Mixing Your Own Songs

      MIXING YOUR OWN SONGS

Many Rappers and Singers are getting stuck on mixing their tracks. That’s not an completely strange fact, because mixing a very hard task you need to practice for many years. To help you out we have a little mixing guide explaining several techniques and tracks for you.
If you buy a rap beat, pop beat or whatever instrumental, nine times out of ten it’s already mixed very smoothly. But sometimes you need to create space in some mixer tracks for your vocals to come out more clearly between the collections of instruments in your track.

If you are not able to hire a mixing service to mix your tracks like a pro, than you can use these tricks with the effects I explain to you.

Let’s pretend you have a song with several track outs; a piano; a bass guitar; kickdrum; a snare; hi hats and a synth which kicks in at the chorus of the song.The first thing you do is when you export the mixer tracks to your DAW (Program you mix or compose with) Is order them in the correct way. We start a the base of your track, so that should be the kick drum, this instrument needs to come over very clearly and punchy so it needs lots of room.

The second most important mixer track is the bass; in combination with the kick it fills the lowest frequencies of your song. After that you place the snare, and after that the hi-hats etc. You order your mixer tracks from most important to least important when mixing. When you have connected all your track-outs to the mixer in your DAW we can start cleaning them up.

HIGH & LOWPASS FILTER: On every mixer track in any DAW you can connect VST’s to the track out, also known as virtuals instruments & effects. The first effect we are going to use is the high pass filter.
The high pass filter let’s all the frequencies pass above the KHz you choose. You should let the highpass filter pass every frequency above 20Khz. Why are we doing this? We human’s tend to hear only frequencies between 20KHz and 20HZ, and the instruments you have, play lot’s of DB’s above and underneath these frequencies that fill op our ‘’Headroom’’ (Headroom is the space you have when you mix a song, the more frequencies and DB’s in this room, the lesser space to come out clearly for them) So on every mixer track we let everything above 20KHz pass, and we can also set a low pass filter to let all the frequencies underneath 20Hz pass.

COMPRESSOR: So we have cleaned up all your mixer tracks, now we need to have a constant velocity throughout your mixer tracks. Pick any compressor in your DAW, as long as it’s no multiband compressor.

You probably see a couple of knobs you can turn, a Threshold, Gain, Ratio, and a Attack and Release button. Now you put your ratio on 4:2 You pull back the threshold button a little bit and you gain a couple of DB’s extra than you have cut from your track. You need to go very easy on your compressor or it starts to hiss. Set your attack quite fast and the release a little later. Now your mixer-track has equal velocity throughout your whole track.

EQUALIZER: When all the frequencies we don’t need are gone, the velocity is equal on every mixer track, we can shape the sound a little bit more. At this stage you connect an equalizer to your mixer tracks.

The main thing in this stage is let your instruments and vocals come out clearly. Most instruments and vocal tracks are a little rough round frequencies 400 and 500 Hz so it’s nice to cut a little there. There is one main rule at turning the knobs of an equalizer ‘’it’s better to cut than to gain’’

REVERB: Now every instrument is clean and sounds very clear. At this stage we are going to put a reverb on the tracks.

The reverb is one of the main things that give your instrument its place in the room. You need to do this all by yourself, give your instrument some nice acoustics, but remember, don’t go too hard on the reverb because your track will get instable by doing that.

STEREO WIDTH: The last part we are is giving your single instruments a place in the room.

The stereo width is the space between your monitor speakers. For instance a snare needs to be centred and quite thin in the middle, the kick centred to but a little wider than the snare. Lead instruments are often very wide. The placement of you instruments depends on the number of different tracks you have. The effect you can do this with is a stereo enhancer. Just play with it.

Now you have a couple tips and tricks, it’s time to go for it on your own, the first couple of times it will be hard, but the longer you practice the better your songs will be mixed. These are just a few tips and tricks, later I will provide you with more!

Source Mixing and Mastering