Now, anyone with a laptop and a couple of recording microphones has all of the tools they need to record, create, and combine music and make their own recording studio. The house recording studio revolution is here. But with the ever growing and often overwhelming options of EQs, compressors and load of other plugging, how can we put them together to make a good sounding mix? With increasing demands on audio quality, sound engineering is important to receive your track to stick out from the masses. Here are a few pointers that will assist you improve on your mixing procedure.
- Are your ingredients refreshing?
Making a brand new dish is impossible without new ingredients. Likewise, in sound engineering, if you begin with poorly recorded tracks containing hiss, phasing issues, room reflections, you are going to have a harder time trying to make anything sound great. So rule of thumb, as opposed to pulling out your hair when it is too late, records your songs nicely. Use a fantastic recording microphone. Document in a soundproof room and do the relevant acoustic treatment if you are able to. Otherwise, record someplace else in the event that you want to. Switch off that noisy air-con. DO NOT fix things in the mixture.
- Use your ears, not your eyes
You Are a sound engineer right? So stop using your eyes. Use your ears. Humans suffer with placebo effect from time to time. In other words, our brains can make us believe something sounds good just as we are getting cool visual feedback. Next time, try using that EQ plug-in with no curve and listen. What really has to be boosted or cut? Did adding that compressor improve anything? Let’s ears make the last call, not the user interface. The ideal combination engineers in the world rely largely on a set of objective ears.
- Do not be a sonic narcissist
Narcissus fell in love with his own picture after staring at it for a long time. Likewise, a combination engineer can fall in love with his own work and do not understand considerable mistakes after listening to it too much. Audio technology is an art – art calls for a clear mind to produce critical aesthetic judgments. So have a rest from time to time, and always keep a fresh ear when blending. Successful audio engineering demands constant improvement.
- Prioritize the elements
Some Things are more important than others in a mixture. As an instance, that shaker might seem really intriguing, but are we mixing a shaker solo piece? Otherwise, give priority to the main elements. In the majority of pop LA recording studios, be certain the kick drum, bass, snare and vocal are sitting nicely, muting the other elements. If you can find all them to sound good together, you have essentially mixed half of the song. Bring in the other components then. If there are not any drums, the vocals can afford to fill out more frequency space and seem larger. Most importantly, the principal objective of an audio engineer is balance.