COURSE SLIDES / REFRESHER

Octave
Major  
Minor   Seventh
Major   Seventh
Minor   Sixth
Sixth
Perfect  
Diminished
Fifth  /   Fifth
Perfect   Tritone
Major   Fourth
Minor   Third
Major   Third
Minor   Second
Perfect   Second
Unison
 Octave
Major  
Minor   Seventh
Major   Seventh
Minor   Sixth
Sixth
Perfect  
Diminished
Fifth  /   Fifth
Perfect   Tritone
Major   Fourth
Minor   Third
Major   Third
Minor   Second
Perfect   Second
Unison
 Mixing

“Mixing is one huge balancing act. Volume

levels, frequency conflicts, dynamics,
panning, stereo balance and overall
coherence must all be considered, with the
ultimate goal of creating an end result
that sounds great on a multitude of
playback systems.” (computer music mag)
 Referencing: Objective decisions

• Referencing leads to more objective decisions when mixing

• Humans ears have trouble making relative decisions (especially after hours in the studio)
• Comparing your mix against existing quality productions - leads to more accurate results
• Referencing is an efficient way of closing the gap between amateur and professional
• Take your time to find the right reference track for your mix (there are many differences
between styles)
• The quicker you can switch between a reference track and your own work the more obvious
the contrast will be.
• Your reference track and your work in progress should have the same level of loudness
because to human ear something that's simply louder sounds better.
 Speakers / Monitors

• Most important piece of gear (recommended: active near field monitors)

• Position your monitors in a triangle (monitor, head, monitor)
• Distance to walls has to be equal for left and right monitor (there should be a
gap between wall and monitor)

but keep in mind…

• Try to listen to your mix on many different speakers

• Many people listen to their music on headphones. Check your mix on
headphones/smartphones/laptops as well.
• Try develop an awareness for the weaknesses of these speakers
 Why mono Bass?
• Bass frequencies have a lot of energy (they move lots of air) and will take up
more space in a mix than mid or high frequencies. Keeping the bass mono
will limit the amount of space used.
• Most subwoofers are mono anyways so you’ll have more control over the
sound being played back on different systems if you keep the bass in mono.
• Bass frequencies are sensitive to phase problems and can easily lose punch
and definition. Stereo bass information might increase phase problems.
• The human brain can’t localize sound at frequencies lower than about 80 Hz.
• As the frequency drops below 80 Hz it becomes difficult or impossible to use
either time difference or level difference to determine a sound's lateral source,
because the phase difference (amplitude) between the ears becomes too
small for a directional evaluation.
 Room
• Important: position of your speaker in the room
• If your room is a rectangle (not a square), place desk on shorter end

• Further optimization:
• Place absorbers behind your monitors and on your walls to the left and right
(at the height of your speakers)
• Bass traps in the corners of the room

• The thicker your absorber, the deeper the frequencies it will absorb.
• (absorbing 85 Hz will require an absorber about 1m deep)
 BASS TRAPS ABSORBERS

ROOM TREATMENT

L R

LISTENER
 Fletcher-Munson Curve (1)
• Phenomenon of human hearing: A change in the volume of our track changes
our subjective perception of the relation between different frequencies. In
reality however, the overall objective balance of the frequencies remains the
same, independent of the listening volume. In other words:

• At low listening volumes, mid range frequencies sound more prominent, while
the low and high frequency ranges seem to fall into the background.

• At high listening volumes, the lows and highs sound more prominent, while
the mid range seems comparatively softer.
 Fletcher-Munson Curve (2)
Practical advise:

• An appropriate mixing volume is somewhere around 70-80dBA (a typical

conversation is around 65dBA, a motorcycle around 100dBA)
• Don’t rely on mixing at high/low volumes only.
• Try to remember your preferred volume settings and get accustomed to them
• Low volume: don’t pay too much attention to your bass here (Fl.-Mu.-Curve)
• High volume - keep in mind: high end will be perceived louder
• Take the volume down to low levels: are you still able to hear your most
important elements clearly?
• How does the reference track sound at those stages in comparison?
 How our ears sense the direction of sound
Directions of sound (3 indicators):

• Timing: when a sound comes from the right, the distance to your right ear is
slightly shorter than to your left one.
• Volume: a sound will be perceived louder where its closer to your ear.
• Frequency: if a sound is further away, high frequencies get absorbed easier.
Example: put an object in front of one of your tweeters (i.e. high frequency
part of your monitor) and listen how the sound immediately feels further away
• Also: when the sound comes from one side, your head blocks a portion of
that sound for the other side.
 How our ears sense the distance of a sound
• 3 factors determine the way you perceive the distance of a sound:

• Frequency response: higher frequencies carry less energy than low ones,
hence they are easier absorbed by objects in the environment - losing their
amplitude faster compared to lower frequencies (e.g. approaching car)
• Amount of reverb: far off sounds mostly reach you through reflections of
multiple surfaces touched on the way to your ear (reverb is like many small
delays arriving after one another)
• Amount of pre-delay: pre-delay is the time gap between the first arrival of
direct sound, and the first arrival of reflected sound.
• Practical example: placing a “near” sound into the “background” – no pre-
delay
 Compressor Summary

• Fast attack and fast release

we are reducing the level of the transient (initial spike you see at the
beginning of the waveform)

• Fast attack and slow release

the overall level of the snare will be reduced

• Slow attack and slow release

we are reducing the level of the sustain at the tail of the snare drum
 Compressor settings

2:1 4:1 8:1

• Ratio Light Reduction Moderate Reduction Heavy Reduction

1-5ms 5-10ms 10-20ms

• Attack Fast/Quick/Short Medium Fast Slow/Long

1-20ms 20-60ms 60-900ms

• Release Fast/Quick/Short Medium Fast Slow/Long
(highly dependent on audio source)
 Frequency Masking
• Psychological effect, affects perception when listening to a mix of instruments

• Example: spectrum above 5kHz gets filled up by loud cymbal sound. A vocal part playing
along will be perceived less well around that frequency range because cymbal is "masking"
other elements.
• That happens even if the vocals themselves sound nicely bright in solo mode.
• So, even if individual instruments already sit well enough in the mix, we have to interfere to
deal with the masking effect.
• In short: it doesn't necessarily help to make every individual instrument sound fantastic,
sometimes we need to change the frequency balance of a secondary instrument to a less
desired setting in order to achieve the best possible mix.
 Frequency Masking

HUMAN
AMPLITUDE
HEARING
CURVE

FREQUENCY
660 680 700 720 740
 Subtractive vs. Additive EQ

• A great deal of the “subtractive vs additive EQ” - debate stems from

analogue times when recordings still contained a lot of noise.

• Boosting through additive EQ increased the loudness of such noise and

therefore was - simply put - to be avoided.
 Subtractive vs. Additive EQ (1)
• We are using Subtractive EQing

• to cut out elements we don’t want / or need when we are trying to clean up
frequencies that are being occupied by more instruments / sounds. We are
figuring out which instrument we want to make stand out and perform a cut
on the other ones in that area
• cutting off harsh sounding resonances on any sound (we are using a narrow
bandwidth, notching out the disturbing noise)
• avoiding a "louder is better" boost to make an element stand out - rather cut
others
 Subtractive vs. Additive EQ (2)

We are using Additive EQing

• while working on our sound designs

• to add a little bit of extra nuances here and there to make a sound stand out

• when using an EQ plugin that adds a certain "color" to the sound (for
example because its modeled after an analogue EQ)
 Exporting / Dithering
Further processing planned (e.g. mastering) :
• render to 32-bit to avoid dithering at this stage.
Rendering to lower than 32-bit, choose a dither mode:
• Dithering adds a small amount of noise to rendered audio, but minimizes artifacts when
reducing the bit depth.
- Triangular (selected by default), safest mode if any additional processing planned
- Rectangular: smaller amount of dither noise, but additional quantization error.
- Pow-r modes: step-wise higher amounts of dithering, but with the noise pushed above
the audible range (Pow-r modes should never be used before mastering).
• Note: dithering should only be applied once to an audio file.
• Attention: Some limiters (like Waves L2) run with dithering activated by default, in this case be
sure to turn it off.
Exporting / Sample Rate
 Octave
Major  
Minor   Seventh
Major   Seventh
Minor   Sixth
Sixth
Perfect  
Diminished
Fifth  /   Fifth
Perfect   Tritone
Major   Fourth
Minor   Third
Major   Third
Minor   Second
Perfect   Second
Unison
 EXAMPLE STRUCTURE OF A SONG

VERSE 1 CHORUS 1 VERSE 2 CHORUS 2 BRIDGE PART / MID CHORUS 3 / CLIMAX

Mixing Approach
• What is the musical idea of the song?
• What is the most important section?
• What are the most important instruments (work your way down from there)?
 Summing up / Key Take-Away’s (1)
EQing

• Rather cut than boost (avoid an upward spiral of boosting, cutting the less
important element, frequency masking)

• Boost wide, cut narrow

• Use shelf filters before peak filters and before notch filters
 Summing up / Key Take-Away’s (2)
Compression

• Turn off the makeup gain

• Exaggerate threshold - find your attack release settings & work your way back
• Side-Chaining (used in mixing to gain room, not to add a noticeable effect)
• Parallel Compression (best of two worlds, keeping dynamics while adding
punch of compressed signal)
• Compressors are more “sensitive” to lower frequencies (louder)- that’s why a
low-cut EQ placed before a compressor is helpful
 Summing up / Key Take-Away’s (3)
General Mixing

• Use reference tracks

• Give yourself the “rule” that you will never put a limiter on your master while
you are still mixing.
• Avoid falling into "louder sounds better“ trap
• Sounds don’t have to sound good in solo, they have to sound good in the
context of the mix (cut ruthlessly).
• What is the musical idea of the song
• What is the most important section
• What are the most important instruments (work your way down from there)
 Summing up / Key Take-Away’s (4)
General Mixing

• Check your mix for phasing issues from time to time. If you’re using the Waves
Paz-Analyser, check the Anti-Phase.

• Be sure to keep your most important song elements / instruments mainly

present in the mono area. Check from time to time (place a Utility on the
master channel and reduce the stereo width, check if you’re losing relevant
information).
• (Often: commercial productions are superbly distributed around the mono area, such that
you’re hardly losing anything when switching from stereo to mono)
 Thanks!

• For more resources, courses, tutorials and sound packs head over to

• www.productionmusiclive.com