Music Production and Mixing Tips & Tricks

What makes a professional recording expert? What's the "noise" that the experts get and how can you make your recordings sound more professional?

Production Sound Mixer London is there's no simple answer. However, with careful listening and a bit of experience you can create excellent results with little equipment.

Great mixing starts ear

Anyone? It is your ears! Sorry to tell you this, but listening to ten hours Rave at 110dB will do nothing for them and you may as well give your mix to a turtle as try to mix with misused ears.

Listen to commercial recordings of mixes you like, analyse them listen to the effects and get to understand what constitutes the sort of sound you are after.

Mixing secrets

There is no hidden secret to getting a fantastic sound, but when we had to sum up the key of mixing two words it would be that - EQ and compression. Okay that's three words.

These are likely the two most important tools used by specialist producers. However, like any tools, if you do not understand how to use them you'll be carving Habitat tables instead of Chippendale chairs.

That's where your ears and experience come in. Here we've assembled some manufacturing ideas, suggestions, tips and suggestions however they could just be guidelines and have to be adapted to suit your material. There are no presets you can change in to make a lousy recording sound good. And when your initial material was poorly recorded not Abbey Road could salvage your mix. But follow these tips and find out just how much your mixes improve.

Get the degree right

You can not push the amounts when recording digitally as you can when tape tape but you still want to get as much signal into the system as possible. This usually means watching the levels very carefully for clipping, and recording in an even and continuous degree.

Some recording software enables you to monitor and set the input level from within.

Monitors

Your ears are just as great as the tracks they listen to.

Oddly enough, you don't necessarily require the most expensive Mic. Many leading artists utilize what some may call "average" Mics cause they work well and get the business finished. You are able to spend a wad on a large diaphragm capacitor Mic (yes, they're great for vocals) if you have the lolly but test out dynamic Mics which are a lot less expensive and can be turned to several tasks.

Mixing MIDI and audio

One of the wonderful things about computer-based recording is that the parts can so readily be changed, edited and processed.

Audio recordings are usually guitar and acoustic devices like the sax and vocals. Incidentally, the best method to record guitars is by sticking a Mic facing its speakers. You can DI them and process them later and this may be cleaner but for a natural guitar sound a Miced amp is difficult to beat.

It's not necessary to record drums live and, in reality, it's difficult to perform and retain a contemporary sound. It is possible to buy off-the-shelf MIDI drum riffs and sound drum loops, or program your own. The quality of the gear which makes drum sounds nowadays is that anybody that has a fantastic riff can sound like a pro.