Reddit reviews The Mixing Engineer's Handbook
We found 19 Reddit comments about The Mixing Engineer's Handbook. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews The Mixing Engineer's HandbookWe found 19 Reddit comments about The Mixing Engineer's Handbook. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Just to act as devil's advocate here - I would recommend at least balancing this guy's work out with some of the more standard texts on mixing (listed below). I checked out this video a while back and was a little weirded out by his approach, which often steps into pseudoscientific territory. If you go to the author's company website, you'll see some dubious claims and suggestions about mixing techniques:
-"There are archetypal frequencies that have been used since the beginning of time to affect us."
-"As shown by the research of Alfred Tomatis, every frequency is a nutrient."
-"Tuning A to 432 hertz vs. 440 has been proven to resonate better with the resonant frequency of our cells - Tuning concert pitch to more auspicious frequencies makes the music go deeper."
-"High Frequencies activate the mind; Low Frequencies calm the body."
-"When you relate to frequencies based on ancient Chakra energies, the way you "feel" the balance of frequencies in a mix in a whole different way that goes through your whole body instead of just your mind. "
I'm sure the guy's mixes sound great - and he seems to have been a successful mixing engineer - but I personally wanted nothing to do with this guy. There are other "holistic" approaches to mixing (like Mike Stavrou's Mixing with your Mind) that work without having as much of a "snake oil" flavor to them. But as always, if this guy's approach works for you and you can look past his quirks, then I suppose it's a good resource.
Other resources: Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio, Roey Izhaki's Mixing Audio, Bobby Owsinski's The Mixing Engineer's Handbook
Hi there!
I've been producing Electronic Music as a hobby for almost 10 years.
Here's a quick guide to help you get started:
1.
you will need a DAW (Digita Audio Workstation), this is your tool and work environment in which you will create and mix your beats.
Depending on if you are on Windows or Mac you have a few different options.
FL Studio - This is the DAW I started producing in, back in version 8.something. It is widely considered one of the best starter DAW's because of the very intuitive user interface and HUGE library of native samples and plugins. FL Studio is sometimes looked down upon by some producers, who don't seem to take it seriously as a professional DAW. In my experience these producers often lack experience themselves, FL is a great DAW and in the end it is what you do with the tool that matters ;).
Ableton Live - This is the DAW I currently use, I switched from FL to Ableton for the simple reason that it was easier to collaborate with a friend of mine who also used Ableton at the time. I feel that FL Studio's native plugins and instruments are a bit better than Ableton's, but I personally like Ableton's interface and workflow better than FL's.
What is very specific about Ableton is the "Live Session mode", where you can arrange your sounds and loops in groups that you can trigger live with a midi controller, which is very handy for live performances (obviously) but also often used as a song writing tool, especially in hip-hop and futurebeat genres. - famous artists that use Ableton: Skrillex, Flume, Netsky, Dada Life, ...
These are the two DAW's I have personal experience with, but there are other options as well: Steinberg Cubase, PreSonus Studio One, Apple Logic Pro, and many more. Best to do your own research and download a few trial versions to see which one you like best.
2. After you decided on a DAW and "legally" obtained one, it's time to start making music. By that I mean "time to start making very shit music that you will look back on with huge cringe a few years from now" because that's exactly what it is like.
I don't mean this in a discouraging way, on the contrary! It takes loads of time and effort before you'll start noticing you're improving. One of the most important things to keep in mind is to be self-critical and open to criticism. Don't assume you know better when you're just starting out, be an empty cup because it's impossible to fill one that's already full.
Here's a very inspiring monologue on the subject by Ira Glass
3. Tutorials and books. Here are some books and tutorials that helped me out a lot, and hopefully will help you too!
books:
Mastering Audio: The Art and Science - Bob Katz widely considered to be the producer's bible.
The Mixing Engineers Handbook - Bobby Owsinski
tutorials:
Sadowick's ultimate Ableton Guide a full beginner to intermediate guide of Ableton Live, purely for this tutorial series alone I'd reccommend using Ableton. It's very comprehensive. Sadowick also has lots of other very useful tutorials on his channel, but is currently on hiatus because of his battle with cancer :(
SeamlessR this entire channel is gold. Seamless uses FL Studio but what he teaches is applicable to most DAW's. Lots of great tutorials on synthesis, mostly Drum and Bass focused but very interesting.
ADSR Tutorials very informative tutorials ranging from mixing to synthesis. Often about House and Techno, but most techniques are really applicable to every genre.
____
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if you start with these you'll come a long way, if you have any questions; pm me.
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EDIT here are some subreddits you might be interested in as well:
/r/makinghiphop
/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers
/r/edmproduction
I am hereby developing three steps to get started in future funk that I will gladly post on any thread where somebody is looking to begin. Here they are, in their first ever iteration. Comments welcome.
 
Step 0. Take your time. Be mentally prepared to throw out dozens of sketches of potential tracks representing hours of work for no other reason than that "they don't click" or you don't know where to take them next. Understand that future funk isn't a formula (and anybody who treats it as one is just asking to be ignored and forgotten). Just like ANY other form of music making, the good and the best take their time to really develop a craft. Be as holistic in your approach as your interest/life/ability allows (learn an instrument if you don't know one already, download ear training courses, basically be as adventurous as you can muster and look to, over time, learn things outside of just "future funk" skills).
 
 
Step 1. Learn to use some key tools. Pick and learn a DAW, anything will do as long as you learn it well (Ableton is popular for its flexibility and horsepower, but is more complicated than FL Studio which is an easy beginner's choice and is plenty legitimate as well). This will be your primary instrument, and over time using it will become second nature.
 
Step 1a. Learn about the tools for mixing- both generally, and the specific versions included in your DAW- this means basic knowledge of compressors, limiters, EQ, and reverbs at the very least to start with. Any audio mixing training will do, no need for it to be genre-specific. Eventually, start looking at mixing tools besides the built-in ones (browsing the Waves Plugin website will be equally exciting and overwhelming). Experiment over time and you'll gradually learn why certain tools/plugins are more powerful/preferred than others, and you'll develop your own preferences for what to use and how things should sound. Pay attention to the most subtle details. There's no shortage of great online tutorials on how to work with and listen to the tools of the trade in audio engineering.
>Recommended Resources: The Mixing Engineer's Handbook
>The Art of Mixing- old 80s tutorial video, very trippy, very educational
 
Step 1b. You'll also want to explore what instruments are built into your DAW, and what instrument plugins you may want to "acquire". Some good starting points for exploring instruments may be plugins that emulate classic synthesizers (CS-80, ARP1200, Korg legacy plugins, etc)- this kind of plays into point #2 as well, so I'll leave this point at that for now.
 
 
Step 2. LISTEN to other music. Your goal is to have a unique and varied and personal set of influences- see a great comment from Amherst here on why this is important.
Dig into your own iTunes library- what unique bits of your past may make interesting influences for your future funk music? My dad loved Dire Straits and Barry White and dad rock, my mom loved Deee-Lite and 80s hip hop. I've played on all of those elements before, plus the stuff I listened to at any point in my life (a lot of jazz in my teen years lol). Dig into the roots of future funk- disco, funk, boogie, smooth jazz, house, french house, 80s pop (feel free to ask for recommendations!). Go on your own digging adventures to find stuff that none of us have before. YouTube is your friend, Discogs is your friend (you can use other people's samples as starting points, but aim to get far away- both Amherst and I have playlists of samples we've used on different projects , just as examples of cool places to start).
You don't have to be looking for samples per say- you might just find some really cool sonic influences or ideas on song arrangement/elements (what synths are they using on that record you really dig? Try to find out!). But you need to spend a LOT of time listening to things that AREN'T future funk in order to make good FF. This is massively important, and one of the reasons future funk can often be seen as a stale genre is that many newcomers list their main influences as other, older FF producers and end up emulating the same old sounds instead of bringing something new to the table.
 
 
Step 3. At the end of the day, when you're looking at your project file and you think you have a groovin future funk tune ready to release, do a quick check that, if everyone did it, would solve 90% of complaints about this genre. "What is my unique contribution to this track?" Did you just take a j-funk song (because that's the type of music that so and so sampled!) and put drums over it at a certain tempo (because that's the tempo future funk is at!)? That fails the test. Did you chop up and rearrange a sample in a really unique way, did you combine 5 different songs to make something new and cool, did you add original instrumentation or harmony to old music? That passes the test.
> Side note: If something isn't very "original" and is just an edit of an existing track, or doesn't use much original material and should be considered a "remix"- be honest and label it as such. There's been a couple controversial FF "tracks" released lately where the artist in question became kinda shunned because they were attempting to pass off slight changes to an existing song as an "original track".
 
Try doing the same sort of self-check when thinking about how you represent yourself as an artist- your style and branding and vibe. Does the whole anime/kanji thing really represent you as an artist and your unique influences accurately? Or did you just default to that after seeing what other people are doing? Figure out something that's true to yourself. (For me, Camino is kinda a representation of me as a social being- upbeat, humorous, outgoing and partygoing- and that's why my music is meant for dancing and appreciating pop culture, and I often use recognizable music.)
 
 
Alright, hope that helps. Anybody starting out can always feel free to PM me, and I think I'll continually work on and update these guidelines/pieces of advice with the help of all mah good friends. There you have it- V1 of Camino's Guide to Starting in Future Funk
Audio is an expensive hobby. You'll have to make sacrifices. I suggest get a part-time job and use the money to buy equipment in this order:
•Mac (because music)
•DAW
•Decent monitors
•Microphone + interface
•A plugin suite
If you learn everything there is to know about each piece you obtain as you obtain it, you'll learn the entire flow of work in audio and you'll know where you'll want to specialize.
There's plenty of books you can read to get you started, I suggest Recording Tips for Engineers, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Assistant Engineer's Handbook, and The Music Producer's Handbook. The manual to your DAW is essential.
When I was your age, I worked at Five Guys a couple shifts a week in order to buy a Macbook. 5 years later, I work in a fine dining kitchen to pay off the student loans I took to attend a private recording arts school. So while you're in highschool, learn as much as you can and decide if you really want this. It's not an easy or simple path. It's almost entirely up to you how far you go.
For mixing: The Mixing Engineer's Handbook is my favourite resource for learning the mix engineer's craft. Also many people recommend Mixing With Your Mind, but I can't claim to have read it.
For tracking: The same author of the Mixing Engineer's Handbook has one on tracking which is also quite good. I learned tracking as an apprentice, so I have read very little in the way of published books on this topic, but for guitars specifically some person archived the posts of a person named Slipperman here which I've found to be a valuable resource for information and entertainment(!).
In general: Get yourself a copy of the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook, and read it cover to cover, twice. It is an absolute building block of audio engineering and probably the best single resource I can suggest for the theory and practice of audio engineering and sound reinforcement.
The Mixing Engineers Handbook is the standard, although there are 100’s of books.
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
As far as phasing issues, you can fix those either during recording by flipping phase on offending mics, repositioning mics, or, if you’re using a DAW, aligning your tracks so that the issue goes away.
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
I recommend looking into some books on production. There is so much more information crammed into the better books than you will find in a week's of searching forums and youtube tutorials. For books on mixing, I say you can't go wrong with Bobby Owinski's The Mixing Engineer's Handbook or Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studioand for general production I recommend Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual just be sure to get the latest edition, it includes chapters that cover everything from basic theory the popular genres (trance, dubstep, DnB, Techno, House, and Ambient/Chillout), it covers the electronics and science of acoustics, MIDI, DAW's and everything that come's along with them (instruments, effects, samplers, etc) and promoting and distributing your music. I can't say enough about this book and what a great way it was for me to see the "big picture" of what was ahead of me when I was starting out.
But seriously, if you don't even know what the term 'gain-staging' means, a single paragraph on a reddit thread is not going to help you much. That's basic fundamentals on how audio works. I'd suggest picking up some beginner books.
There's a lot of fundamentals covered in this Sound Reinforcement Handbook.
And the Mixing Engineer's Handbook is great.
edit: new mix! please take a look at this one: https://soundcloud.com/pali_m/candied-sprites-1 (electronic dream pop)
Most importantly though is I figured out I've been sitting too close to my monitors! I've been super frustrated trying to figure out why when I bounce the track the low end is SO much more prevalent and muddy, and it's because I haven't been hearing it properly at all. Standing outside your door to listen to your mix is also really helpful. Bought "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook" and have been learning tons. Very nice to finally have a single resource to work from.
Still not totally up to par but would love your guys' thoughts on how to make it better.
__.
Hey fam, would love your thoughts on this guy: https://soundcloud.com/pali_m/candied-sprites
Electronic dream pop, saccharine dancey refrain to sate your sweet tooth. Just an exercise to work on structure and comp techniques sorta, but I'd really appreciate some input on how to make it better, especially the mix.
Will do my best to return feedback in kind.
I've removed this thread as this is all pretty broad, easy to find, hard to answer in a comment, or covered here plenty of times before.
> What loop/sample sites offer free samples/loops
You can find this with search
> What is the best way to fill in the buildup?
Listen to tracks you like and do what they do
> Anything to take into account with vocoders and vocaloids?
Learn how they work and where vocals sit in a mix
> Is there anything I should know about mixing&plastering as well?
There are entire books about this, such as this and this and this ;)
You're welcome to post all of these in our regular "there are no stupid questions" threads; there should be a new one today. Best of luck and don't be afraid to research and just try things!
Buy and study this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
It is WELL worth the money and you will continually use it as a reference. The information will take your recordings to a totally new level. All of Owsinski's books are great, but this one is specifically for what you are looking to do.
There is so much that goes into getting great sounds and recordings that is far beyond would I could type out in a single day.
Regarding speakers for your studio, you don't need the huge hi-fi speakers that big studios have, they use those mainly to flatter artists and industry reps. For mixing, you should get a set of speakers with a relatively flat frequency response that spotlights the midrange and has low distortion. The Avatone Mix Cube is good for this. You only really need one because a lot of mixing is in mono. The Yamaha NS10s are also good (these are more expensive and are pretty standard in most studios. The thing about these speakers is not that they sound good, but that, on first listen, you'd probably think they sound bad; they highlight problems in your mix.
I imagine if you're doing hip-hop a lot of your listeners will listen on headphones so it's useful to do some mixing on headphones (you might do mono mixing on your nearfield and work out panning and stereo stuff on headphones, for example), so get two good pairs of studio headphones-one for you, and one for people you record (unless you're building this to record yourself, although if people know you have this cool studio they might want to get in on the action and it'd be good to be prepared for that if it does happen-you might also want to record a feature on your track or something).
Get a DAW and know it back and forth. I would say for your purposes, unless you're already well-versed in Pro Tools or already have a copy of it, don't get Pro Tools-there's a huge learning curve and it's by far the most expensive. Reaper has a free demo that you can use indefinitely and FL Studio and Audacity are free. Ableton is what most producers use but it's not really made for tracking or mixing, so what some people do is they produce in Ableton and bounce the track to another DAW to mix.
Microphone-wise, ideally for vocals you want a large-diaphragm condenser. A small-diaphragm will work too but LDCs are standard. You can record on a dynamic mic but they usually need a lot more gain which might mean more noise and you'll need to be handy at mixing to get the sound you want out of a dynamic mic.
If you're investing in a big project like this, read a lot and know what you're doing. This book will get you started on mixing techniques and the basics. This one is a must, it starts out with some chapters on how to acoustically treat the room you're working in which even though it isn't glamorous or fun is totally vital to a good studio.
These two books will get you far:
[The Mixing Engineer's Handbook](The Mixing Engineer's Handbook https://www.amazon.com/dp/128542087X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_mSDqzbH36PSN0)
Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio
Here's a lengthy video series on mixing by Michael White: Fundamentals of Mixing
I like the way he uses graphical representations to help you visualize various aspects of mixing.
Also check out the UBK Happy Funtime Hour podcast.
Good starting point - https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
I think that era of sound engineering being a black art that is passed down from master to apprentice is pretty much gone, at least reserved for a very small elite.
As much as you and I will never get the chance to learn from a master in a big studio, we now have very similar technology to them, at least to the point of just making a decent sounding recording.
There are definitely a lot of young producers emerging from their bedrooms now and challenging the establishment.
Checkout Flume for instance, he produced his debut on a laptop, and he just got a Grammy. So that whole professional industry is in the middle of a major disruption, just like the whole music industry.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert, but my mixes have a basic level of cohesion, competitive loudness, and they sound OK on different speakers.
If you don't feel like your mixes are cutting it, I'd definitely recommend working through a book (the other one that comes up a lot is The Mixing Engineers Handbook I've worked through that one too ) or go YouTube if you prefer, just make sure that you are working through a start to finish introduction. That is key to me, that you learn all the basic techniques as a whole set of tools, and apply them together. I thought I had worked out as much as I could from the internet too, but I had a lot to learn, and still do.
Also make sure you are constantly comparing your mixes to commercial mixes you like, on your system. Get a set of reference tracks, and run them alongside your mix and A/B them. That is one technique everyone recommends and you learn so much that way.
There is a great book called "The Mix Engineers Handbook"
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
It has a lot of guys who did famous records in the 60s and 70s talking about how they did things.
Hit up the dude Bobby Owsinski, those frequency references came from this book. Let him know he must of made a mistake lol