20 Recording And Mixing Tips That Will Make Your Life Easier
- When mixing live drums, copying the snare drum to a new unprocessed channel will help maintain the live feel
- Going through the tom tracks and editing out the spill, keeping only actual tom hits is time well spent. Forget gating
- When recording bass drum, it's worth placing a mic close to the skin inside the drum as it helps when triggering samples
- When recording dynamic vocals, place a 2nd mic 2 feet away from the singer so when they sing loud you can use that track
- Placing a pop shield in front of the vocal mic can be used to control the minimum distance between the singer and the mic.
- Most singers take one ear out when recording. Switching off the unused channel will reduce the spill on the mic
- Inserting a DeEsser before the vocal reverb on a send can prevent the reverb from sounding 'sandy'
- Always roll the excess mic lead next to the mic stand so you can move the stand freely if needed
- Zoom to make sure the bottom snare mic is in phase with the top mic,otherwise it may lose it's body.
- Keep the talkback always on & run it through a compressor, sidechain from the monitor mix, so it Ducks when you're in Play
- Set up a 'listen mic' in the live room so that the drummer doesn't have to shout to be heard & assign mute to a controller
- During rhythm section with a keyboard player, record the Midi to its own track for more editing and sonic options
- Check your mix on good headphones before printing, things like edit clicks and cut breaths will jump out
- Place a pair of speakers at the back of the Control Room behind you, makes vocal riding easier
- When layering 2 kick samples, use Linear Phase EQ on both to maintain solid spectral balance
- Record guitar on a stereo track; Mic/D.I. makes editing easier. Use Waves Audio S1 to balance the two tracks
- Record a few seconds of the click track spill so you can phase reverse and cancel out the spill on the mic later
- Change the strings on the guitars a few days before the recording session so they keep in tune
- Cut low mid frequencies on the bassdrum (±110Hz) to make room for the bass. This will give you more headroom & more punch
- Try Trans-X on Overheads to tame kick/snr transients. More control over kit sound, wider stereo image
Follow: http://twitter.com/yoadnevo and http://yoadnevo.com for more tips.
Fabfilter simplon is as good as waves S1 for balancing & enhancing tracks.
Greetings -- I just finished reading the "Preparing Your Tracks for Mixing" by Yoad...wish I had read it before sending a load of tracks to my mixing engineer. The next song I send to my mixing engineer will be much better recorded, prepared and labelled as a result. I can't wait to hear the current results. Thanks Yoad...! Peace
Thanks, this is so useful, that phase trick on the click it's cool
Good! Thanks...
Yoad, thank you so much for the tips!! You've mastered 2 of the tracks I had the pleasure of mixing. You took it to a whole different level. Thank you for being such an inspiration and for sharing your knowledge with all of us!!
