The McScary Album Chronicles #5: Mixing
There is a lot that goes in to the mixing process of a song. Once everything is recorded, and programed, you still need to mix it properly, which can be a very time-consuming process. A song can have all the elements of greatness, but if it is not mixed well, it will not sound good. I've seen it written many times that mixing takes a life-time to master, and I can see why. Even though I'm sure this album will not having expert level sounding mix, I have hope that it will sound reasonably well, and significantly better than my last album.
The software I used for my first album was very low-quality, and I knew very little about mixing. As a result, the extent of my mixing on my first album, was pretty much just me slightly tweaking the volume faders and doing a little panning. Since then, I have done a great deal of research on compressors, limiters, noise gates, EQ theory, etc.
For this album, I am using a an ample amount of individual track compression to insure that my audio levels do not exceed 0db and if they do, it is only slight and not enough to cause a notable clip. I have also been doing more subtle panning to give the instrumentation their own spots within the audio spectrum, as well as spending more time adjusting the EQ settings.
I have run into several audio issues so far in the mixing process, but am doing my best to remedy them. First of all, there is frequency clashing. This is where two or more sounds/instruments play at the same time that occupy the same general frequency on the audio spectrum, resulting in a muddy sound or having once drowned out by the other. I have been doing by best to fix this by raising certain high or low frequencies on the EQ and with a little opposite panning. The other issue I have found is over compression. I try to keep my audio levels out of the red by using compression, as many producers do. The down side to this is that if you use too much compression, but still maximize the audio levels of your mix, you lose the sound dynamics, which results in a lifeless and boring constant sound. I have been trying to fix this by still using track volume faders to lower audio levels, and trying to use compression sparingly. Though a couple songs still hit the red slightly, I don't think it will be too much of a problem. After some initial hesitation, I think I am going to try to use a limiter on the master track of a couple of the more booming songs to keep them from clipping out like crazy. I think as long as I keep the threshold high and don't add volume gain, this should not hurt the dynamics.
Almost done...