mixing pt4 3.19.02

seems like every week or so i post a new mixing technique. which is good for yall. lol yall better be showing some gratification, lol. anyways, for this tutorial you will need a few basic things such as:

• cool edit pro 1.2a
• t-racks 24
• read up on my last couple of tutorials.

and that is about it. now basically like i have said in every tutorial i've written it is different for everyone, and everyone's needs. so don't bitch if it don't sound good to you, cuz chances are, it will sound very nice, but just in case - don't expect perfect quality out of these few steps, this shit takes time and practice.

ok first off you got your shit recorded raw ass acapella, first (like always) do your noise reduction and silencing. then, i know i went up against it in my other tutorial, but i read up a lil more on it, and after doing some researching and expirimenting i've found the best for us, do some compression, this is done by going into transform>amplitude>dynamics processing. now pick 4:1 compression. and all the sudden you will see your shit shrink, lol don't be alarmed that is just evening everything out smoothly. plus i have found this really ups the warmth in your voice, alot, but it also ups your hi's so you might wanna consider a hi cut on your compressed vocals. but i didn't do it, and you'll see why in a minute. then normalize your shit, and i normalized this time at 80% for main vocals and 60% for backups, which, once again, worked good for ME. our mic and mixer is powerful and it sounds alot louder than it looks.

then i went through the whole acapella (this part sucks but is necessary) and highlighted every breath carefully, and did a 10db cut on the breaths, and sometimes i did it twice on some, it just depends, and to do that you highlight the breath, then you go into transform>amplitude>amplify and select 10db cut, bam, there you go.

after that suck ass part got out of the way your vocals should sound really nice, and to polish that off, i did a reverb (the same one as the last preset i gave you "light reverb".). which gave it a more spacious, not so isolated sound.

THEN lol, i went back after all was done, and did some minor eq'ing (newbies need not do it) and just lowered a couple frequencies. you'll have to tweak it a lil bit to get it to your likings. and after i did that, i did the final step, which should always be yours and normalized it again, to 80%.

now for backups, i'd say apply the compression, and do the same as the last tutorials, except make your compression before you start polishing it all and eqing.

now, after i did that and all was said and done, i gave it a review, and mixed her down. and saved it as a *.wav file, make sure it is 44100 Hz, 16 bit mono/stereo, otherwise t-racks won't read that shit.

then open your t-racks, and hit the button in the bottom right corner labeled "open". and find your file and open it.

then i when to that section on the right of the "tube-comp". and where it says "defaults" click on defaults (not the arrow, on defaults) and scroll down a lil bit, what is in there is a bunch of cool ass presets, and i would recommend trying them all out for yourself, just to see what they can do. after you get done, select "SUITE - Gentle Master 1". and that will make it sound ten times better and i promise you this, it will eq the bass and treble (pretty much eliminating distortion, but you oughtta check it for your self), it will compress them (to level out all the frequencies, and make sure it is all pretty much even), and hard limit it (bring up the overall volume of the track to a certain point just under peaking). and this will give it a hell of alot cleaner sound, and more warmth will be added, you will be pleasantly suprised. trust me. i am in love with that preset. you may even wanna expiriment with the knobs too, i'd recommend turning all of it off, listen to it without the mastering, then turn all of it on and listen to it, and slowly turn one off at a time, so you can see for your self what kind of effect it is putting on your overall mixed track.

then when you are done, just hit process. and you got your self a (generally speaking) mastered track. i personally was VERY satisfied with the outcome of the mastering process and i'm pretty sure you will be too!

this is a good example of the quality of our music with the mixing process stated

HiFi (Fast Computer) LoFi (Slow Computer)

oh and what some people seem to get confused with now a days is what exactly compression is. alot of cats think it just takes your vocals down to a cetain volume throughout the whole part of the audio. which is halfway true, but (when used correctly) compression can level out the frequencies in your track so nothing is to loud, or too quiet. i actually had it confused lol, the reason i didn't like compression is cuz the last time i used it (before i figured it out), it sounded like shit, it raised all kinds of fuzz and shit in it and just sounded aweful, but the noise reduction will get rid of that if you reduce the noise before you compress, which i must have not been doing at the time.

hope you enjoy this one!