Tips

Why You Need To Use Reference Tracks

, ,

Have you ever opened up a new mix session and immediately felt overwhelmed because you didn’t know where to start?

Maybe you thought…
– Where should I pan the instruments?
– How loud should my effects be?
– How much attack should I have on the kick?

Or maybe you finished your mix, got it sounding great in your studio, then went to play it in your car only to discover that it didn’t translate at all? Perhaps, all of a sudden, your track had too much low end? Or your vocals seemed to disappear?

We often have a rough idea in our mind of what we want our mixes to turn out like – but rarely do people actually compare their mixes to other songs during the mixing stage.

Using reference tracks in your mix sessions can be extremely handy. They allow you to have a standard to measure your mix against.

They also help with:

  • Creating mixes that translate from speaker to speaker
  • Guiding you to getting the right balances between instruments
  • Identifying what settings to use for EQ, compression, and effects
  • Learning how professional mixes should sound on your monitors

I’ve put together a video to show you how to use reference tracks.

In the video, you’ll learn how to use reference tracks to help you understand your studio monitors better – as well as what to pay attention to while using them in the mixing stage.

You’ll also learn a common mistake people make while using reference tracks and how to avoid doing the same thing.

I’ll even walk you through my reference track playlist and identify the reasons why I choose to use these songs. Don’t make fun of me; you’re about to discover one of my biggest guilty pleasures to listen to…

– Mike

 

Looking for more tips on how to create pro-sounding mixes from your home studio?

Check out The Ultimate Mixing Blueprint: A free guide on how to use EQ and compression across a variety of instruments so that you can create great mixes quickly.

Dissecting Plugin Presets

, ,

Have you ever found yourself mixing and decided to try out some of your plugin’s presets only to feel like they actually made things sound worse?

Maybe you thought:

Are the pros really using these awful settings?!?

or

Wait… Are my tracks supposed to actually sound like this???

Presets are often designed with a variety of desired end results. Just because something says “Lead Guitar” doesn’t always mean it’s going to miraculously make your lead guitar tracks sound amazing.

Instead, you need to reverse engineer the plugin settings to get a firm understanding of what source material the designer was working with.

You want to get a good grasp of why someone would use these settings so that you know when to use them for your mixes.

For example, if a preset named “Kick Drum” has 15db of 8khz added, you could reverse engineer this to mean that perhaps whoever made the preset was working with a kick drum that didn’t have very much attack on it.

For certain genres (for example, jazz), you might not want a ton of clicky attack from the kick – instead, a rounder sounding kick may work perfect. But on the other hand, if you are working with a dull sounding kick in a dense metal mix, this preset may be perfect to use.

Presets are not meant to be a one-click solution to your mixes. And fortunately, the more you train your ears and learn, the less likely you’ll feel the need to scroll through the various presets trying to find something that works.

However, if you get a firm understanding of what your presets are trying to achieve, they can definitely be useful and help you achieve your desired results faster.

You might (and most likely will) need to tweak presets a bit to make them work perfect with your source material. But saving time through less mouse clicking is always a bonus.

So take a look inside your plugin preset folders. Try to reverse engineer them so that you can find opportunities for when to use them and how to save yourself time. Use the Ultimate Mixing Blueprint to reference what each setting is trying to achieve.

What are some of your favorite presets and how do you use them in your mixes?

– Mike

 

Looking for more tips on how to create pro-sounding mixes from your home studio?

Check out The Ultimate Mixing Blueprint: A free guide on how to use EQ and compression across a variety of instruments so that you can create great mixes quickly.

Wait… You Want Me To Do What?!??

,

I remember it clearly…

The first day I walked into my first big studio job after graduating from a prestigious music production school.

At this point in my life, I had spent a bunch of money for tuition and over two years of my life studying all I could about the correct way to use all sorts of gear. I had graduated at the top of my class but certainly didn’t feel like I knew it all.

I expected that I’d learn some new tricks of the trade by watching other engineers in action; but I had to at least know the basics of what to do – right???

When I first walked into my new job, the head engineer asked me who I was and what my background in engineering was. I told him my story – that I started learning on my own through the internet, recorded bands in my basement for years and eventually went to school for music production. I was excited to work in a big fancy studio and have the opportunity to play with all the high-end gear.

He looked at me and said “That’s cool. But now you work in the real world and we do things differently. Forget everything you know and were taught in school. You’re going to learn how to use gear in ways you were told you’re not supposed to”

At first I didn’t know how to respond.

Forget everything?!?? Was school a waste of time?!? Have I been doing it all wrong?

That day, I learned some of the biggest lessons of my engineering career.

In the first session I did as an assistant engineer, we were tracking guitars. I was dialing in preamp settings on a Neve 1073, focusing on getting a good clean signal without driving the gain into the red (the way I was taught).

That’s when the head engineer said “Turn the gain knob up all the way!”

I said “Won’t it distort?”

“Just do it!”

As soon as I did that, the guitar tone took on a whole new life. It was super dirty, had so much fuzz and sounded so wrong – but at the same time, it sounded so perfect. It was exactly the sound the song needed.

It was one of those big “ah-ha” moments.

There is no one-size-fits-all method to recording or mixing. 

You need to trust your ears and sometimes step outside of your comfort zone in order to get the results you need.

It’s one thing to know how to use your gear the way it is instructed. It’s another thing to know how to push the limits of your equipment to get results that you may not use all the time – but that came in handy at the right moments.

I strongly recommend you experiment with all of your equipment. Get creative. Try different EQ techniques, gain staging or compression settings.

Your experiments could very well sound like garbage – but you will quickly learn to identify what your equipment is capable of doing and what it can’t.

Some of those happy accidents just may end up leading to the missing ingredient in your next mix

Just some food for thought…

– Mike

 

Looking for more tips on how to create pro-sounding mixes from your home studio?

Check out The Ultimate Mixing Blueprint: A free guide on how to use EQ and compression across a variety of instruments so that you can create great mixes quickly.

1 2 3