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5 Pro Mixing Techniques
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0:04
Go ahead and play me any mix, and within 10 seconds I’ll tell you exactly what’s missing. Why? Because there are only about five things that separate an amateur mix from a professional mix. But lucky for you, today in this video I’m breaking down these five things and showing you exactly how to use some serious mixing tools to get your song sounding professional and competitive. [Music]
0:29
Hey guys, I’m Bradley Denniston. I’ve contributed to Grammy-nominated projects, earned platinum records, and worked on blockbuster films that have grossed over $3 billion in box office sales. But after decades—like literally two and a half decades—of fumbling around with mixes, my own mixes, I want to share the five techniques that have truly made a difference in my music. And I know these tips will give you and your music a serious edge. So let’s dive right into
0:54
the video. [Music]
0:59
All right, first technique—and the number one thing that’s going to make an amateur mix sound really tiny and kind of demo-y—is everything fighting for the same space. So let’s fix it. Let’s have a listen to this chorus and pay attention to the rhythm elements. [Music] “The night away / telling me I’m all right when I feel nothing away” All right, we’ve got a lot of guitars, we’ve got drums, we’ve got bass, we’ve got some synth stuff—but it’s really ill-defined and hard
1:34
to hear those different elements. And everything starts to sound really mono when that happens. So what we’re going to do is—these acoustic guitars—we have Neutron 5 on the acoustic guitar bus. So just left/right acoustic rhythm guitars. Then we’ve got this Neutron 5 plugin there. Okay, and this is the Unmask plugin. So we’re going to be unmasking some frequencies here. The big thing that I hear is all the clutter in the rhythm guitars. So here’s what we got for all
2:01
the rhythm guitars on the chorus: [Music]
2:11
Right, lots of different choppy, rhythmic kind of stuff, which is really fun—but they’re all competing with each other. So this rhythm chop guitar—this one up here—sounds like: [Music] And I really love it. I love the midrange in it. But the acoustic guitars are kind of competing with that chop guitar, and they don’t need to. The acoustic guitars can totally just take the top end. So what we’re going to do on the Unmask
2:38
plugin is sidechain—give yourself the guitar that you want to—or the element you want to unmask—in the sidechain. And that’s going to be the chop rhythm guitars here. And we’re just going to turn this knob up and start to unmask that chop rhythm guitar.
3:03
Now that’s sounding really good, and it’s starting to take care of that midrange chop that’s happening here. But it’s also taking down some of the crispiness of the acoustic guitars. So we have this little slider, which is a filter that says “don’t touch anything above that frequency.” So let’s start to bring this slider—this filter—down so that we can get the brilliance back in the acoustic guitars. [Music]
3:37
And with just a couple tweaks on the attack and release time here, I have a really nice opening spot for that chopped guitar. And that is unmasking. That is unmasking frequencies. Let’s hear this A/B: [Music] Now just imagine unmasking your mix and the frequencies that are competing with each other in various instruments across the mix spectrum. That’s just going to open up your mix like crazy. Now let’s move on to number two. [Music]
4:19
Technique two: We’re going to control dynamics without killing the life of your mix. I hear this so often in amateur mixes—everything’s super loud because we have all these modern tools, right? But nothing’s dynamic, punchy, and massive in the mix. So I want to keep the life in your mix. I’m going to show you some techniques to do that. Now, as we know, most of the transients and life comes from the drums. So let’s really focus on the drums in this technique. [Music]
4:49
Now the drums sound pretty good—but they could sound a lot better. They could be louder, they could be more aggressive, in-your-face, and punchy and big and full. So let’s throw on Neutron 5’s Clipper plugin. And this is just magic. I freaking love this thing. So what we can do with the Clipper here is we set a threshold to hard clip, right? So if it passes the threshold, it’s going to hard clip. But the real magic in this plugin, for me,
5:13
is the soft clip boost. And this is just going to add soft clipping to the transients, which is going to make them loud and proud and add harmonics to them. So check this out—it just brings the drums to life: [Music]
5:39
So as you can hear, it is making them a lot louder—but it’s also perceived loudness as well, because of the harmonics that it’s adding with the soft clipping. So what I like to do here is I like to set the threshold so I’m just clipping the very tops of the transients. That’s usually going to be the snare, clap, kick drum, etc.—anything that’s transient-heavy. Soft clip boost is going to give you some soft clip saturation.
6:00
So soft clip saturation is adding harmonics to the fundamental of what that transient is doing. Now, the coolest thing about these plugins—any of these plugins—is that we have multiband, right? So we can go up here, and if you want to take this a little further, you can multiband this and find where the punch is happening—the low bottom stuff—and then where that crossover point is for the punch, right? So I like to listen to the snare—like the “C” of
6:24
the snare—and I find where that’s at. And I like to cross over right—I like to leave that under with the low stuff. So check this out—we’re just going to solo this band, this low one: [Music] Perfect. We’ve got a good crossover there, where you can hear the “uh” of the snare there. And this one on the low end, I’m going to do a little bit more of a soft clip and less of the hard clip, because the transient
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there is not going to be so loud and peaky—that’s usually going to happen in the high-end stuff. So on threshold here we can just bring this up to like 0.1. Now on the high band here, we’re going to solo this out: [Music]
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Now that’s where you’re going to get all that snap. So we can hard clip the very top peaks of that, and then we can bring in just a little bit of the soft clip boost. And now let’s bring this all in together—both bands: [Music]
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And now let’s pop it in the mix: [Music] “Night away / when I feel nothing away” [Music]
8:12
Now, as I mix, a big tip for you guys is once you bring up the drums and they start to stand to attention and they’re in your face and they feel big and they feel really great—that’s where I’ll start to build the mix on top of that foundation. So this is my starting point. Get the drums rocking. Now get that bass locked in with those drums, and then we’ll add the vocals and get the vocals to still stay on top, etc. But this is so important to dynamics. And later
8:37
in the video—as I go through all five of these techniques—we’ll go to the master bus and some extra sauce I do on the master bus to make sure we’re really hitting those dynamics and we’re getting that nice, dynamic, punchy, big mix. We’re on to Technique 3, and it’s all about vocals. We want our vocal to be present, we want it to cut through the mix, but we don’t want it to be so far on top of the mix and too crispy and ear-bleeding.
9:07
So, I’m going to show you how to get your vocals to really sit in the mix but still be nice and clear. Let’s focus first on the lead vocal in the chorus here: [Music] All right, they feel a little congested. They don’t feel like they’re really cutting through the mix enough. And that makes it really hard to hear what the lyrics are, and the melody, and everything else. So I have Nectar 4 I've just turned on and put on the insert, and I’m just going to use the
9:45
automatic assistant here and see what it can do: [Music] “Away…” [Music] So automatically, it’s going to give me a starting point. I don’t necessarily think that you should just go with exactly what it gives you—use your ear, use your engineering skills and your production skills. I like to go to the detailed view here. The reason being is I’m kind of old-school with my engineering. We have some EQ, which is definitely a good look, and some compression here.
10:33
I’m going to take the compression up just a touch because I don’t want to compress too much on this vocal—I feel like it’s already compressed pretty well. The EQs are what I’m going to work on and what I’m going to focus on. So you have one EQ, and then we have a compressor, and then we have EQ 2. These are really good moves, I think. So there’s a lot of body and buildup in this area—in this 500 area—and here’s where I’m going to focus.
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Right, so let’s go here and solo this vocal: [Music]
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So I feel like that’s cleaning it up pretty good, but we could even go further on this. I’m going to take it down further, and I’m going to tighten up the Q a little bit so we can really hone in on this area. You could also solo it out and hear what it’s doing and find that part that’s really getting congested there. [Music] “The night… away… I’m all right when I feel nothing…” That is beautiful for me, and a great starting point. Again, I’m just going to turn
11:49
off the compressor and anything else that’s really causing any sort of pumping or artifacts. I know sometimes this has like an automatic follow function on it, which can kind of throw your vocals off—because it can be seeking. I’m just going to turn this EQ off because I don’t think this is necessary—unless we were doing the compression, then I might use it. So I’m going to use this EQ, and we can literally just delete any modules you don’t even want—right?
12:16
Just boom boom boom—get rid of them. You’ve got EQ 2. We might want to use some Dimension, but let’s just see what it does. Let’s turn it on: [Music] I actually really like that. Gives us some nice width, and kind of feels like it’ll sit better in the mix here. So let’s put the vocal now in the mix with just a little bit of EQ and some Dimension—like literally, that’s all it needed. [Music]
12:54
“The night… away… telling me I’m all right…” [Music] Beautiful. Nectar is just so good for vocals—it’s literally made for vocals—so it works perfectly. Now the last step I’m going to take here to make this vocal really sit in the mix is: I’m going to use Neutron 5 on the vocal mix bus, along with another Neutron 5 on all the instruments being bussed to their own mix subgroup, okay? And what we’re going to use here is the Unmask feature, and we’re going
13:29
to unmask the vocals from the instruments. And this is a really cool way to just give yourself a little bit more vocals up front and make some clarity—dig a little ditch for the vocals to sit in. So here’s the instrument only. We’re gonna solo this out: [Music] Beautiful. Everything’s sitting really nice now that we’ve done a lot of separation in the past techniques here. But now we’ve got Neutron 5 here, and we want to pick, on the sidechain, our vocal mix bus to unmask.
14:04
And we’ll start to turn this up so we can start to unmask the vocals from the instruments—so it’ll kind of make room for the vocals here. And let’s put on the vocals as well, and we’ll start to bring this up: [Music] “I’m all right when I feel nothing…” Either way, that is doing a beautiful job—but it’s taking a little bit too much of the top out and the bottom out. So again, we have our filters which say “don’t touch this area.”
14:42
And we’re really going to focus on the vocal range—we’re just going to go from like 200 or so to about 5K or so—and we’re just getting the middle of the vocal. [Music] “The night… away… telling me I’m all right when I feel nothing…” That’s beautiful. It’s like this perfect place for the vocals to sit. Now let’s just give you a nice A/B here—before and… [Music] “After… heat, heat…” [Music]
15:35
“The night… away… telling me I’m all right when I feel…” [Music] “…nothing.” The vocals just feel much more clear. I can hear what’s going on. And they have a nice little pocket to lay in. Of course, I’m probably overdoing this a little bit—but I just want to show you guys how this really works. Let’s move on to Technique Number 4, which will be really cool.
16:05
[Music] Are you guys enjoying the video so far? Are you learning anything from it? If you are, drop some love in the comments, let me know, and ask any questions you got. We’re going to move on to harshness. This is really the biggest reason why people turn down your song—why they can’t listen to it loud. And I’m going to show you exactly where to look, what frequencies to look for, and a tool I use all the time on the master bus to take care of harshness.
16:26
Obviously, we’re talking about EQ here. So I’m going to open up a dynamic EQ, because this is one of my favorites to put on the Ozone 11 chain, and I like to put it before my maximizer. Right now, I just have a little bit of maximizing going on at the IRC IV Modern setting and then the dynamic EQ ahead of it. What I like to look for in harshness is typically around—actually, it’s always around—the 2K area, okay?
16:54
So for my ear, that part just fires off. Also, 6 to 8K can get kind of problematic as well. But this 2K area is physiologically how we hear baby cries, sirens, etc., and we are predisposed to that frequency. So I want to make sure that I take that down, and I’m going to just look around there. So let’s play the chorus again: [Music] “Away…” I’m not a huge proponent of like soloing out bands and everything—I’ve just been mixing for over two decades. So for me it’s like,
17:38
I know where to look, I guess. If you don’t know where to look, soloing out the band really can sometimes trick your ear. You’re like, “Ah, it sounds bad,” because soloed bands always sound bad, right? You’re like focusing only on one specific frequency. But 2.3 here sounds like killer—it’s crushing my eardrums. So what I’m going to do here is just take it down a little bit on the dynamics, and we’re going to set a threshold for
18:05
when certain notes—like when I’m hitting those high notes—it starts to peak out. We’re just going to kind of choke that down just a touch. So how we do that is: —First of all, let’s get it out of solo, right? —Then we want to take this down by using the threshold. So let’s let it cross the threshold and find the problematic part: [Music] “When I feel nothing… either way…” Right away, when I turn that frequency area down, you’re like, “Oh, it’s not
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as aggressive and grating to your ear.” So now you can turn the volume up and you can bang this song—you can play it really loud in your car—it’s going to feel good. Right? So I don’t think you should take out a ton of these areas, because sometimes this can be intelligibility. But this is a great range to look for—2K to 3K. And I’d say even when you get to 3–3.5K, that’s where you get some nice cut for
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the vocal that’s not super disturbing to the ear. So really look around like, you know, 1800 to 2500 for that really annoying frequency sound, okay? And that’s what I’m doing here—I’m just saying, “Hey, when you cross the threshold, bring this down 2.2 dB.” Let’s find a good sweet spot for it: [Music] “The night away… telling me I’m all right when I feel nothing…” It’s literally that simple with this dynamic EQ. And the best part about this is I can push this
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into the maximizer now, and it’s going to give me more volume and not be harsh and not destroy my ears and make me want to turn down the speakers. So let’s just start to bring in a little bit more of this. We’re going to maximize, and we’re going to dynamically EQ. We’re going to balance the two. And this way, we can keep giving ourselves headroom as we bring up the volume level—and the
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low information (meaning, if there’s anything down here that’s starting to distort on the maximizer), we can shelf down and make sure that it’s not hitting the maximizer as hard. So these two plugins together are amazing—they’re like the duo. And I’ll give you a before and after after I kind of dial this in. All right, now let’s hear it A/B—before and after. We got a lot more volume out of this already—we got an extra 2 to 2.5 dB, which is amazing—and without being harsh.
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So let’s hear it: [Music]
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“The night away…” And there you go. Dynamic EQ + Maximizer — that is like an amazing duo that’s going to keep your music nice and smooth, loud and proud. Let’s move on to the very final Technique Number 5, that’s going to help you go from an amateur mix to a very professional… [Music] …mix. Congratulations! You made it to Technique Number 5. Now we’re going to ensure that your mix and master translates to all systems. So if you’re working in your room, in your headphones, and
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you take it somewhere else—it sounds like crap. It sounds awesome in your room, but it sounds like crap somewhere else—this technique is for you. We are now in deep work on the master bus. So right now I have: The dynamic EQ taking care of some low stuff, some mid stuff, some buildup here, and that harshness we talked about earlier. Then I have a Stabilizer, which is also taking care of some harshness and sort of separating the mix a little bit more.
21:52
Then we have the Dynamic section—I haven’t done anything with this, but I’ve matched these bands and these crossover points—this multiband compressor—to the same thing as this Tonal Balance Control. The Tonal Balance Control is going to allow me to visually see where I need to be for the genre of music that I’m making. And this is a great representation—especially if you’re working out of a room that is not tuned up—you know, it’s a bedroom, it’s a garage,
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it’s a den, an extra room, whatever. So you can pick: Do I want Pop? Do I want Rock? Folk? What am I making? Is it EDM? I’m going to go with Pop on this one. And you’re going to get these little target areas—and what you really want to do is try to get within the middle of these target areas so that you know it’s going to translate well. And I’ve matched all these crossover points that you can see within this to this multiband compressor—so I can start to dial in my mix visually.
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This is a great way to make things translate. You can also go to this Fine Adjustment, and you can see the smooth curve of what’s going on. So let’s play it back and let’s look at Broad and Fine: [Music]
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“The night away… telling me I’m all right when I feel nothing…” So if I’m going for more of a pop sound, I probably want to get these high-mids down a little bit more. Right? That’s going to be the 2K to 7K band. If I go back to my compressor here—it’s this band here. Then we’re going to start to compress a little bit more and take this down so we can fit it into that tonal balance. So with both windows open—this is really fun—and
23:29
it’s actually like kind of a… it’s like a puzzle. Obviously you don’t want to only think about the visual aspect of this—you want to use your ears. You want to make sure the attack and release is right and all that stuff. But let’s try to get this down just a little bit with the multiband compressor: “Heat, heat… heat…”
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[Music] So as you can hear, it’s starting to tame it, smooth out the mix a little bit—but also we’re starting to hit within that box a little bit better on the tonal control. So now let’s just kind of adjust everything on the Fine Grid here and make sure that we’re in a good spot: “Heat heat heat…” [Music]
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“All right, away…” Now let’s A/B: [Music] “Heat heat…”
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And lastly, let’s bring up this low end here, because it looks like we probably want to hit a little closer to the middle there: “Heat, heat… heat… heat… when I feel nothing…” All right, now let’s give this a nice A/B and pay attention to our Tonal Balance Control: [Music] “Here—heat, heat heat…” [Music]
27:07
“Telling me I’m all right when I feel nothing…” Either way, this is a great way to just visually see a representation of where your frequencies are. Of course, use your ear. Again, I may want to take down the low end a little bit on this one, right? And bring a little more clarity up in the high-mids because I kind of like that balance. Or you might want to go to a more rock and roll sort of vibe here and follow this kind of curve. It’s all up to you—and it’s all up to your taste.
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Now to finish off this video, I want to give you a nice A/B before and after of everything we’ve done throughout this process: [Music] “Right… away… the night away… telling me I’m all right when I feel nothing… away…” Remember: The difference between an amateur mix and a pro mix is not just about the tools. It’s knowing when and where to use them, using your ears and discretion, and really learning these techniques. So I’d start with maybe adding one or
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two of these new techniques to your workflow and mastering them throughout the process—and then add the next one, and add the next one. And hopefully this makes your mixes and masters go from that amateur to professional level. If you got anything out of the video, again, drop some love in the comments, make sure you subscribe to the channel here, and all the tools are linked in the description. I’ll see you guys next time.
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