The Mix Up – Blog

First, a BIG THANK YOU to the recording artists around the world who have helped make Magic Ears successful in 2015! Your trust means the world to me, and I look forward to continuing to help you realize your artistic visions in 2016!

Another HUGE THANK YOU goes out to the members of the media (and Facebook group administrators) who have provided coverage and support in 2015. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Throughout the year, I’ve helped many people understand the importance of mastering. Once a song has been written, there are three essential elements that go into releasing music: Recording, Mixing and Mastering.

Many artists record and mix their music, but they stop short of finishing their projects because they don’t master their mixes. Think about it this way: can you name one major album that you love that wasn’t mastered? Of course you can’t! So why release something of your own unmastered? Makes no sense, right?

So, while you are making those New Year’s resolutions, here’s one that will be a lot easier to keep than losing weight or quitting cigarettes (both things you really should do, by the way): Master your music in 2016.

Perhaps you have older mixes you never got mastered (or need to be remastered), or you have new recordings that should be mastered. I will work with you to make certain your music sounds as good as it possibly can for a price that you can afford (I also offer exceptional mixing at reasonable prices. Click here for details).

For new customers, we will continue to offer your First Song Free!

I love helping artists achieve their goals and dreams, and I look forward to collaborating with you in the new year!

Happy New Year from Magic Ears Mastering!

 

Warmest regards,

Adam Matza

Owner

Magic Ears Mastering

 

This time of year (let’s admit it, since Halloween), we are inundated with Christmas music, and a lot of it sucks.

The songs might have been good the first million or so times we heard them (and that’s just this year), but they’ve long since passed their expiration date and don’t smell all that good.

Here is a Christmas Song list for you to play at the once-a-year family gathering that you’ll enjoy (and some songs that your dear Aunt Mimi might even like):

1) Christians and the Pagans (Out There Live version) – Dar Williams
2) Father Christmas – The Kinks
3) Christmas In Washington – Steve Earle
4) Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis – Tom Waits
5) Christmas – The Who
6) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (Live in 1975) – Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
7) Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – John Lennon
8) 7 O’clock News/Silent Night – Simon & Garfunkel

9) Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid
10) A Junky’s Christmas – William S. Burroughs & The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
11) Christmas Rappin’ – Kurtis Blow
12) Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto/Hey America – James Brown
13) Millie Pulled A Pistol on Santa – De La Soul
14) A Merry Jingle – The Greedies (Thin Lizzie & The Sex Pistols)
15) Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight) – The Ramones

16) Christmas at the Zoo – The Flaming Lips
17) Christmas in Hollis – Run-DMC
18) Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy – Bing Crosby & David Bowie
19) Mistress for Christmas – AC/DC
20) Little Saint Nick – Beach Boys
21) I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Ronettes
22) Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt
23) Back Door Santa – Clarence Carter
24) Little Drum Machine Boy – Beck
25) Blue Christmas – Elvis Presely
26) Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) – Darlene Love
27) Run Rudolph Run – Chuck Berry
28) Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms

29) Trim Your Tree – Jimmy Butler
30) Christmas In Jail – The Youngsters

31) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – Ronnie James Dio (featuring Tony Iommi)

Honorable Mention: Santa Claus & His Old Lady – Cheech & Chong

What are your favorites?

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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We’ll keep it laser focused and simple on this one…

With multiple instruments taking up the same frequency range in your mix, you need to find the best frequency for each.

It’s rare that instruments sound best at the same frequency. If the kick drum and bass guitar sound great with boosts at 80Hz but they clash, with a little experimentation you’ll find the bass jumps out of your speakers elsewhere, perhaps at 100Hz, or even down in the 50-60Hz region.

Once you’ve found two discrete frequency ranges for two competing instruments, you simply cut in one what you boost in the other.

It’s that simple. It also works well to separate multiple guitar tracks that are playing the same progression, clashing lead vocal lines or overpowering keyboard parts.

To create separation in your mixes, cut for one instrument what you have boosted in the other.

PS: Make these adjustments in mono, and then check them in stereo. I find that it’s more accurate this way, as the stereo image won’t trick your ear into thinking there’s separation that may not be there.

I mostly mix in mono for this reason. If it sounds good in mono, it will likely sound great in stereo!

Thanks for reading our blog! If you are a new customer, please consider our FREE SONG OFFER. We look forward to working with you on your music!

I am constantly on the lookout for new tips on mixing and mastering. Fortunately, because of the Internet, there is exceptional information out there waiting to be tapped.

Graham Cochrane is one of my favorite instructors. He’s a really nice guy and shares more than 90 percent of his online content for free. I have also tapped into the other 10 percent, which is reasonably priced and comes with a no questions asked, money back guarantee.

I found the following article on his blog at TheRecordingRevolution.com and will share it with you here. It is the three mixing secrets from Andy Wallace, who is one of my favorite mixers and one of the best who has ever done it. His list of credits is so long and so varied, it boggles the imagination. Check out a partial list on his Wikipedia page.

 

Here is Graham’s blog from August 4, 2014:

If you like hard hitting rock mixes, then you probably like Andy Wallace’s work.

Famous for mixing Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, and even Guns N Roses – this guy has been crushing it in the studio for over 50 years! The sad thing is, he rarely sits down with the media. So when I saw Sound On Sound landed a major interview with him I was pumped.

Wallace is a brilliant craftsmen, and I wanted to pull out three of the his biggest “secrets” to mixing from the interview and share them with you here.

Secret #1 – The Quick Mix

All too often when mixing we like to start off by doing major surgery. We want to dive in and start “making things sound better” – whatever that means. I’ve suggested for years that a great mix starts with a super quick mix. It seems Andy Wallace works this way as well.

 

 

There’s a reason why Andy does this (and you should too). Actually two reasons.

First doing a quick mix before you dissect each element individually is smart because you start with the whole song in mind and make better choices of where to place volume faders and pan pots. You are listening like your audience will.

Secondly, by working quickly on this mix you don’t have time to over-think things. Your first impression is generally correct, so in one sense by moving quickly you are preventing yourself from screwing things up.

Secret #2 – One EQ/Compressor

One thing that surprised me was to hear Andy Wallace explain that he pretty much only uses the same eq and compressor on each track in each mix. He mixes on an SSL console and simply uses the built in channel processing – hardly any outboard gear.

 

 

Please don’t miss this powerful point and think that it’s because he uses a real SSL EQ and compressor that his mixes are awesome. The takeaway here is that simplicity is what works.

By deciding to commit to simply using one EQ and one compressor for 90% of your mixing work, you have eliminated a lot of pointless decision making, thereby allowing you to mix faster and with more creativity because you are focused on what you are DOING with your effects, rather than on which one to use.

Secret #3 – Ride The Faders

A lot of Andy Wallace’s work has been on aggressive rock records (Slayer anyone?!) – and naturally people want to know how he gets such hard hitting mixes. Is it compression? Limiting? Some magical and obscure piece of outboard gear?

It turns out the answer is simply riding the volume faders.

 

 

These days you don’t need an SSL 9000 series console to do this – your DAW has powerful automation built right into it!

And most of the time it goes under-used by the typical bedroom producer.

What Wallace is doing here is simple – he’s taking the power of moving the volume fader (mixing at it’s most foundational) and is now automating it for certain tracks at certain moments in time. I call this sweetening – either way, it works!

Like a movie director using edits and cuts to zoom in and direct the viewer’s attention for a moment, riding the faders allows you to direct the listeners ears to what you want them to hear in a given point in time.

What Wallace Didn’t Talk About

Interestingly enough, the one thing Wallace didn’t talk much about at all during the interview was gear.

When asked, he divulged his favorite tools (An SSL and Pro Tools) but that’s all the attention he gave his equipment. Instead he talked about minimalism, feel, music, and understanding the artist’s vision.

It’s funny how all home studio owners seem to want to discuss is gear, when a mixing legend like Andy Wallace would rather talk about “creating impact” and uses virtually the same setup he’s had for over 5 decades.

Makes you think.

 

 

I woke up this morning, and for a moment I had forgotten that Scott Weiland died last night. I was up until 4 a.m. listening to his music and thinking about how sad it was that he was gone.

I saw Stone Temple Pilots open for the Butthole Surfers (with Basehead and fIREHOSE) at Bayfront Park in Miami in June of 1993. This was just before the Unplugged show hit and sent them and Weiland into super stardom.

Without a doubt, the Butthole Surfers were far and away the best band that day. However, this relatively unknown band from San Diego, with a wiry lead singer who had Raggedy Ann-red hair, really grabbed me with how well they played, how tight they were, how good their melodies were and what a badass frontman they had.

It wasn’t long after that you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing an STP song or seeing one of their videos. There was, of course, backlash and jealousy.

But when you stripped all that away, you were left with the songs, the lyrics, the playing, the melodies and the singing. Scott Weiland was one of the best rock vocalists I’ve ever heard.

His first solo album, “12 Bar Blues” included one of my all-time favorite songs, “Barbarella.” The first time I heard it on the radio, I was totally floored. To this day, I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Those who know me well on Facebook, know that I post one version of it or another a couple of times a year…at least.

For whatever reason, the vocal break down that includes the lyrics, “And all the tangerines/They taste like jelly beans/This must be boring by now/Grab a scale and guess the weight/Of all the pain I’ve given with my name/I’m a selfish piece of shit…” always resonates with me.

There was something completely authentic, vulnerable and sad about Weiland. It all came through in the timbre of his vocals. At his core, he was a blues singer. I don’t know from where his pain was derived, but I wanted him to overcome it.

I was lucky to catch him at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale in the summer of 2013. Weiland was in good form and seemed to be having a lot of fun. A couple of weeks ago, he played here in Asheville. Sadly, the show got past me and I missed it. I’ll always regret that I missed a last chance to experience him.

Now there will be the inevitable “I knew it was coming” and “once a junkie, always a junkie” crap, which will miss the point.

Weiland was a rock star. He was one of the last rock stars. He deserved to be a rock star. He earned it with talent, will and hard knocks. He was the real deal, not some packaged hipster piece of crap that passes for a rock star in 2015.

So, RIP Scott Weiland. I hope you have found the peace in death you could never find in life.

Thanks for the music and giving us everything you had until you had nothing left.

You were here.

 

 

 

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Stu Smith of DIY Music in the UK. He asked a wide range of questions about mastering and gave me the freedom to be free-ranging in my answers.

Stu does an excellent job with his blog, and you should sign up to receive the new posts.

Check my interview out here: DIY/Magic Ears Interview.

Regards,

Adam

If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, then you are probably constantly bombarded with ads for plug-ins. EQs, Compressors, tools made specifically for vocals, for drums, for the bass, mastering suites and many others — all clogging your news feed and following you wherever you surf on the Internet (thanks Google Remarketing!).

With Black Friday fast approaching, these ads will only increase. Have you ever stopped to think about whether you need most of the plug-ins you buy? I have quite a few I use, but I have far more that I do not.

The exceptional Graham Cochrane at TheRecordingRevolution.com put together a really concise five part checklist to make sure the plug-ins you are using are actually making your mix sound better.

After reading this article a while back, I always go through each of these five steps. You should too! Who knows, maybe you’ll sell off some of those plug-ins you don’t use and focus more on getting to know what you have!

Here is the article:

When you slap a plugin on your mix, do you have a concrete reason? Is it really doing something for your tracks?

An engineer says “The XYZ Compressor is the smoothest sounding compressor I’ve ever heard. I love it!” So we blindly go out and buy XYZ Compressor, insert it into a track and just assume it’s making our mix sound smoother. Whatever that means.

Maybe it really is a great plugin. Maybe it’s not. How do you know?

Is there a way you can definitively discover if a plugin is a good fit for you and your music? Is there a way to make sure you’re using it in the best way possible?

Today I want to share a laughably simple 5 step process I use to get the absolute best out of my plugins. It’ll give you the clarity to say “Yes” or “No” to any plugin at any point, and the confidence to know each plugin you use is there for a reason.

Step #1 – Listen In Default Mode

The first thing you should do is simply listen to the plugin in default mode. I know it sounds obvious, but so often after inserting a plugin on a track we go hog wild and begin twisting knobs.

Resist the urge.

What we want to discover is what the plugin does for our tracks in the default setting, simply passing audio through.

Does it add some sweet harmonics? Does it thicken up the bottom end? Does it mellow out the top end? Does widen the stere image? Or does it do absolutely nothing? (Which isn’t a bad thing by the way).

Simply listen and methodically bypass the plugin (on and off) and take note of what you hear. There is much to learn about a plugin by hearing what it does to your audio all by itself.

Step #2 – Try Some Presets

On almost any plugin, trying a factory preset is an insightful exercise as it reveals what is possible with the plugin and what the manufacturer envisioned for its use.

Many times you will discover a preset that is an instant fit and become one of your go-to sounds. I have some favorite factory presets for example on one of my buss compressors. They simply work.

Most of the time you won’t get a perfectly useable preset, especially if it’s an EQ (almost pointless in my opinion) but you will still discover some cool things about the plugin. And knowledge is power.

Step #3 – Push Buttons

Did you know you can push buttons and tweak knobs on your plugin and nothing bad will happen?

I say this sarcastically because all too often I hear people being afraid to mess with their plugins – thinking they could somehow ruin the mix. News flash, you can undo anything you like in a DAW!

It’s wise to develop the healthy habit of fiddling when it comes to your plugins.

Grab each knob and crank it as far as it will go. What did that do? Take a mental note. Rinse and repeat for each knob.

This takes the concept of trying out presets to the next level. It allows you to know what is truly possible with your plugin.

Much of the extreme settings will not be useable, but knowing how far you can push things and what happens when you do, is critical to getting the most out of your gear.

Step #4 – Balance The Output Volume

Except for perhaps a limiter, the goal of any plugin is never to simply make the track louder.

This is an important point – when fiddling with a plugin (any plugin) if your settings add some gain to the track (which is invariably what happens) you will always think you are enhancing the sound. Humans think louder sounds better.

The key is to locate the output knob or fader and turn the signal back down to the original input volume. (Or if you made the track quieter with the plugin, like with compressors, then turn the output back up.)

This way, when you do Step #5 you can make an accurate assessment of whether the plugin is helping or hurting your track.

All too often we skip this step and love how each plugin adds a bit of “something” to our track, when in reality that “something” is called gain, and you don’t need a plugin to turn up your mix a few dB.

Step #5 – Bypass The Plugin

If you have matched the output volume of the plugin to that of the input, then Step #5 will actually work.

After playing around with the plugin and landing on some settings that sound good to you (and that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?) the final step is to simply playback the song and bypass the plugin. Turn it off and then on, and then off, etc.

All you’re doing at this point is listening to see how (and if) the plugin changes the sound of your track. Is it better? Worse? Or does it not make any real difference?

That last question is huge. I find myself adding plugins, tweaking sounds, matching the output level, and then bypassing the plugin all to find that I can’t tell a difference with the plugin on or off.

If that happens, major clue to simply get rid of the plugin. It’s literally pointless in your mix.

Putting Them All Together

Wow – those were pretty simple steps, right? But they are so important. And in real life all five of those steps flow together pretty quickly and fluidly.

Just this week I was mixing a song for our Dueling Mixes members and tried out a brand new (free) compressor that was recommended to me. I slapped it on my mix, went through all five steps, and in the end felt that it did absolutely nothing for my mix.

I maybe lost 10 to 15 minutes MAX doing this, but now I know for sure that I don’t need that plugin on my mix.

And on the flip side, I went back to my original compressor and I can confidently say  it sounded much better to me. That’s a beautiful thing.

So let me ask you: do you walk through all five of these steps when you’re trying out a plugin on your mix? How do YOU get to know your plugins intimately so you can mix with more confidence?

Magic Ears received a really nice mention by Stu Smith in his DIY Music blog.

I’ll be doing an interview with them soon and will post it here.

Keep making music!

Adam Matza
Owner
Magic Ears Mastering

 

If you follow The Mix-Up on a fairly regular basis, you know that I am a big fan of Graham Cochrane of TheRecordingRevolution.com. Recently, I came across this article he wrote on creating headroom in your mix.

There are so many things going on that add unnecessary energy to your mix. It doesn’t take much to remove those elements to make your mix sound cleaner, naturally louder and more dynamic.

Here is Graham’s article:

The name of the game with mixes these days is headroom. This is especially true with mixing in the box (i.e. your software). What is headroom and why is it important? The short answer is: the range between your song’s loudest peaks and 0dbfs (or clipping). The benefit of lots of headroom? Sonic clarity and musicality. Do you want your mix to sound squished and flat? I didn’t think so. So listen up.

No Room To Mix

If you don’t leave enough headroom in your DAW then you really have nowhere to go with your mix. You will be hitting the proverbial (and literal) ceiling early and often. No es bueno. In the analog world we had some fudge room near the top of the meter, but the same does not hold true with digital. The solution? Free up as much headroom as possible and your mix will gain life and room to breathe. Here are the three easiest ways to get back some precious headroom in your mix.

Turn Your Tracks Down

This is the most obvious solution to the headroom quandary. Although few people seem to take my advice on this one. By simply turning down your tracks in your DAW you will be sending less signal to your mix buss and consequently will have instant headroom and clarity. You can do this in one of three ways: turn down your faders, use clip based gain to reduce track level, or insert trim plugins across your tracks with a generous level cut.

I guarantee you your mixes will come together faster and will sound better if you would simply pull all your tracks down before you begin to mix. At the modern 24 bit depth provided just about every audio interface these days, you have plenty of quiet gain and a low noise floor. No need to have really loud tracks running way up the meter. Pull them down and turn up your speakers and your tracks will sound better.

Use Your High Pass Filter Often

A long time ago I wrote about how using your high pass filter is the fastest way to clean up your mix. It’s so simple that it’s mind boggling. By rolling off the ultra low end (100hz and below) on just about every instrument other than kick drum and bass you free up a ton of headroom and volume for your mix buss to breath. On most tracks in the mix, you gain nothing sonically from the sub 100hz area so it’s a waste of volume anyway.

Some people complain that your tracks will sound too thin if you high pass them all, and I would agree…if you listen to them in solo. But as you should know by now, mixing in solo mode is a fools errand. In reality, your tracks will sound 100% the same in the mix. The only difference will be the extra headroom you’ve just freed up. Nice!

Cut The Ugly Low Mids

The third and final way to buy back that precious headroom in your mix is to cut any and all of the ugly low mid frequencies. Low mids are notorious for hogging up volume. In fact, they arguably can take up more headroom than all that stuff you’ve been high pass filtering. Sometimes we label these frequencies (anywhere between 200 and 500hz) as muddy and I think it’s an accurate description. They don’t have nice warm low end, just thick, sticky, headroom sucking mud.

Here’s my reader’s digest version of how I cut low mids. I grab an EQ on say a drum buss, do a huge boost in the 300 to 400hz area, and sweep around until I hear the ugliest frequency on the planet. Once identified, I turn that boost into a cut of at least 3db. Then I simply compare the carved out EQ curve to what the track sounded like before. 9 times out of 10 the track sounds the same only better. More clarity in the top end AND in the bottom end. And all the while it’s taking up less volume, and consequently eating up less overall headroom.

What’s Stealing Your Mix’s Headroom?

At the end of the day, you can’t get a great mix going if you have no where to go on your mix buss. If your headroom is taken up, you might as well concede. That’s why it’s critical to free your mix buss up from wasted headroom so you can get to work creating a musical, clear, and punchy mix. Which of the above three target issues is stealing your mix’s headroom?

Experiment and find out. Your mixes will thank you for it!

As you may or may not know, Billboard Magazine just came out with their list of the 10 best rappers of all time.

I agree with only three (Yo, Billboard: where’s the Hard Rhymer, Chuck D?!)  and wanted to share my Top 10:

1) Chuck D
2) Biggie
3) Ice Cube
4) Snoop Dogg
5) Ice-T
6) Eminem
7) Rakim
8) Tupac
9) GURU
10) KRS-ONE

What’s your Top 10?

BILLBOARD’S TOP 10 GREATEST RAPPERS