One Easy Step to a Cleaner Mix! - Creating Tracks

This helpful and informative video tutorial shares something that the big studios would rather you don't know. Follow this one tip and you'll enjoy a cleaner mix every time!

When it comes to mixing, and achieving that elusive cleaner mix, there are really very few rules to follow. And they aren't exactly printed anywhere readily visible when inspiration strikes, especially this one. Here it is in a nutshell. Most people want more bass in their music these days. To get more bass, you actually need to cut more bass from your project!

Well...that seems confusing.

But, really it isn't! See, there is only one frequency spectrum at the end of your project. And if you have sounds competing for the same space in that spectrum, it makes it quite difficult to hear everything clearly. A perfect example of this is what happens to my voice in this tutorial when the field recording starts playing at the same time I am speaking. My voice becomes much more clear and present as more of the low end frequency activity is removed. You can actually hear it become a cleaner mix as the EQ work progresses.
Now apply this same theory to your own music. If you have several different sounds in your mix that occupy (at least in part) the same frequency range as the main bass instruments in your mix, there will be issues. Perhaps your music doesn't have the clarity or punch you know it could have. This could be because of this very problem. Dealing with this sound-by-sound, as soon as they are added to your project is the most effective pro-active way of combating issues like muddiness and the first step towards a cleaner mix!

As you can see in this lesson, it is not just a matter of using a high pass filter. In fact, there are many, many more things you can do to achieve a cleaner mix, but it does start here. And remembering to bust out that high pass filter for every sound that is not a 'bass instrument' is one of the best habits you could ever form in your music production career.

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Closed Caption:

today we are going to be talking about one
little thing and its a very little thing,
it's a very simple thing.
One little thing you can do to make your mixes
cleaner, to get rid of that muddy washed out
sound, to get more bass and more impact from
your bass instruments or elements in your
mix.
And it is something that is easily overlooked.
So let's jump right into this, it's about
the idea that less is more.
And I know that sounds confusing at first
but trust me, I've trained artists all over
the world for many years and many of them
are quite resistant at first to this idea.
Especially those who produce electronic or
bass heavy types of music.
Because more equals more right ?
Well actually no and it really just comes
down to the idea that there is only one frequency
range at the end of the day for your music,
there may be one hundred different tracks
in your project and each one is meticulously
handled, each one sounds great on their own,
but unfortunately they all need to play nicely
together, they all need a space in the mix.
And we're going to cover how to make that
possible or a bit easier, anyway, through
one proactive measure that you can apply to
just about every single sound in your mix.
And of course the end game here, the end goal
is to create more room, just in general in
your mix of course, but for those bass heavy
elements, that's what people really want these
days.
So we're going to show you how to do that.
We're going to use, instead of, how a lot
of other people try to approach this when
explaining this concept is they'll take a
bunch of sounds, you know, basically a full
mix and they'll let you listen to how those
bass elements will sound, how the song itself
sounds overall and they'll start making adjustments
and then they'll let you listen to it again
at the end and you can form your own opinion
about it at that point but what I'm going
to do is show you with just one sound, one
very common sound, how this theory actually
works.
Because without that I feel like there's just
too much room for questions that could be
answered very easily by just focusing on one
thing.
So here we go.
We going to look at rain, this sound of rain.
And this is a pretty common type of field
recording, found sound, environmental sound
that you hear in music, commercials, movies,
television shows, it's everywhere, it's everywhere
around us so lets listen to this for just
one second.
The very first thing that should jump out
at you at this point is the environmental
noise, if it doesn't don't worry, you're not
alone, the longer you train your ears, the
more attune they will be to these frequencies
and where these frequencies actually lie across
the spectrum.
Ok, that environmental noise that you're hearing
is not a high frequency sound.
Let's listen to it again.
Now perhaps you don't have very well trained
ears or maybe you have perfectly trained ears,
either way, the second time listening to this,
you probably heard a couple more raindrops
than the first time, your ears slowly become
acclamated to the environmental noise and
that is why it is really important to deal
with this issue pro-actively.
And its not just environmental noise, its
unnecessary frequency activity, is really
what it is.
That's really what it comes down to.
There's a reason why something like birdsong
stands out to us when we're walking around
out in the world and that's because those
are high frequency sounds and they pretty
much stand on their own.
The rest of the sound that we're hearing that
we don't even acknowledge is just kind of
the smear of low frequency noise and when
you capture a sound recording outside all
of that frequency information is recorded
and now you have to deal with it.
The same exact thing is true with any instrument
or sound that you might be using in your mix.
Ok so the first part of less is more is getting
yourself in to the habit of making subtractive
decisions before you make additive decisions,
in other words instead of bumping up the bass
frequencies on a bass instrument, what we
should be doing is attenuating or decreasing
or removing completely those low end frequencies
from everything but those bass instruments,
ok so its in addition to subtraction, so less
actually is more, its just that you need to
get through the entire concept before you
can start to trust or believe in it.
So let's jsut open up an EQ, and we'll just
leave this sound looping here till we get
started and I'm going to slowly shape this
sound by removing frequencies that are incredibly
unnecessary and we won't complete this today,
we won't actually complete this sound, we're
not after isolating just individual raindrops
or anything, this is simply a lesson in less
is more and how to get your mixes very clean,
ok ? So the key to making this happen is the
high pass filter.
It's also called a low cut filter by some
folks.
And its not just the high pass filter that's
important here but the high pass filter is
going to be your reminder to approach things
with a subtractive mindset before you begin
adding, ok ? So we'll just go ahead and we'll
start playing our sound here and turn on our
analyzer and the very first thing you'll notice
is, if this is a recording of rain, why in
the world is all of this stuff down here in
the low end.
So we'll just go ahead and we'll turn on our
low cut or our high pass and we'll start to
roll this off.
Now this is going to seem pretty extreme at
first but your ears will aclimate ok ? you
should begin hearing a difference pretty soon
here.
Those who have less trained ears will be closer
to 200 before hearing the first significant
change, ok and we'll turn this off and you
should be able to perceive a difference and
we're going to continue to roll this up and
you'll see that right around here is around
where all of this noise activity stops so
what we're going to do is virtually hold to
down there and then we're going to change
our curve.
And we're going to work from left to right
here, that's about right.
So these are pretty significant changes in
each one of them, individually, it may not
seem like it but add them all up at the end
of the day it makes a very big difference.
You don;t want to take all the environmental
noise out, you just want to remove a fair
bit so everyone tuning into this can hear
exactly what we're doing, can hear the changes.
So it's a constant balance of reduction and
then finding the right bandwidth that's appropriate
for your sound and usually in environmental
recordings like this and often times any kind
of synthesized sound, almost all sounds have
really nasty shrill reasonant peaks hidden
in that sound somewhere so we'll just use
this bandwidth quickly and we'll boost this
up a bit and you should be able to hear something,
just move across this, we'll find it, there's
almost always at least one, usually several
sounds.
Now we'll just go ahead and make this even
more narrow.
This is the best way to find, you can kinda
hear, you can hear it, hear this resonance.
Ok you know what, it may not get any worse
than this, just going to back that out a little
bit.
Ok, so, this is another key to a clean mix,
is these things will pop out more, though
they'll be more noticeable as you take away
low end so often times you might need to make
a pretty surgical removal of noise or resonance
up here in the higher frequencies even though
the end goal is to clear up the bass elements
of these lower frequencies and then we might
even just kind of give a small bump up here
to a high end, to get those crispy little
raindrops shining through.
Ok so your ears should have aclimated by now
and this sounds like a pretty decent recording
of rain outside.
Now we can remove more sound, more noise that's
unnecessary, let's go ahead and turn this
eq off all at once and you can be judge just
how much bass frequency, low end frequency
presence there was in this recording that
really didn't need to be in there, Here we
go.
And again with the EQ.
Ok you can actually here the sound of the
rain kind of washed out in the background
as it falls all over the place.
And you can hear those tiny little raindrops
up front, couldn't really hear that before.
Now why do we choose this sound and how is
this supposed to translate into more bass
in your projects ?
Just imagine, and after this lesson you won't
have to imagine, you can go find out for yourself,
you can listen to any sound you like and prove
it for yourself.
Just imagine if almost, one hundred percent,
of the sounds that you use in your music projects
are not bass instruments, have bass frequencies,
that means, they have activity in these lower
frequency ranges, in the same exact places
where your bass instruments or your bass elements,
are most active, then every other sound should
have those frequencies removed to make, or
at least attenuate it a bit, to make room
for those bass instruments to really pop and
if you don't, that's where the conflicts start
and that's where muddiness starts to occur.
The same things happen in these mid range
areas especially in music with multiple stringed
instruments and vocals happening at the same
time right around this five hundred mark or
so, is a pretty typical culpurit, bass music
with a lot of kick and snare and several layered
synths as well as heavy bass instruments you're
usually going to find some muddiness down
around two fifty area or so as well.
Now those can be pretty tricky because you
know obviously there are some drum sounds
around two fifty that that's the main focal
for a lot of those sounds.
Same is true with vocals around five hundred
so you know just apply that same thought to
like a bass guitar or a bass synth, you know,
if that's really rocking around here, around
seventy five hertz or a hundred hertz something
like that then you certainly don't want anything
else in your mix touching those areas, just
like you want to roll off everything, you
know, below fifty or maybe sixty hertz, just
to protect this area that you can then place
sub bass into, that you can then control and
add some serious sonic impact to your mix.
but that's it.
I know it's a bit of a lengthy explanation
but hopefully this super simplified example
of just what environmental noise exists around
us at all times and that that can be correlated
or translated into any sound that you encounter
there is going to some frequency activity
that is simply not necessary, its not essential
to that sound and you want to remove as much
of that as possible, without altering the
sound itself much at all, if at all, you can
still make a ton of room for the other sounds
in your mix, so that's it.
One simple step, apply this to every single
sound in your mix, even some of your bass
elements, some of your bass sounds will need
some of this high pass filtering.
And here's why, bass frequencies, those low
frequencies, the lower the frequency is, the
harder it is to move those frequencies through
the air, the more energy it takes to move
them through the air, so it makes sense that
if we cut those unnecessary frequencies out
of all the other instruments, that bass is
going to come flying out of those speakers
as soon as it hits, ok , that one bass instrument
that's really, you know, that focal point
you want, that's what's going to happen.
Alright so again, that's it, high pass filter,
it's that simple, just remember high pass
filter.
Also called a low cut filter and it's the
far left on your EQ.
Hope this helps, hope you enjoy some cleaner
mixes and some easier mixing sessions from
here on out.
thanks again for stopping by and we will see
you again soon.
Cheers.