll probably find you can mix at
lower levels most of the time, and still mostly get it right, and this will help you work
longer days. But I still like to check mixes loud periodically, because you just simply
hear them better that way.
Ok, now your drums are hitting nicely and you're feeling the groove: so one by one,
unmute the other elements of the mix, and add them to your drums. Pull the fader all
the way down to start with, then ride it back up until it seems balanced, then move on to
the next element and add that.
Don't touch your drums: they're your anchor. If you're suddenly not feeling them anymore,
that's because something else is obscuring them: figure out what that thing is, then
try to find a way to make them fit around one another.
What you do, specifically, to fix that problem, can vary: you might break out an EQ to carve
away frequencies that are clashing. Or you might use dynamics processing to duck the
problem out of the way. Or you might decide to revisit the arrangement.
You could of course use something else as your anchor. Maybe it makes more sense for
you to start with your vocal, or a bass part. That's ok. It's also ok for you to tweak EQ
or compressor settings on your anchor channel, if you think that's going to help the mix
fit together better.
The main thing is: don't touch the fader for that channel. And also, take care of the gain
structure on that channel, so that things like compressors aren't changing the loudness
too much. Using something as an anchor like this helps to avoid the creeping loudness
cycle I described earlier.
And, if you started with your anchor hitting roughly -23 LUFS on the master, you'll probably
be able to build your whole mix around it without your peaks hitting full scale.
That's the only thing that matters in terms of your overall mix level by the way. Keep
the peaks below full scale: that's it. Overall loudness can be dealt with in mastering. The
only thing you need to worry about at the mix stage is making it sound the way you want
it to.
If you do happen to start getting red lights on the mix bus, don't be afraid to just turn
the master fader down a bit to compensate. Honestly, this is fine.
Alright, now we come to the big one: the question of dynamics:
I always feel very confused and after all these years I still don't understand what
my music should sound like when it comes to the mixing phase.
I feel this has to do with consistency too: every track I made so far seems to have very
different levels and dynamics. I basically feel like I'm not following a method and just
randomly mixing each track. Though I always mix or produce with the same techniques, eqing,
compressing when it's needed, and so on.
I feel like I do the right things, but the end result is just.. weak.
And I also want to hark back to his earlier comment:
I never compress too much, yet I still feel my music isn't as dynamic as my genre should
be
Again, haven't heard any examples, I'm just going by this email. But my guess is you're
actually not compressing enough.
Compression is really important to modern music production. It's easy not to realise
how much until you start mixing yourself however, as it's something you don't hear consciously
until you've trained your ears and brain to notice it.
It wouldn't be controversial if I said rock music couldn't have happened without distorted
guitar amps, right? But I think it equally couldn't have happened without compression
on drums. Not in the same way anyway. That hard hitting, explosive drum sound doesn't
happen naturally, any more than a fifth played on an acoustic guitar sounds like a rock power
chord.
If you "never compress too much" that makes me think that, in fact, you never compress
enough. Because how do you find the right amount except by adding too much, then dialing
it back a bit?
I would urge you to organise your mix into a handful of subgroups, if you haven't already,
then smash those subgroups with compression. Go wild, and listen to what happens. Hit it
with way too much, and get used to how that sounds… this is useful ear training… and
play around with attack and release settings, while listening to how this changes the overall
punch, or groove, or fatness.
If everything you do just sounds unrelentingly bad, try a different compressor. But when
something interesting starts to happen you can then dial down the ratio, or blend in
some dry signal, and turn radical pumping into more subtle groove enhancement, or punch,
or glue.
My hunch is that the "dynamics" you're hearing in other mixes in the same genre isn't just
"more dynamics" in the sense of "less compression", but in fact "more carefully tuned dynamics",
probably through the extensive use of compression.
This is especially true of drums. Compressors are actually really bad at reducing the dynamic
range of drums. If they're set fast enough to catch and control the initial transient,
they tend to kill the drum sound and rob it of its punch. But that's not really what they're
used for on drums: rather they're a tool to shape the transients, and make the drums sound
punchier, or fatter, or groove better.
Here's Pro-C2 as an example, squashing the drum bus using the Punch style, with the attack
time set to provide a fast snappy character. Notice the output meters: I've matched the
average levels, so there's no real loudness difference between input and output. But the
peak levels are actually higher for the compressed signal, meaning the compression has actually
increased the peak to average ratio of the drums.
More importantly though, its shaping and changing the way those drums sound: the energy is squeezed
toward the front end of the drum hit, a bit like squeezing toothpaste to the front of
the tube, making them hit harder and more aggressively… while the body of the drum
sound is distorted by the release stage, along with perhaps the ambience of the room, providing
a sense of energy and controlled power.
And, because I'm processing the whole drum bus, things like hi hats and ride cymbals
start to bounce up and down in level in response to the main beats, and significant extra grooviness
can result.
I would suggest that, if you never have to open up a compressor plugin to tame the settings
because you overdid it initially, you're probably being too safe and conservative with your
compressor settings.
I can't leave the subject of dynamics without mentioning other non linearities such as saturation
and distortion: partly because these can actually affect the dynamics, but more importantly,
they can affect they way you perceive dynamics.
Distortion can be very effective at making something seem louder, partly because our
hearing is also non linear and will also distort very loud signals, and partly because it increases
the harmonic complexity, and increases the bandwidth, and makes that part occupy more
space within your mix.
And saturation is good, in all its various flavours, for making things seem warmer, or
thicker, or brighter, or more detailed, delete as appropriate. I would argue that all digital
mixes will benefit from some degree of saturation, regardless of the genre. Even classical mixes.
The only question is, how much to apply.
There's a kind of bell curve when it comes to saturation: adding a little bit usually
sounds good: adding a bit more might sound better still: at a certain point you'll peak,
and adding more layers of saturation will start to cloud the mix, make it messier, more
cluttered, more congested.
Your goal is to end up near the top of that bell curve. And if you never have to bypass
a saturation plugin that turned out to be a step too far, or dial back a distortion
effect that you overdid a bit, you may be being too conservative and cautious with your
saturation and distortion effects.
Speaking of revisiting settings that you already set once: this is totally normal and expected,
because mixing is, inevitably, an iterative process.
And this brings us to the question of method which also cropped up. On one level, you can't
have a fixed method that you follow for every mix, unless every mix is identical. And you
can't just start with channel one, EQ and compress it, then move on to channel two,
and progress logically through your mix like a computer program.
The reason you can't do that is because the correct settings for channel one depend on
the context. And you don't have the context until you've mixed the rest of the song.
Every change you make is therefore provisional: you make the best guess at the correct settings,
based on the context you have at that time. But understand that, as you continue to refine
your mix and the context changes, you may need to revisit those settings and tweak them,
or maybe even rethink them completely, and that's a perfectly normal part of the mixing
process.
It's only when the mix is nearly finished and you're just applying minor tweaks that
you can have any confidence your moves are good and will survive till the final render.
But that doesn't mean you can't have any method to your mixing: just that you need to step
back and add a level of abstraction.
Here's my suggested methodology:
1. Start with the volume faders, and set a rough balance for all elements of the mix,
before you do anything else. The volume balance is THE most fundamental aspect of a mix, and
nothing else can be right unless that is, so look at that first.
There may be channels that don't have an obvious correct level at this stage: that might be
because they need some compression or automation to control their dynamics, or they may need
EQing to fit around other elements of the mix. But don't worry about that at this stage,
just make your best guess and move on, till you have a rough starting balance for your
whole mix. 2. Whatever is bothering you most about the
current mix, attack that next. If there's a horrible frequency clash between two parts,
break out the EQ and try to fix it. If the vocal dynamics are all over the place, throw
a compressor on it. If it seems too dry, dial up some reverb or delay. Keep fixing the most
egregious and obvious problem you can hear, and those problems will naturally get smaller
and more subtle, until all of a sudden you realise your mix is cooking and you're nearly
done. 3. Get to that stage as quickly as possible.
Don't overthink each move, especially in the early stages of a mix: chances are you'll
have to revisit the settings anyway, so get them in the right ballpark and move on. The
faster you get to the stage where the mix is almost right, the better the final mix
will be. I promise!
While we're talking about methodology, I want to return to the analogy of learning to play
a musical instrument. When a musician improvises a solo, they're not thinking in terms of individual
notes: they'll be reaching for the patterns of scales and arpeggios they've practised,
and will be assembling little snippets of licks and chops that they've built up over
the years, much as when we speak we assemble clauses and sentences more than we focus on
individual words.
When it comes to mixing, you will also build up a selection of licks and chops: tricks
and techniques that you can rely on to fix a certain type of problem that you've learnt
to recognise. It might be specific settings for a specific compressor that give your drums
a certain type of attack and punch. It might be a certain combination of compression and
saturation that makes your vocal glow or shine. It could be the specific type of distortion
you run in parallel when your bass part isn't sitting right.
Now, I could learn to play every solo that Stevie Ray Vaughan ever recorded, note for
note, with every articulation perfect. But that wouldn't make me Stevie Ray Vaughan:
I wouldn't be able to improvise a solo like him unless I also learnt to listen like him,
and think like him.
Ok I confess, I probably couldn't learn all Stevie's solos note for note, but never mind,
you get the point. You need to build up your own collection of mixing chops, because it's
not enough to know the technique: your ears need to be able to recognise situations where
that technique might help.
And on that note I would say: as well as not overthinking each move within a mix, try not
to overthink each mix. The longer you spend listening to a mix, the harder it becomes
to hear it as your listeners will. This is another reason to work quickly! But it's also
a reason not to spend too long on a mix. If it doesn't come together reasonably quickly,
put it on ice for a while, do some other mixes, and come back to it later with fresh ears.
You'll improve as an engineer faster by finishing more mixes than by spending more time on each
mix.
Ok that's all for now, thanks for watching.