The basic concept of mixing: mixing public areas
There are three areas with the highest frequency in mixing: middle, extreme left and extreme right.
The center is the most easily noticed position, usually reserved for vocals, drums, drums, bass, etc. Although it is a common skill in modern music production to closely connect the drum with the bass, it is not so popular in early recording. When stereo technology first appeared in the mid-1960s, people also heard that the orchestra and the lead singer were separated. This is because stereo is still a brand-new and undetermined format for recording and mixing technology at that time, so there was no pan knob on the mixing console at that time, only a three-level switch was used to specify that the audio track should be sent to the left and right outputs (or both, just like the middle).
However, when the musical elements are extremely sideways, it will cause some technical problems. For example, if the low frequency on one side increases too much, the unbalanced low frequency energy will affect the production of turntable (early LP, SP and other vinyl). The only solution is to balance the low frequencies on both sides, or to spread the bass, drums and other instruments with a lot of low frequencies to the middle.
The basic concept of mixing: panorama-imagine the position of sound
Panorama is usually abbreviated as Pan. In stereo, the position of sound in the left and right channels is adjusted, which can stagger the tracks, increase the clarity and avoid the interference of musical instruments. Proper use of Pan's function can make the sound wider and the sound field deeper. Of course, just like other elements in the mashup, there is no absolute right or wrong to adjust the pan, which should be judged according to the actual situation. Here are some basic principles to follow:
Basic concept of mixing: large mono
With the development of commercial music and dance music in recent years, Andhadhun's main task has gradually become to make the finished music sound bigger and wider. The simplest way is to shift the sound to the left and right. Although the sound seems to become more obvious at first glance, it will actually cause the problem of "big mono".
When a large number of stereo sources are moved to the far left and the far right in the mixing, no sound field is actually added. On the contrary, because all the sounds are crammed into the same position, the positioning and depth of each track are destroyed, and all the sounds overlap with each other, but they lose their sense of space. In the process of mixing, a suitable reason is needed to shift the sound to the left, right or middle. When some people get some sound materials (such as synthesizer timbre and some stereo effects), they intuitively translate them to the far left and the far right, hoping to make the base timbre sound as wide and big as possible, which will eventually lead to the disaster of frequency distribution. If you put drums, drums and voices in the middle, you will find that all track frequencies interfere with each other; If you can see these sounds, they will hide from each other, making it impossible to tell which ones are in front and which ones are behind.
The solution is to discard such stereo material and find a place to place it, so as to create your own sound field positioning, instead of translating to the extreme left and right. For example, we can translate the sound material on the left to ten o'clock and the sound material on the right to four o'clock, which will make the overall sound positioning clearer and more stereoscopic. If necessary, we can add some effects to make the sound more in line with our expected sound field. Let all the instruments have their own positions, so that everything sounds like a combination.
Basic concept of mixing: mono listening
Some mixers switch between mono and stereo in the second half of the mix to check the phase consistency and the balance between the pan and the instrument.
When stereo mixing is merged into mono, all the negative factors will cancel out, reducing the whole volume and even causing some sounds to disappear, so some mixers will reconfirm the balance of instruments in mono to check whether any instruments overlap each other. Because it is difficult to find accurate dynamic balance in stereo, it is best to listen to the finished product in different monitoring systems and different environments after mixing, so as to ensure that the mixed results can adapt to different playback situations.
Basic concept of mixing: dimension-sound volume
The volume of sound, that is, the sense of space that the listener will receive, is usually affected when recording, but now in the mixing stage, most effects are added to change the original sense of space, such as reverberation, delay or some modulation effects (such as chorus or edging). ).
When mixing, changing the original size of the sound is usually to create a sense of listening space, or to add special flavor to make the sound sound broader or deeper. Generally speaking, we imagine the space where performers are located, such as bars, rooms, concert venues and so on. And then re-create a sense of space to surround the original sound.
Smaller reverberation or shorter delay can make the sound louder; When the attenuation of reverberation is less than 1 s and the delay is less than 100ms (the actual value may be smaller than the above), a small space will be generated to wrap the original sound material, making the sound sound wider than the original sound. Sometimes, in order to make reverberation more suitable, EQ is added to the reverberation to adjust the frequency, and the principle of EQ, as mentioned earlier, depends on your ears to judge everything.
Basic concept of mixing: dynamics
The strength of control is to keep the volume level even, so that the volume is too low to be heard and too large to be weakened. In modern music, the louder the sound, the better, and the frequent use of compressors, "dynamic" has become an important factor in mixing. The main purpose of using dynamic controller in hybrid is:
Control dynamic increase effect
Dynamic control plug-ins basically include compressors, limiters, gates and so on. With these tools, you can dynamically control the volume. The compressed sound will be more compact, and the overall volume can be increased in the output stage. But excessive compression will make the sound lose its vitality and expressiveness. If the dynamic range is too large, it is easy to cause the output to break the table and break the sound. How to grasp it is a subject that needs to be pondered repeatedly in the process of mixing.
Basic concept of mixing: compressor
The main control parameters of compressor are threshold and ratio. Threshold determines when the compressor starts running, for example, it is set to -20db, which means that when the volume exceeds -20dB, the compressor will compress dynamically. The ratio is basically similar to the proportional control of compression, assuming that the ratio is set to 4: 1, that is to say, when the volume of every 4db exceeds the threshold set by the threshold, the compression through the compressor will become1db; Similarly, 8: 1 will result in only 1db output for every 8db of the original volume.
If we take the exam results as an example, suppose that the final exam results are generally poor, but there are still a few students close to full marks. The teacher wants to adjust the average score of the final exam to prevent students from breaking the table. At this time, the concept of compressor can be put in; Assuming that 60 is the standard, the scores above 60 are compressed by 2: 1, and then 20 is added to the adjusted scores. In this way, students below 60 directly add 20 points, and students with 70 points become 60+(70-60)/2+20 = 85 points, while 65,438+. After being compressed by the compressor, the whole data can be gained again without sonic boom, which is the common usage of the compressor.
Most compressors also have sound start and sound release variables. The attack will determine how long the compressor starts to act, and the release will determine the time and end of compression. Some compressors also add an automatic mode to make these two parameters change automatically with the original dynamics of audio.
It should be understood here that the dynamic processor is actually performing a gain reduction action, that is, turning down the volume. Then why did you say that you should use these effects to make the sound louder? Because when we compress the louder part, there is room to increase the overall volume, that is, to make up for the gain or output gain to make up for the reduced volume.
Basic concept of mixing: limiter
The biggest difference between compressor and limiter is the way of setting. When we set the ratio of the compressor to 10: 1, it will have a similar effect as the limiter. Basically, the limit is like a signal wall. When the volume reaches that threshold, the original signal is only allowed to exceed a little, most of the volume is forced to be compressed within the limit, and the whole slope looks close to a horizontal line.
Limit is usually used to prevent the output signal from being too large, resulting in problems such as excessive speakers or volume. Moreover, some mixers will also be used on the bass, so that the bass will not be too strong and the mixing will be easier.
The basic concept of mixing: door
Gate is like a door, which controls the switch of the door through the threshold to decide whether the signal passes or not. It can be used to make the sound come out only when we want, and it can also be used to eliminate some crosstalk problems. For example, when recording a drum, all we need is a shot, only the sound of a small drum, or only the sound of a big drum, but the mic of a small drum will receive other parts of the sound. At this time, we can use gate to eliminate redundant sound, or eliminate some environmental or amp noise, or let the sound end faster than the original signal.
Here are some examples that I hope will help you:
Bass-most basses always play the same sounds. They are louder than other instruments, and some are very quiet. We use a compressor to reduce these differences and make the volume average.
Lead singer-every word and melody line sung by most singers is not at the same level, so some words can't be heard clearly Compressor can make every word heard in this case.
Drum or snare-sometimes the drummer plays differently every time. The compressor can make the sound intensity closer. Gate can prevent the continuous sound in the drum group from affecting the next sound and causing confusion.
When compression is used as an effect, it can also completely change the sound, and through appropriate settings, it can also make the sound sound closer, more aggressive and more exciting.
When adjusting the compressor, too fast attack will reduce the punch of the original signal, and too long release will compress the compressor until the next signal appears. Because the onset and playback will strongly affect the sound changes, we can start from the place where the onset is slowest and the playback is shortest, and slowly speed up the onset until the instrument sounds "dull", then stop at this point, and then slowly increase the playback time until the next sound comes out to avoid compression to the next sound. Finally, compare it with the whole set to see if the setting is appropriate, so that the compressor can run as naturally as breathing.
In addition, compressor will obviously compress the main frequency, because the main frequency contains a larger part of energy in the sound, so the more compressed it is, the more powerful it is. The less compression (6db or less), the less damage to the dynamics, but there is no definite method. Sometimes we will greatly compress the electric guitar, drums and vocals according to the actual situation.
Here are some tips for using compression:
Drum: Usually, we use gate to make the drum sound only when it is struck, and use the drum signal as the input of the side chain to control the volume of other tracks so that it is not affected by the big drum or other sounds.
Vocal speech: 3: 1 to 4: 1 is a suitable starting ratio, the attack can be slow to fast, and the release can be fast to slow. Setting a threshold will reduce the gain by about 4 to 6db.
Bass: Sometimes the limiter can be used to set the threshold, so that the gain can be reduced by about 3dB or 4dB, and the bass can stand more stably in the mixing.
Guitar: A high proportion, such as 8: 1 or 10: 1, usually plays a good role. It should be noted that the threshold should be set at the position where the guitar will not be interrupted, and the starting and playing should be coordinated with the beat speed setting.
Compress the whole set of rhythms: use a stereo compressor on the bus, and use the bus as an effect between the tracks of the whole set of drums to send back, sometimes including bass. Then, let the compressor perform relatively strong compression, and at least 10db is reduced. And add some high and low frequencies (6? 10db is about 10k and 100Hz) to the compressed signal, and finally the output volume of the compressor is adjusted in the mixing. This can make the whole rhythm group sound bigger and easier to control, but there will be no problem of excessive compression.
Some suggestions on the sound stage;
Reverberation is layered by frequency, with longer reverberation accompanied by brighter frequency and shorter reverberation accompanied by darker frequency.
Sometimes, you can try different panning methods instead of turning the reverb pan to the left and right.
Not all reverberation must be sent back, but it can be directly hung on the audio track as appropriate.
Use reverberation to make the sense of space bigger and delay to make the sound deeper.
Using more reverberation on the main instrument elements can make the whole sound stage blend better.
Parameters such as long delay, pre-delay of reverberation or reverberation attenuation, if adjusted obviously, will make the sound sound deeper and farther. If the delay and pre-delay are greater than 100ms, the sound sounds and feels like it is coming from far away, so it is necessary to judge the size of the last stage in use. When the attenuation or delay is small and the level is high, the sound sounds obvious; When the attenuation or delay time is long and the volume is loud, the sound sounds far away.
When the delay time is synchronized with the warp speed, increasing the depth of the effect will not attract attention; Many mixers will combine the delay time with the beat speed synchronously, so that the delay effect can be more integrated into the music. But this does not mean that the delay effect must be synchronized with the beat speed, but if it is not done, the effect will be abrupt and easy to be noticed, and it can also be used as a special effect. If the reverberation can be synchronized with the speed of the song, it will also have a more integrated effect in the song.
Sometimes the studio will change the ambient sound of the sound through re-amplification, that is, after the original instrument sound is released from the speaker, the microphone will be used to receive the sound. In this process, the type of microphone, the receiving position and the surrounding environment will all affect the received sound, changing the sense of space and sound quality of the original acoustic instrument. The quality will vary from person to person, but the sound will definitely be different from the original material.