hey guys welcome back to another video today I'll be starting my series on how
to mix a song with Ableton I'll be mixing a hip-hop beat normally I just
walk through and mix the whole song but I'm gonna try to break it down into
different portions and today I'll be focusing on levels let's get started
levels are also known as adjusting the volume I don't know what else you can
really call it but it's one of the most important things when you mix a song if
your levels aren't correct kind of all the other portions kind of fall out of
place so a queuing won't matter as much obviously and panning and whatnot
because you won't be able to hear something or if you do if you are able
to hear something it could be too loud so we're gonna make sure we get those
levels all straightened out before we do anything else I have a hip-hop beat I
created here make sure to use some good mixing headphones or a modern setup
obviously you should have nothing on your master channel that could interfere
with your mixing okay so this is the beat unmixed this is what we're starting
with here
first is first I'm gonna either turn up everything a little bit that way it
Peaks around 6 decibels which is gonna be our target volume when we're mixing a
song for the master channel it doesn't need to be exact just anywhere between
negative 3 to negative 6 and this can be known as gain staging next time I start
playing with the volumes maybe start with one instrument at a time or one
sound at a time and slowly bring them in i commonly mix of drums first so I'm
going to do that a good way to mix your song easily is to turn it up loud it's
easier to hear details so I have a trick in order to do this I'm gonna put a
compressor at all I call it a hollowed out compressor on the master Channel
then we turn it up about 6 decibels and if you guys are wondering why I'm doing
this I'm just making it so we can listen to it louder but we can still turn it
down later on just with a click of a button I think the logs pretty good
there and next time adjust volume the bass
so I don't want the base they'll be overpowering the kick for instance but I
still want to make sure it's bumping a bit so I've got to find a nice little
medium there now I'm gonna bring in the sample
obviously gotta turn this up quite a bit
that's sitting pretty nice in the mix a good trick that I learned from one of my
teachers in the past is you can try muting some of the instruments in order
to see how the levels sound in comparison without it like for instance
I'm gonna mute the bass here and listen to how the levels sound with each other
there's no my head for later on gonna want to cut more lows from the sample
because you can hear the bass there so make mental notes of panning tricks and
EQ tricks you may want to do reverb and whatnot any other effect you could think
of but obviously I'll handle it after I do the levels I would say the levels are
pretty good there I'm going to check some combinations and instruments a few
times just to see how it sounds
I'm gonna bring the bass down a little bit
these little horn sample in there that I'm debating whether or not to keep just
remember to turn off the holodeck presser afterwards
next thing we'll be doing is Equalization so stay tuned for the next
course I'll link the next video down in the description so make sure to check
that out it should be on eq's and compression we should check me out on my
social media is that we were beets if you guys have an idea for a video or if
you have a question you can ask me there or you can also join my discord you can
just message me on there type in the general chat tune in next time when I
make a hair cake