Dance remix - mixing/sound advice needed! (sound clip included)

[TonyCrazyMan]

Hi!

 

Today I was doing some dance stuff for a change. I was sitting in the studio trying out different techniques. I read the Mixing Engineer's handbook and tried out different things. I was focusing on eliminating as much "plastic" sound from the keyboard as I could to make it sound a little more natural. In terms of what type of dance sound I was trying to get I was trying to get a typical Backstreet Boys type of sound. At the same time I wanted clearity on the main instrument. (electric piano) I was doing this by eliminating frequencies in the 400 - 500Hz range on the problem tracks. I also wanted a nice stereo picture and a rather soft bass sound. I was focusing on three elements: "Drums, bass, electric piano". The sound was recorded completely dry with my Yamaha Tyros keyboard directly into the RME Fireface 800 audio interface. Mixing and mastering was done digitally, so only one A/D conversion in the recording chain.

 

Now to my question. I was doing this sound sample to get a reference point for on what sound quality I am currently able to record with the knowledge and gear that I have, as I am in the learning phase of mixing. (my home studio is rather new and I'm pretty unexperienced too...) I would like to know what is the worst part, in terms of sound quality, of the sound/mix? What should I do to make it "better" sounding from here? Can you isolate any problem areas that I need to focus on? I would like to have it a little louder, but yet not so it sweeps away too much dynamic range. Please listen to the 40 first seconds of the sound clip and post some thoughts or comments... Thanks!

 

The demo sample is available here:

 

Dance remix - 192Kbit/s mp3

 

Best regards,

Andy

[TonyCrazyMan]

I just have to say that so far I've located five things I should do something about mix wise:

 

- The electric piano needs more compression, it tends to dissapear now and then.

- The electric piano needs some more "bite". It blends in too well right now. An increase of the 2000 - 8000 Hz area with some added volume would make it stand out a little more.

- The snare drum has too little reverb and would become a little larger by adding a little chorus on it.

- Maybe a boost on the 200 - 250Hz frequency area on the electric piano would make the sound a little larger.

- I think I didn't put any delay on the mix at all, maybe some delay would make the snare hits come alive a little more...

[greendoor]

I suppose I could say it sounds great and try to be nice and not annoy you. But that's not my style - if you ask me for advice from me I going to say what I really think. It's only one opinion from one person, and should only be taken as that. If everyone only says nice things and hold back what they really feel, how could you make any progress?

 

So I guess what i'm going to say isn't going to please you, and you'll probably want to abuse me. So let's avoid all that - if you don't want me to reply to your posts just say the word and i'll never do this again ...

 

This doesn't sound like a mix, let alone a remix. It sounds like a factory auto-pattern from a Japanese keyboard - cheesy little vibroslaps and all. The digital sound quality is good, from what I can tell via mp3 and small speakers. But there is really nothing there to mix yet, so you shouldn't be worrying about eq at this stage.

 

I don't think I would ever put a chorus on a drum sound myself - I use chorus a lot, but never on drum sounds. I'm not saying you can't do it. Delays maybe - but I don't think this track is begging for that either.

 

Obviously the vocals are missing - that's where the serious recording and mixing comes in. The arrangement currently has big holes that would be filled by vocals, or if not - some other sounds. So if this was just an instrumental section, it hasn't really started yet.

 

It sounds very clean, and to balance that I would be wanting some dirty elements. It sounds like a very generic keyboard pattern - it needs something else to make it your own. If you can't edit the midi notes, you could consider recording the patterns as audio loops and cutting them up and re-ordering them.

 

Do you multitrack it? Do you have access to the kick and snare and bass seperately? You could try saturation/distortion/compression/eq on the individual tracks to give them some grit and phatten them up. It's not really sounding 'dancey' yet.

 

Do you have a sampler, or guitars or something for different textures? Music made with a single keyboard can sound a bit one-dimensional.

 

Once you have some vocals and other sounds, then you can start mixing. The piano would go down a lot in the mix when you introduce vocals. And you shouldn't really start eq'ing anything until they are in place.

 

Don't worry about mastering yet - that's a seperate process for much later.

[TonyCrazyMan]

Thanks for your reply! BTW, I was multritracking, but the drums were on a single track. It's really good to get someone else's perspective on the sound. I think you were partly trying to say that the drumset is too factory like too, I mean it's too balanced and unprocessed. I started realising that getting the balance of different drum elements is in this context one of the more important things I would have to check out. In this case I recorded the whole drum rhythm on one track for creating the sample faster, so I wasn't really mixing the drumset and the effects were applied on all drum elements at once. I think this was partly causing this "Japanese Factory Preset" - feel! This might have been a little exaggerated due to pretty much compression on it and too little reverb.

 

One thing that Bruce Swedien usually do with keyboard sounds is to reamping the direct signal with a good mic to get some reflections of the room and fatten things up. Maybe I have to try out something like that..!

 

I agree on the fact that this demo sample is really nothing to mix yet, just because the most important elements are missing. But the point with the demo sample was to really focus on the digital sound quality: low noise, low digital jitter, clearity, softness, dynamics, stereo etc and use effects to compensate for these artifacts. So I guess that dancy vibe would come naturrally if I would continue recording new elements from here and focus on getting the drumset more dancy by using effects on different tracks. The reason why I only used three elements was because I wanted to simply make three tracks very big with the help of mixing. The electric piano is not big enough in that sense I noticed, but I think I have to raise the volume a little.

 

Do you have a sampler, or guitars or something for different textures? Music made with a single keyboard can sound a bit one-dimensional.

 

Yeah, the Tyros is really no dance synth like my Korg Trinity when it comes to sounds, but the Tyros has much better sound quality! The extra elements in this song would have been taken from the Korg Trinity synth, at least some space sounds and maybe some kick drum too. It really lacks these textures right now so it's really no where near a complete mix in that regard!

 

So what have I learned so far with this experiment? Well, I really noticed the volume setting on different tracks in a mix is very important and something I tend to fail on even though I am aware that it is important. In this case the drumset was actually too "homogenous" because of the effects being applied directly on all drum elements at once and because I was not controlling the volume on separate drum elements. These kinds of shortcuts should be avoided. This was part of creating a Japanese Factory preset feeling on the mix. Additionally I might have to start analyzing a little more what kinds of sounds I choose to record and how to process them in a way that makes things fattening up. Maybe I have to focus on the Korg Trinity synth a little more, the Tyros seems to sound a little too keyboard - like... Hmmm... I have to become more selective with sounds! Maybe I tend to underrate the importance of a good sound source...!

[greendoor]

No worries - the sound quality is good. My partner uses a Yamaha auto arranger synth for song writing - although the sounds are nowhere near as good.

 

I don't know what you are recording too, but assuming it's a software DAW with both midi & audio, these are some things you might want to try:

 

Import the autoarranger midi data into your DAW (whether by disk, or usb or just recording it in realtime). Then you can seperate it into midi tracks for each part. That means you can edit out the bits that are annoying - Japanese midi programmers has some strange quirks that might make more sense back in Japan.

 

Even if you keyboards don't have multiple outs, you can solo each instrument and record each track one at a time. That way you end up with a multitrack that you can do so much more with.

 

Often with dance mixes, the drums and loops you hear are heavily layered. You could try triggering two or more kick and snare samples with the same midi data. Even piano parts - you can try layering two pianos, maybe two identical pianos but one is detuned up 10 cents, and the other detuned down 10 cents and pan them left & right.

 

Mastering guys get heavily into eq'ing and stuff because that's all they can do (with a stereo wave file I mean). While you are at the arranging and mixing stage, you can achieve a lot more without touching an eq. For example - if the kick isn't thumping the way a dance tune should, you could try layering in a low kick, maybe an 808 or 909 kick. Or a really long sub-bass kick triggered every bar or so.

 

Although I think compression is overused, it basically is the sound of rock and dance music. A lot of engineers will tell you they reach for a compressor before they reach for an eq. It gets really interesting when you start compressing, say, kick and bass together as a group. Or high hats and snare together as a group.

 

Plenty of tricks to try - there aren't really any rules for this stuff, but you are competeing against guys who use every trick in the book.

[TonyCrazyMan]

Originally posted by greendoor No worries - the sound quality is good. My partner uses a Yamaha auto arranger synth for song writing - although the sounds are nowhere near as good. I don't know what you are recording too, but assuming it's a software DAW with both midi & audio, these are some things you might want to try: Import the autoarranger midi data into your DAW (whether by disk, or usb or just recording it in realtime). Then you can seperate it into midi tracks for each part. That means you can edit out the bits that are annoying - Japanese midi programmers has some strange quirks that might make more sense back in Japan. Even if you keyboards don't have multiple outs, you can solo each instrument and record each track one at a time. That way you end up with a multitrack that you can do so much more with. Often with dance mixes, the drums and loops you hear are heavily layered. You could try triggering two or more kick and snare samples with the same midi data. Even piano parts - you can try layering two pianos, maybe two identical pianos but one is detuned up 10 cents, and the other detuned down 10 cents and pan them left & right. Mastering guys get heavily into eq'ing and stuff because that's all they can do (with a stereo wave file I mean). While you are at the arranging and mixing stage, you can achieve a lot more without touching an eq. For example - if the kick isn't thumping the way a dance tune should, you could try layering in a low kick, maybe an 808 or 909 kick. Or a really long sub-bass kick triggered every bar or so. Although I think compression is overused, it basically is the sound of rock and dance music. A lot of engineers will tell you they reach for a compressor before they reach for an eq. It gets really interesting when you start compressing, say, kick and bass together as a group. Or high hats and snare together as a group. Plenty of tricks to try - there aren't really any rules for this stuff, but you are competeing against guys who use every trick in the book.

 

I was listening to the demo sample again when I realised, this demo sample is pretty damn annoying, really irritating! How can it sound that irritating! A part of that is of course because you miss those important main elements and due to the Japanese feel, but I was able to isolate something in the mix that really plays a big role in making this demo sample "irritating". Pay attention to the electric piano! What do you hear? You hear a phaser effect on it. I noticed it really doesn't blend in, it only creates some extra irritating vibrations. This effect is part of the 16-bit DSP engine in the Tyros keyboard. I have to turn it off immediately! So I learned something new: Pay attention to what type of modulation effects you use on different tracks, sometimes one modulation effect on one track might be just too much, creating a messy and irritating final mix! I think in this case the phaser modulation effect was really making things muddy due to the rather soft sound too, so it was really driving up dust of low frequencies. Instead of that phaser effect I think a good tape saturation effect would have been worth trying out or something similar less random-modulating. Maybe a slow chorus would have been smoother or maybe I would have realised it really doesn't need any modulation, I might have ended up with a stereo delay on it that might have been more interesting and less irritating. That was really the second big mistake on this mix, things were messing up the mix because I was not paying enough attention to what was really there...

 

Originally posted by greendoor No worries - the sound quality is good. My partner uses a Yamaha auto arranger synth for song writing - although the sounds are nowhere near as good.

 

Well, at least the sound quality of the Yamaha Tyros is good. When I play in the room it sounds smooth, warm and clear even though I sometimes have to EQ strongly to eliminate some mids that come from "hard" sound samples in the mid section. Actually this demo sample was heavily EQed, much due to the electric piano. You might think it is the raw keyboard sounds you hear, but I can guarantee that sound is sharper and a lot more muddy. Overall I tend to get much too much frequencies around 400 and 500Hz when I record completely dry and this creates a boxy or plastic kind of sound. Even though this sample still has some plastic feel to it (pay attention to the sound of the kick drum) the mix could be much more isolated and muddy than it is now. So I think that might make you thing that the sound quality is ok and that I don't have to EQ anything. But the Yamaha Tyros keyboard is really one of the best sounding keyboards/synths I've ever heard, it's just that I sometimes pay too little attention to what sounds I choose to record from what keyboard. (actually I have 2 Korg synths, 1 Roland piano and 1 Yamaha keybord, I usually end up recording the Yamaha Tyros keybord)

 

I don't know what you are recording too, but assuming it's a software DAW with both midi & audio, these are some things you might want to try:

 

I have a MIDI interface that connects my keyboards, but this time I was recording in audio directly into my DAW, just to speed up the process and being able to focus on what I was working on. So I was recording only drums from a style on the keyboard on one track. Then I added the bass and electric paino sections myself on two other tracks. You might notice that the bass guitar is not in time, that's because I was not using MIDI and I was actually only recording a few takes in the original tempo, only improvising. So I know what you mean by using MIDI and start eliminate some artifacts of the song. I guess the percussion could be turned off or the sounds should be replaced into something more dancy. That would maybe make it a little less keyboard like too. Your recommendations of modifying the rhythm in MIDI and start using the detune to fatten things up I think is two very good reccomendations! Might really be some key ingredients in this context, because I agree, it is too much like a "Japanese factory style" as it is. I also think I have to try overdubbing MIDI a little more to get some layers and textures creating added depth/bigness. Your recommendation of grouping rhythm elements might become useful too!

[TonyCrazyMan]

So I read some more about mixing and had to try out that New York Style compression trick... I wanted a little fatter low end, unfortunately I got too much high end at the same time and later on I found out there was pretty much hum in the mix too that I couldn't hear in the studio. So I was actually a little dissapointed since it sounded pretty good in the studio. But a mastering engineer would be able to clean up stuff like this pretty good I think... I was recording directly as audio because I wanted to mix, but a midi version would sound a lot smoother than this... I was not removing the drum rhythm in the past mix, actually I was just adding stuff, hehe. It was very fun!

 

Dance remix - New York Style 160kbit