Ok I sent a beat to
@Iron Keys straight from my MPC, no effects. I dumped it into Studio One since he uses that too and sent him the file to mix it. So it was all unmixed. I only realized at the end that for some reason my MPC's output was at -12db LOL, sorry about that.
Anyway, so here's straight from the MPC unmixed:
And here's
@Iron Keys's mix:
I really like the mix, especially the bounce delay on the vocal snippet. What did you do to the main sample? I knew it had to be brought up big time in the mix. Let us know what else you did!
So, out of all the beats I've received so far, Fade's was by far the easiest to mix.
This is down to 3 main reasons...
1: the
sounds were all pretty clean and straight up; I didn't have to do any rescue work, free to process them as I want.
2:
sound selection; I probably could have just turned up the main sample, slapped an EQ, Compressor and Limiter on the Master and called it a wrap. Everything just fit together.
3:
It's Mister Motherfuckin' Fade
Okay, so first things first, noticed this was quite clearly a 'boom-bap' style, gritty 90s type Hip-Hop feel - so that was going to guide my approach; I'm not about to mix this like I would mix a pretty girl pop record.
That being said, one decision I made straight away (that I only just realised after pulling up the project), was to slap an
SSL 9000 J channel strip on every channel (lot of
Hip-Hop was probably mixed on 4000 E or G consoles, but I'm more of a 2000s guy so 9000, and would still keep the hip-hop feel.)
I didn't really do anything with the strips other than
drive them a little for the console tone.
Okay, if I'm totally honest, first thing I did was say to myself "this is so well fitting, what I even meant to do to this?"; which is an interesting point, a lot of time
you don't actually need to do much in a mix, (i first learnt this when I went completely legit and started with only stock and focussed on just getting levels right - if you have to do too much in a mix, recording/production process might be flawed)
I approached this mix with the idea that I want to 'bring it up to date' a *little* in and make it sound big and hard hitting, but, I did not want to turn this into a glossy pop-bap affair, I wanted to keep that grittiness --- in practise this means not making things overly bright or sparkly (example, don't high boost the snare, or keep in mind to keep it a little darker)
Clean Sounds
Clean in the sense they aren't drenched in verb, or buried in a drum mix or sample.
This gave me ultimate flexibility over processing them. And as you can see, the drum hits are very untainted - not compressed/saturated/clipped - I was free to fuck 'em up as much or as little as I want. (compared to some others where I may have to fight to claw back punch for example)
Sound Selection
As mentioned in previous sections - the sounds all just fit, I did not have to really do anything in terms of getting them to 'fit together', all EQ decisions were based on tone and whether I wanted more/less of something.
Drums
As I previously mentioned, I did'nt want to make these too hi-fi, but I initially brightened the snare a little, gave it more crack and sparkle, however, when I revisited this the other day after Fade said he was ready for me, I decided the snare felt too harsh and I ended up removing my eq boosts to it.
In the following is what my EQ moves were before my revision (the high mid was higher, I moved it down to where shown in photo, then removed it altogether. The low boost was also only added on my revision, I decided the kick needed more thump.
(drum bus)
The Sample
Fade was curious about what I did to the sample, and honestly, I don't think I did much other than turning it up...
--- my gain pots (LOL @ + 17.8dB)
The following is going to look crazy, but is mostly just some dynamic EQ ducking for the drums to cut through (probably not necessary, but I wanted to feel like I was doing something --- jokes aside, it likely did serve a small function)
Just a subtle bit of rebalancing the mids.
At the end of the mix, I added this to the 'music' bus just to bring it a bit more to life and a bit more upfront...
I really like the mix, especially the bounce delay on the vocal snippet
This was quite a half-happy-accident type occurence... I wanted to add a bit of movement to it so did some auto-panning, and also threw a delay on... and I think when I scrolled onto like a '1/4d' or one of those odd timings on the pan, it split it perfectly time wise. So I chopped the end part onto another track and made the delay come from that side. Something like that, but I 'heard it'(in my head) and then chased it.
It's Mister Motherfuckin' Fade
He told me I can only say nice things about his beat or he'll ban me jokes aside, Fade is an experienced beatmaker/kidnapper/musicmaking guy, and this is probably a big reason why; his sound selection was so on point, delivered well. That experience plays a massive part in naturally picking and playing sounds rhythms and melodies that just naturally are going to 'work' without too much conflict; I imagine it would be similar mixing a 2Good beat - the challenge here would be he uses a lot more instrumentation, so would naturally require more work to make everything 'fit'.
As for my master bus, I did not do too much, I added Tape saturation, to add to that 90s feel, and some mid-saturation just to add a bit more weight and presence. Then just typical limiting etc.
As I said, Fade's beat didn't feel like it needed too much, so a lot of it was just about '
enhancing' typically by adding '
tone' of vintage hardware emulations.
One of the most important things in mixing, is realising that (and when) you often don't really need to do anything.