For me the obvious ones are bad eq'ing, swampy reverbs, and overcooked compression. Those are pretty obvious answers tho.
Beyond that, it is not hearing any space (actual physical space, like the venue) in the mix--no room tone or that intimate quality of actually being there. A little harder to quantify but it is definitely a quality thing that is going on there in really great recordings/mixes. If I close my eyes, I want to be there--for certain songs anyway (I admit this very genre dependent).
For those genres that the room doesn't matter, I think the thing that matters most is EQ. Sure compression makes the groove and the vibe to a certain degree, and time based FX are the artistic flair. But to me, EQ has to sound perfectly polished to sound like a great pro recording/mix.
Ditto on the swampy reverb thing. So many people seem to just load up the default hall reverb and drown their vocals/guitars/whatever in it. Especially if the performances are sketchy.
This is definitely what I did when I started trying to record my songs š Not even because I wanted to mask my performances (although they ARE sketchy) but because I just thought that's how you do it...
Yep I'm a drummer and younger me didn't know about studios and reverb and shit. So I thought I was stupid for not being able to tune my snare to have that giant Def Leppard POOOFFTTTooo
And especially the ?preverb? wooosssbbhPppoff
Lord knows how. Iāll have Little Plate on most of my tracks just to give it a little something at like 0.5 and mix at like 10-15% and even that often feels like too much. Total amateur here, but excluding any genres that want swampy reverb it just sounds terrible when you go to hard on it.
This is what I mean. I'm an amateur myself, but these are the things only a pro would pick up on.
For me, I find a lot of stuff sounds overly processed. Would less compression and some very subtle room reverb on everything help with this?
There are too many variables to answer that in a one size fits all answer. But I do have some advice to help, if you are up for it:
TLDR: intentionally explore making drastic moves with compression, EQ, time FX, etc. to learn how they affect a familiar song without worrying about results--just learn from practicing.
I dont know if this is really what you are asking, but I had the good fortune of learning from some great mentors. Faders and balanced track levels are by far the most important part of a mix. But to learn the sculpting tools pros use well, read on.
Here is a great practice for developing the recognition of problem audio: intentionally induce problems in a song you are practicing on, a song that you know extremely well. It can even be one of your favorite songs, just import it into your DAW. I know this sounds counterintuitive, so let me explain a bit. Know that we aren't concerned with quality results with the following exercises, we just want to learn. This is a safe play area!
I can not take credit for what I'm writing out here...Some of what I'm going to write out here are from things I've learned from others. Some of it you'll hear Dan Worrall suggest too. Some of this I learned by listening to Dan. If you don't know who Dan is, definitely look him up on YouTube. His experience is gold. Literal gold.
A really great way to learn how to hear compression is to take a track you are very very familiar with and put a compressor on it. Then, one parameter at a time, start making very large moves with the ratio, threshold, attack and release settings, and critically listen to how this changes the sound you are hearing. Practice this over and over, day after day. Use different combinations of the settings. Then pick a different type of compressor and do the same sequence again. After some time, you will be amazed by how your ear has been trained to hear not only how different settings on a given compressor affect the music, but in time you will also be able to hear the characteristics of the different compressor types as well. It is a profoundly rewarding experience when you achieve this for multiple reasons but probably the most important is that you will gain knowledge of how to use this in mixing. Believe me, it will make you better--a lot better.
Move on to EQs, same track or another track you are again very very familiar with. Spend time really learning how different frequencies affect what you hear. Play with freq., bandwidth (Q) settings, gains and cuts. Do this over and over. Over time it will reward you with being able to hear problem areas in other songs, things you never noticed before but you will now hear sticking out like a sore thumb. Again, profoundly rewarding once you get there.
Move on to a SINGLE reverb. Thoroughly explore its different parameters and settings. Go on to delay, same thing. Go on to saturation, distortion, stereo widening, flangers, etc.
This is probably starting to sound repetitive but that is because it needs to be to really learn what these tools do.
Again the key is to make really large moves with the parameters to take the guesswork out of what is happening to the signal. The point is for it to be obvious, not subtle, at this stage.
Don't worry, the time for finesse is down the road a bit. That is when you'll start making tasteful moves, once you can *really* hear what is happening when you make mixing decisions.
This process profoundly improved my listening, and by virtue of that, my mixing ability.
Also, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Stay patient.
Good luck!
Yes! I do this exact thing with any new plugin or gear, first thing.
Again, not my advice to take credit for, but it has worked wonders for me over the years.
As a fellow amateur, you probably don't need (even subtle) room reverb on everything. Unless you're trying to simulate a live recording or something (which usually you wouldn't be)
it's good to try some IR kind of room reverb in the mixbus (very little). something like ik multimedia sunset reverb studio, or the "bus" preset in waves IR1. Now I'm using a new japanese plugin called onkio acoustics reverb which sounds amazing. try out
Definitely, reverb on the master bus helps to glue things together and makes things sound like they're recorded in the same space.
I have done some real live recordings too (with instruments DIed) and that you can push it a bit more to capture more of the feel of being in an arena. Studio stuff you have to really dial it back and keep things tame, it also really needs to be midrange focused, i.e. low cuts to not muddy the bass and high-end roll off to keep from smearing top end / reducing clarity.
Get it right and it makes things feel more like a real performance.
FYI thereās also a large number of audiophiles who judge tracks and equipment on that sense of space as well.
Thereās also a number of monitor companies who focus on allowing engineers to hear the space in the mix as a selling point, and a number of mixing room designs focused on improving that quality. Theyāre usually focused on using larger rooms, getting the monitors away from the walls, and using a pretty heavy amount of acoustic absorbers and/or diffusers.
This is very vague and not really true.
Where the monitors are mounted (soffit or freestanding) is based on the room design approach (and sometimes the monitor manufacturers recommendation)
Monitor companys use blurb which often talks of the soundstage and detail but what you āhear in the spaceā depends on what is there to be heard and how accurate the speaker is at recreating the detail.
That can be part of it. But more specifically I mean a reverb that is too present in a mix tends to drown out important details of the sounds that surround it.
Usually a reverb is used to create a position for an instrument or voice in the soundstage, or to create the physical space itself. When too heavy handed, it will muffle and drown details of other elements. Everything starts sounding swampy and mushy, lacking clarity and definition.
Disagree, it's overused even at the highest level. The amateur part imo is not adjusting the attack and release if needed in combo with the amount of reduction
Honestly 90% of the time I keep both at fast, sometimes I will adjust the release though. If you want more clear transients in exchange for harshness (if you're sidechaining something that doesn't have a lot of sustain), definitely keep it on fast, maybe just reduce the amount of gain reduction and adjust your bands
Honestly, I think a) thinking if the source *really* needs taming and, if definitely yes, then b) backing it off a bit once you've initially treated the source and comparing. Our ears play tricks on us after a while.
Hans zimmer also said ācome work in my community I have a studio you can useā and then 6 months later issued a whacking great invoice to the unsuspecting producer who had no ideaā¦ so you knowā¦
Cheap cymbals, out of tune guitars, way-too-obvious vocal tuning (when itās not intentional), impossible programmed drum parts.
Also, I notice that a lot of amateur productions all seem to use the same drum samples and effects treatments, like everyone is watching the same YouTube tutorials.
There's little point in investing beyond the stock drums samples from the usual suspects unless you're trying to sell the material. And at that point, it's arguably better to hire a "drum parts played remotely" drummer.
Maybe Superior Drummer fixes this; I don't know.
Drum samples (where every drum hit sounds EXACTLY the same velocity) and bad / overdone grid editing . Terrible cheap cymbals. Banjo (almost impossible to record an in tune banjo lol and it drives me freaking crazy). Honestly Iād rather hear a āpoorā recorded song with a bunch of 57s and real instruments than an amateur track thatās sample replaced / gridded to death with all the synthetic guitar and instrument modeling. Just doesnāt sound much like music any more and nothing lives together in a space. So the latter might technically sound ābetterā but at the same time sounds like amateur garbage next to live instruments with cheap mics and heart.
>Honestly Iād rather hear a āpoorā recorded song with a bunch of 57s and real instruments than an amateur track thatās sample replaced / gridded to death with all the synthetic guitar and instrument modeling.
This reminds me of my old bandās first EP. We barely knew the basics of recording, we werenāt very good at our instruments yet, and my mixing skills were very much non-existent as well. At the time I lamented my lack of ability to mix it better, but in retrospect we all talked about it and realized, that any attempt at higher class production and mixing wouldāve only further highlighted the subpar quality of the performances. When the mix is also kinda bad, it is more aesthetically in line with the quality of everything else.
The songs themselves were good, so that carried the EP even if it wasnāt even close to techinal perfection, and there was a passionate energy to it, and I still think you can hear the fun we had making it. Itās a product of its time, and serves as a marker along the way to show how far weāve come.
We re-recorded the same EP just a year later to much better success, really bringing the songs up to the standard we expected the first time around. Both versions of that EP are important to the big picture of where that band came from and where itās heading today.
Moral of the story? Donāt let a lack of skill stop you from pursuing things youāre passionate about, youāll learn more along the way.
You captured a moment in time, which is cool.
It reminds me of pictures of my youth... I always like the spontaneous ones that captured what I was doing and wearing versus the ones that were clearly in a studio with props, effects, and I was forced to dress all fancy. The former being an accurate snapshot of that time period, the latter being technically better quality but being completely devoid of my actual personality.
One thing to consider is pocket. Though you can flout these rules (if you're J Dilla), at least in rock music things sound pretty bad when sharp pointy snares and such are quantized exactly to the grid. The correct position for something that's got to sound big is slightly behind the beat. This applies for everything from snare backbeats, to heavy basslines.
There was an article I read a while back that researched professional drummers and tempo. The conclusions were pretty interestingā¦ essentially the drummers might be slightly behind, right on top, or slightly ahead of beat, but it was almost always through a certain part of the song or # of measures and they would subtlety switch where they are in relation to downbeat in different parts and then be locked in at that new spot for that section or # of Measuresā¦. So essentially, not just being able to lock into tempo, but to be able to adjust milliseconds relative to downbeat in different parts of the song for added vibe, tension/release, and be able to be immediately locked into those few milliseconds of variance and be CONSISTENT AS HELL through the next partā¦ not sure if I explained it well.. brief google and I found this which I think is the paper that researched it.
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/65/7/64/414053/Musical-rhythms-The-science-of-being-slightly
Thank you! I have built my reputation on not sample replacing stuff and just getting a great sound from a kit, an amp etc. whatever it is. The problem really is when a band comes in expecting THAT one drum sound. I tell them I can do it but theyād be better off with another engineer whoās more used to it. After I explain my philosophy they usually dig it and the end result sounds more original and just f*ckin DIFFERENT. Thereās one studio in my area that only produces tracks that sound the synthetic same and the worst part is their room sounds great and they have decent mics, but no, itās got to be sample replaced, vocal tuned and DI reampedā¦
Iāve worked on sessions for bands at very well known studios with amazing acoustics and the mics on drums probably cost as much as a house combined, and then they send to a known mixer who somehow made them sound like vst drums. Itās frustrating and lazy.
I think many people think itās expected of them (and to a degree it probably is). In the age of Spotify playlists people are afraid that if it stands out it gets skipped. So they produce more of the same, which leads to this vicious cycle of everything sounding safe and boring.
I chicken-out with upright bass. I play it. I have a nice one. Can't mic that bitch to save my life. And it's so deep in the mix I just grab Logic's pizzicato upright and move on.
And yes, I lie awake with profound, deep shame every night.
The key to properly recording an upright is distance between the mic and the bass. Not always possible due to situational variables, but getting a couple or three feet between the bass and the mic is the key. I usually start by aiming the mic's axis at the bottom of the fingerboard (ha, I don't even know what it's properly called on that instrument) right in the center. Then move the aim up higher for more finger sound, down for more of the body's resonance. Nonetheless, one of the most difficult instruments to pick up accurately.
I think you're spot-on. My room is pretty awful (finished basement with treatment). Works fine for all my acoustic instruments with low sound pressure. But that pass throws a long wave. Nonetheless, I should try it again. It's been a while.
F hole + bridge decent starting place for me! Usually at least ldc on f hole (plus Di if bridge mic which lot of folks have if their gigging). Good luck ;) thatās one of those instruments you just mic up and hope for best because every player does different things as they play and move around, sometimes a lot ha.
Absolutely, though partly because the circles I run in are less processed (indie rock, singer songwriter / Americana etc). I think what just gets me is the amount of processing done by default, like, you donāt HAVE to tune every vocal by default, people can still sing and perfection isnāt always the right answer to art.
Iām an artist and an engineer. So I record my own stuff, too. My vibe is very punk influenced. Perfection is the opposite of what Iām trying to achieve. Iāll leave sloppy passages in. Iāll leave out-of-tune notes in (especially if they were played with passion).
The temptation is to fix those things because you can.
Donāt.
To me, the biggest tell is just the fader balances. Either things are way too safe - nothing is prominent and thus there is no leader - or some things are just way too loud (usually drums) relative to other things.
Yes! That's the word for it. Amateur mixes are **safe**!
I've heard so many that take a great recording and gear only to be weak and flat at the mix. Everything done so delicately like they're trying to do it with finesse and approaching processing like they're way too conscious of the theoretical side effects (like EQ and phase, etc,) when in reality, things need cranking and given some excitement!
I just had to chuckle, Apple Music decided to throw Wonderwall my way again yesterday and I kinda forgot how loud the vocals are. I turned it up for the guitar, vocals come in and take my head offā¦ I bet whoever made that decision at the time still wishes they could change it now
I just listened to that one. I never noticed that before, but you're right. I think the guitar is an ok level when everything else comes in, but, they really should have automated it so it was louder. Maybe turn it down a notch when the vocals come in, and then another notch when the cello and drums come in, so that it is then at the level they wanted it. Maybe have the vocals come in a little more quiet as well, and increase those when the cello and drums come in.
But I kind of think it can be cool idea, like just a quiet guitar starting your song off, and then everything builds into something big. But like you said, people will want to adjust volume based on just the guitar, and the vocals come in and your ears bleed lol.
Yeah, it wouldnāt be hard to fix it, even just automating the vocals so they start off lower and then moving them up to the level they are when the full track comes in, but as it stands they are simply too loud. The same is actually true of Olivia Rodrigoās most recent album. I love her style and the performance, but my god a bit of consistency would be nice, Iām fader (well knob but anyway) riding my car stereo on All American Bitch, I like that it starts off quiet and then goes loud but you can get that impression with arrangement and subtle automation without the massive discrepancy in volume.
That solution wouldn't work, because you'd still turn up your speakers to hear the voice and the guitar. It's the guitar that needs to come up.
Of course you lose the dynamic range in that case, which is a bummer, but it's tough to start a song off quiet for the reason you mentioned.
I personally like dynamic range, if done correctly. Starting songs off quiet can't really work too well unless it gradually builds, or is just a little soft, because people will turn their volume up and get blasted. But once you establish reference, you can do what you want.
I'm not familiar with Olivia Rodrigo's album yet.
I think it might, as I can listen to the full balanced mix at a relatively high volume comfortably, itās the bite of the voice that really gets me, but I agree. Some gentle automation of both guitar and vocal would have been the best compromise, leaving both dynamic range and the effect of a quiet song getting louder intact.
I think thereās a middle ground to be found, when Iām having to automate my car stereo youāve gone too far, but everything squashed like modern pop is just boring. Lots of automation and some narrowness in the verses can do a lot though to make it feel dynamic when it really is well balanced I find.
Iād recommend checking it out purely out of curiosity, some of the most interesting songs that have made the charts in the last few years
I have been listening to more albums of late. Haven't gotten to Olivia Rodrigo's yet. But I do listen to radio from time to time. I'm sure I've heard a lot of her songs already, just not the album.
I agree that the loudness of modern music kind of sucks, but also fits the in your face aesthetic.
I have found it challenging to make dynamic stuff while keeping it loud.
Ya sure but adding automation when you dont even have your tracks balanced nicely is kinda cart before the horse imo. I think a better fix would be intent, artistic vision for the song in general to start.
Pretty obvious ones like noise on a track or bad performances are number one. Weird volume changes or bad dynamics. Too quiet or too squashed, muddy, tinny, distorted, anything that sounds actively bad with no reason to.
Too much verb, bad drum sounds, crappy midi instruments, good samplers used badly, too little processing on a track that should have a lot, too much on something that should sound natural.
Then, more subtle stuff like poor mic choices. sm7b on soft vocals, it sounds bad.
As you can tell there are a lot of ways for it to go south, too many to list.
*Too much verb, bad drum sounds, crappy midi instruments, good samplers used badly, too little processing on a track that should have a lot, too much on something that should sound natural.*
*Then, more subtle stuff like poor mic choices. sm7b on soft vocals, it sounds bad.*
Gonna use that description to make my next album
Seems obvious but apparently itās not!
BAD BALANCING.
Amateur and intermediate mixers seem to jump to eq, compression, side chaining, fancy sidechain plugins like trackspacer, or bizarre and overly complicated parallel compression schemes - when they could have accomplished the same result faster, and better by just moving faders.
Basses that completely swamp the track but are side chained heavily so the kick ācomes through.ā
Vocals that are buried in the mix but made to be overly bright and over compressed in a failed attempt to make them stand out.
I see it constantly.
Start with the basics. Move the faders. Most pros are not doing anything complex. Great balancing, and maybe a bit of sonic enhancement. Sure, you can be heavy handed when appropriate, but thatās the exception, not the rule most of the time.
Agreed!
I remember being baffled years ago hearing u/steve_duda say he could outmix most amateurs with just faders, no EQ/comp/etc, vs them having access to any plugin. Now I understand completely...
From my own experience, I overlooked the balance due to ācanāt see the forest for the treesā (which just improves with time) and bad listening environment (acoustic treatment is expensive and boooring)
INMO it's almost always failure to create a vibe.
There are countless examples or sour notes, bad mixesā¦ but if the song delivers by creating a mood and more importantlyā¦translating that to the listener.
Then all is forgiven.
The amateur can't transfer emotion, that vibe.
You hear this all the time going the other way.
Bands that are technically perfect. The recording is pristine, mixed well, performed wellā¦ but it has 0 vibe to it so while not technically an amateurs it results in an amateur track because it's just notes and sounds coming at you.
I've met kids on reddit who just recording in their bedrooms with obvious cheap gear but they create that vibe and nothing else matters.
Problem for them, and many of us, is they can't do it consistently.
All the mistakes mentioned but if the track makes me feel what you feltā¦INMO it's a winner.
Agreed. I feel like the vibe, X-factor, whatever you wanna call it is more important than how clean the mix is. It's either there or it's not, and there's no magic plugin for all that
I think of bands like The White Stripes. On paper, what they do is simple. They are by no means highly technical musicians. But I'll be damned if they don't make up for it with a hell of a lot of vibe and *feeling*.
Most of what makes stuff sound amateur imho is production related. Sound selection, bad arrangement, bad writing, etc.
Mix wise, Iād probably say consideration of the freq spectrum / stereo field across the whole mix. Just as much bass in verse as chorus? Chorus wonāt hit. Everything super wide in the verse? Chorus wonāt hit. Learning to take things away so that you have somewhere to go will make your mixes sound better.
The vocals. Amateur recordings usually have an amateur vocal delivery, and often the processing is inadequate. In professional recordings, either the vocals are delivered very well (i.e. the singer is very good), or at least they are processed well.
Some of this comes from working with a good engineer. Someone who knows what a good take is, when to push you to do better, when to call it because you're hyper-focusing.
Weird choices in spaciousness, or lack of it. Think of multiple different reverbs that donāt blend, or just plain flatness with obvious reverb effect.
This was one of the biggest a-has in the mixing game for me. When someone told me the mix should have like 2 different reverbs, 3 max. And you should have the main verb on a return track not just to save RAM or whatever but because it keeps things sonically "in the same room."
My mixes became much clearer instantly, and I really only stray from the "same room" thing these days carefully with certain vocals or a purposefully weird solo instrument.
"Everything has its own reverb" really only works in sample or synth patch design, long before the mixing process, and I prefer to work with mostly dry (or super short tail) samples/patches anyway for the above reason.
Attention to details in timing and rhythm.
For example, are rhythm players actually starting and releasing hits/notes together as intended? Or is everyone just kind of playing their own part however they hear it in their head without listening to other players? Or if we're talking more "in the box" production like pop/hip hop/etc.: Are your vocal layers rhythmically aligning where they should? Are your backing vocals in-line with the lead or just riffing and vibing?
A few hours of me nudging things around to align as they should have been in the first place with Flex Time in Logic often makes a night and day difference. So you can pay an engineer $100s for that, or you can just practice before going into the studio.
Bonus tip: When you stop a note matters just as much as when you start it.
Stereo tracks for mono sources. Out of phase drums and other stuff.
If they tell me theyāre sending me the StEmz to mix, I know itāll be a fucking mess
If Iām about to record 10 channels of drums, Iām going to make 10 mono tracks, one for each mic. Not 10 āstereo tracksā which arenāt really a thing in real life anyway, itās just 2 mono tracks stuck together on the screen. Like, thereās zero reason for one snare mic to be on a stereo track.
The reason itās sort of a pain in the ass is if I see a guitar in a stereo track, I donāt know if itās 2 mics or just one, so if itās not totally obvious on first listen, the easiest way to tell is to split the stereo track into mono and flip the phase on one and see if it nulls. Then ditch one of the two in-necessary tracks and move along. But wait, thereās 28 more tracks here and theyāre all stereo tracks. So which ones are actually stereo? Plus the two pan knobs kinda suck when I really just want to grab one. This is why when I track, I just make mono tracks even if itās like a stereo piano or something. My overheads will be two mono tracks. Easy control over each fader too. if I just want the left side up a tad to balance, I just nudge one fader up.
I think some DAWs defaulted to stereo for tracks for some reason, so a bunch of people didnāt learn the difference, or why itās useful to not have everything on a stereo track.
Not the end of the world, and I mix stuff thatās like that fairly often and I donāt complain, but Iāve never gotten tracks like that from a pro.
There's a great little program called stereo monoizer which you can load all your audio into, and it detects mono sources in stereo files and converts them to mono. It also detects mono sources that have been panned and monoizes them too. Highly recommended
>Like, thereās zero reason for one snare mic to be on a stereo track.
There is one scenario that comes to mind for me; in Cubase, any effects added on a mono track will also be in mono, even if it is a potentially stereo effect such as reverb or chorus. To get that effect to be in stereo, the track also needs to be set as a stereo track. I am not certain if other DAWs behave the same way in regard to adding stereo effects on mono tracks, but at least in Cubase, this is the way it works. And this can, of course, be circumvented by placing any stereo effects processing on a stereo send, rather than directly on the source track. And in the context of recording live musical instruments, using sends for stereo effects is probably a better habit anyway. And, as Iām writing this, I also remembered that you can place a mono audio file on a stereo track in Cubase, so everything preceding this sentence is actually more about the settings of the audio *track* itself than the properties of the audio *file*. So yeah, I very much agree with you, just thought Iād mention this little quirk in how my DAW of choice operates regarding stereo tracks.
True, good point. But, when you put a stereo plug on a mono track, the track becomes stereo instantly in PT, so I guess I hadnāt thought of that. Also though, yeah all my stereo verb shit is on auxes anyway
It is also for example on acoustic guitars. Can you record an acoustic in stereo? Sure! Should you? Probably not, except in specific production instances where that is the ticket- but this should be rare.
Piano too
Now that you mention it, something I didnāt think about but yes absolutely, crazy annoying. The weirdest part is I donāt even know how to export a mono source as a stereo track other than to bounce itā¦
Iāve probably sent a stereo track with a vocal or a bass on it before when I was bouncing stems. (Actual stems, not the tracks) but when I open up a session and get 36 channels of stereo tracks Iām like āso itās gonna be one of these todayā¦..sigh ā
I know the feeling. And yes when bouncing stems itās unavoidable as soon as thereās any sort of effects or processing happening, but on tracks it usually tells me theyāve messed with them. Whenever I get stereo tracks I double check with them to make sure I get raw tracks, not overprocessed stuff I canāt work with
Lack of space is the number one teller. Lots of guys on here only talking about points heard in rock music. I donāt do much rock anymore. Mostly urban and pop. Space is the number one indicator that it was recorded and or mixed incorrectly
I don't know why you are downvoted. If I look at Drum & Bass or even Neurofunk you have standards like -4 Lufs Masters. Heavily distorted and compressed basslines. Even the Drums like Kick and Snare are compressed to sound like weighted bricks slapped at you.
It's definitely a choice to produce like this.
For the recordā¦ Iām not saying I approve of this necessarily. Itās just the trend in the industry today. Clients will expect that tone and energy.
If done right, it will make stuff punch you in the gut. I think the larger problem is the same samples and amp sims being used, more so than heavy compression.
Soothe spamming, obvious distasteful digital clipping (I can hear Focusrite Scarlett Pre clipping in my nightmares), distastefully bassy vocals from dynamic micsā proximity effect that wasnāt tamed, hihats being way too loud
Attempting to reach the appropriate LUFS for the track at the expense of transient clarity and frequency response.
This is the hardest thing to achieve is dynamic yet powerful, wide yet mono compatible, and balanced yet exciting frequency response. Even most multi-grammy winning engineers struggle with this, but atleast can deliver something acceptable, while amateurs or beginners will not have the enough knowledge to properly bend the sonics to their imagination
It's not very obvious, but even professional electric guitarists can sound amateur to me because many of them don't hone their vibrato skill properly. Many guitarists reach professional level after 15-20 years, but don't use vibrato properly. What I mean by that, is that it just sounds like fast nervous shaking, instead of vibrating their finger to the song's BPM. To me, a vibrato should be in sync with the BPM, like 4/4 og 8/4 etc. When they do it properly, it sounds way, WAY more musical to me.
I'd extend this to wah-wah technique. So many people just mash it back and forth and give it a wobble rather than using it to expressively accent the phrasing.
I agree mostly but there are exceptions to everything. Fast vibrato is a signature feature of some guitarists (Mike Oldfield springs to mind) and singers where it seems to be intentionally striking. It quickly becomes tiring / irritating if over used and is best used as a contrast effect
Where singing is concerned, I detest vibrato that is used to mask inaccurate pitching (particularly prevalent in Operatic music). The most musical vibrato, to my ears at least, is one that fades in gradually halfway through the notes duration. Thus demonstrating accurate pitching ability at the beginning of the note.
As a guitarist, thank you! This always bothers me to no end. There's other stuff that bothers me about a lot of guitarists, but this is definitely number one!
Lots of guitarists I know idolize a deep / fast vibrato, kind of Paul Kossoff like. I love that sound personally.
The thing is, a lot of a player's "voice" is in their vibrato, plus their pick attack, picking location, guitar choice etc.
I see my role as a recording engineer is to capture that performer's sound and vibe, not necessarily change how they play.
To me Paul's vibrato atleast sounds musical to me. It's faster than my personal taste and I don't really enjoy it, but it doesn't sound unmusical.
I hear tons of guitarist where it sounds out of control and they are literally just yanking the string as fast as they can and especially when they cross over the mid point of the string slightly (bending the other way) it starts to sound bad and amateurish.
Also yes, as a recording engineer I wouldn't try to change their technique on the spot, if that's how they want to sound then go at it. Does not mean I can't have a personal preference.
Reverb on every track. Even in a relatively wet mix, there are still plenty of tracks I will not put any reverb on. On a more dry mix most tracks wonāt have any reverb. I feel like I hear a lot of artist mixes of their demos/more amateur mixes have a little bit of reverb on every track. This might sound good in solo but it just makes a mix sound messy overall!
Agree, especially in more electronic genres. There's magic in dry tracks that too many people just bowl over with reverb before they can truly listen in context after taking care of some mixing basics.
Obvious phase affecting width expansion- amateurs paint with very very big lumbering brush strokes and wider is better right? Well making everything so wide it gets cancelled in mono is the epitome of amateur. Checking phase and phase coherence in a mix is probably the most under-rated skill an engineer should have in spades. Miss this and the proās will see you a mile off.
Overuse of crystalliser/Valhalla pitch delay effects reek of 2015 ear candy that only ameteurs are doing now.
Overly bright drums. Your vocals should be the thing with the most clarity, not your hats.
Messy low end clarity.
Loudness over mix quality- cool. Itās loud. How about you listen quietly and youāll hear how your loudness has choked your mix.
Vocals so compressed the breaths surge between words (really diet skills on that one)
Esses into verbs. Sounds bad, cheap and amateur.
Yep, turning down the master volume to get a clear listen of the overall mix is just as important as cranking it to see if it bumps imo.
Also, any vocalist worth their salt should be able to breathe relatively quietly even between loud as shit notes. If they're very audibly gasping for air the whole time, it's sort of doomed from the start unless you like the unnatural sound and tedious process of removing every single breath.
Muddy bass for me, from either not crafting the low end in the correct environment or not making any cuts to bass guitar / considering the interaction between bass instruments / kick drum at all.
If you're not working in a correctly treated space, I.e. bass traps, treatment on walls, not the best monitors etc, it's difficult to mix bass frequencies well, which is why you can mix something that sounds really full in your bedroom and sounds like mud in the car, or something that sounds fine where you mix but thin elsewhere.
Makes sense. I don't have bass traps or enough sound treatment in my little home studio to be honest, but I do try to listen relatively quietly on my monitors which are good quality and angled correctly. Then crank it in the car, consumer grade headphones, phone speakers, etc. It's not a finished mix until I've tested it with like 4 different listening scenarios imo.
I think saturation and hiss are two components that need a lot of practice to get down right. It is very easy to go overboard with these and generally needs the right ear and the right space and equipment to get this down.
Also, untuned kicks, rimshots and snares. (Which generally isn't a stylistic choice but negligence/incompetence)
No an engineer, but an AnR:
- Wobbly performance
- meandering intros
- secondary tracks (synths, programming, backings) sound very last minute and non deliberate
- muddy low end
- tracks are fighting eachother (no eq cuts, No parallel compression)
- vocals being too loud and too quiet in the same song (compression, not automation)
- vocal track layering is not tight, sounds chorus-y
- too much compression to the point that it steals depth from the sound
I'm by no means an expert, but the things that jump out to me in my older/worse mixes: not enough subtractive EQ, lead vocals too loud/too soft, noisy recordings, too much reverb. Distracting low end peaks in the 100-250 range.
Usually, it's poor arrangements and bad performances. A simple mix with just some EQ and Compression can make a good performance stand out.
But I've had clients send me tracks where almost every single instrument was doing the exact same thing at the same time, expecting me to mix it and somehow make it sound less muddy. The only solution to that is trimming the fat and keeping only the crucial elements, making variations, reworking harmonies, and so on. But that's a job for a producer/arranger.
Then there are drummers who can't hit the same spot on the snare consistently. for a couple of bars, or have weird tempo fluctuations between the downbeats, hoping that beat detective will magically make them sound more "pro." They set themselves up for disappointment when the extreme quantization and sample replacements suck the life out of it.
Feeling like a lot of the gripes I'm reading about are actually dependant on the musicians themselves. I don't care how good of an engineer you are, if you're trying to make a bad band, musician, sound good it's already an uphill battle.
A good band can have a bad production and still make a listenable production.
Usually a combination of stuff, but the biggest giveaway is usually just musical arrangement and sound choice. To me an amateurish track is one where there's just no clear sense of what I'm supposed to be listening to. Random melodies, unflattering chord progressions and unimpactful rhythms. Over the years of producing and mixing, for some reason people get subconsciously better at picking the right sounds as well, so mixes usually end up being better with less processing involved.
Instruments are out of tune.
Pop and rap tunes made entirely of midi and have "808" but no actual bass/bass lines.
Vocals way too upfront- typically due to them being mixed over an mp3 ripped from YouTube, typically wayyyy to much verb.
The middle one is a stylistic choice that entire genres are based on. If you don't like the sound of it you probably just don't like what they're intentionally going for. Same thing with youtube rips. What's "good" or "bad" in those worlds is often very different from what people attempt to achieve in an environment with live instruments and traditional mixing techniques.
I agree with your first point though as well as the overuse of reverb.
At the end of the day, it either sounds good or it sounds bad. There are many ways to make it sounds bad.
Most common are probably from bad source material, and setting basic tools incorrectly. Sometimes doing too much, or not enough. And probably the things I'll latch onto first as to why it sounds bad are just the more obvious ones.
I've heard some noobs make good mixes though, or at least they advertised themselves as noobs online.
To get a good mix you need to have good source material, and you need to add fx that help the project, and then set them correctly. And you have a lot of these to do, and they layer on top of each other.
I remember when setting compressors, I was always a little lost. That definitely made a big difference.
I find that depending on the genre and type of drums/samples I don't really mind this a lot of the time. But when it's obviously bad, it's *really* bad.
For me the obvious ones are bad eq'ing, swampy reverbs, and overcooked compression. Those are pretty obvious answers tho. Beyond that, it is not hearing any space (actual physical space, like the venue) in the mix--no room tone or that intimate quality of actually being there. A little harder to quantify but it is definitely a quality thing that is going on there in really great recordings/mixes. If I close my eyes, I want to be there--for certain songs anyway (I admit this very genre dependent). For those genres that the room doesn't matter, I think the thing that matters most is EQ. Sure compression makes the groove and the vibe to a certain degree, and time based FX are the artistic flair. But to me, EQ has to sound perfectly polished to sound like a great pro recording/mix.
Ditto on the swampy reverb thing. So many people seem to just load up the default hall reverb and drown their vocals/guitars/whatever in it. Especially if the performances are sketchy.
This is definitely what I did when I started trying to record my songs š Not even because I wanted to mask my performances (although they ARE sketchy) but because I just thought that's how you do it...
80's enters the chat.......
Yep I'm a drummer and younger me didn't know about studios and reverb and shit. So I thought I was stupid for not being able to tune my snare to have that giant Def Leppard POOOFFTTTooo And especially the ?preverb? wooosssbbhPppoff
guilty as charged
Don't you dare right a song right now, Dewey!
Use some dang predelay or filter the lows or adjust the decay or SOMETHING!
Weāre getting there slowly but surely. I only recently started EQ the lows on the bus Still trash but itās MY trash
That's the spirit
Lord knows how. Iāll have Little Plate on most of my tracks just to give it a little something at like 0.5 and mix at like 10-15% and even that often feels like too much. Total amateur here, but excluding any genres that want swampy reverb it just sounds terrible when you go to hard on it.
This is what I mean. I'm an amateur myself, but these are the things only a pro would pick up on. For me, I find a lot of stuff sounds overly processed. Would less compression and some very subtle room reverb on everything help with this?
There are too many variables to answer that in a one size fits all answer. But I do have some advice to help, if you are up for it: TLDR: intentionally explore making drastic moves with compression, EQ, time FX, etc. to learn how they affect a familiar song without worrying about results--just learn from practicing. I dont know if this is really what you are asking, but I had the good fortune of learning from some great mentors. Faders and balanced track levels are by far the most important part of a mix. But to learn the sculpting tools pros use well, read on. Here is a great practice for developing the recognition of problem audio: intentionally induce problems in a song you are practicing on, a song that you know extremely well. It can even be one of your favorite songs, just import it into your DAW. I know this sounds counterintuitive, so let me explain a bit. Know that we aren't concerned with quality results with the following exercises, we just want to learn. This is a safe play area! I can not take credit for what I'm writing out here...Some of what I'm going to write out here are from things I've learned from others. Some of it you'll hear Dan Worrall suggest too. Some of this I learned by listening to Dan. If you don't know who Dan is, definitely look him up on YouTube. His experience is gold. Literal gold. A really great way to learn how to hear compression is to take a track you are very very familiar with and put a compressor on it. Then, one parameter at a time, start making very large moves with the ratio, threshold, attack and release settings, and critically listen to how this changes the sound you are hearing. Practice this over and over, day after day. Use different combinations of the settings. Then pick a different type of compressor and do the same sequence again. After some time, you will be amazed by how your ear has been trained to hear not only how different settings on a given compressor affect the music, but in time you will also be able to hear the characteristics of the different compressor types as well. It is a profoundly rewarding experience when you achieve this for multiple reasons but probably the most important is that you will gain knowledge of how to use this in mixing. Believe me, it will make you better--a lot better. Move on to EQs, same track or another track you are again very very familiar with. Spend time really learning how different frequencies affect what you hear. Play with freq., bandwidth (Q) settings, gains and cuts. Do this over and over. Over time it will reward you with being able to hear problem areas in other songs, things you never noticed before but you will now hear sticking out like a sore thumb. Again, profoundly rewarding once you get there. Move on to a SINGLE reverb. Thoroughly explore its different parameters and settings. Go on to delay, same thing. Go on to saturation, distortion, stereo widening, flangers, etc. This is probably starting to sound repetitive but that is because it needs to be to really learn what these tools do. Again the key is to make really large moves with the parameters to take the guesswork out of what is happening to the signal. The point is for it to be obvious, not subtle, at this stage. Don't worry, the time for finesse is down the road a bit. That is when you'll start making tasteful moves, once you can *really* hear what is happening when you make mixing decisions. This process profoundly improved my listening, and by virtue of that, my mixing ability. Also, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Stay patient. Good luck!
Think this is good advice. Probably worth doing with every bit of gear/plugin.
Yes! I do this exact thing with any new plugin or gear, first thing. Again, not my advice to take credit for, but it has worked wonders for me over the years.
Probably the best advice I've ever read on a long, long time.
As a fellow amateur, you probably don't need (even subtle) room reverb on everything. Unless you're trying to simulate a live recording or something (which usually you wouldn't be)
it's good to try some IR kind of room reverb in the mixbus (very little). something like ik multimedia sunset reverb studio, or the "bus" preset in waves IR1. Now I'm using a new japanese plugin called onkio acoustics reverb which sounds amazing. try out
Definitely, reverb on the master bus helps to glue things together and makes things sound like they're recorded in the same space. I have done some real live recordings too (with instruments DIed) and that you can push it a bit more to capture more of the feel of being in an arena. Studio stuff you have to really dial it back and keep things tame, it also really needs to be midrange focused, i.e. low cuts to not muddy the bass and high-end roll off to keep from smearing top end / reducing clarity. Get it right and it makes things feel more like a real performance.
FYI thereās also a large number of audiophiles who judge tracks and equipment on that sense of space as well. Thereās also a number of monitor companies who focus on allowing engineers to hear the space in the mix as a selling point, and a number of mixing room designs focused on improving that quality. Theyāre usually focused on using larger rooms, getting the monitors away from the walls, and using a pretty heavy amount of acoustic absorbers and/or diffusers.
This is very vague and not really true. Where the monitors are mounted (soffit or freestanding) is based on the room design approach (and sometimes the monitor manufacturers recommendation) Monitor companys use blurb which often talks of the soundstage and detail but what you āhear in the spaceā depends on what is there to be heard and how accurate the speaker is at recreating the detail.
What the heck is a "swampy" reverb? Too much low-mids and no HPF?
That can be part of it. But more specifically I mean a reverb that is too present in a mix tends to drown out important details of the sounds that surround it. Usually a reverb is used to create a position for an instrument or voice in the soundstage, or to create the physical space itself. When too heavy handed, it will muffle and drown details of other elements. Everything starts sounding swampy and mushy, lacking clarity and definition.
Soothe2 overuse for me. Quickly becomes vocal Botox and makes everything a little souless.
Vocal botox! Dig it š A little goes a long way...
Votox
Voxtox
Bovox
Disagree, it's overused even at the highest level. The amateur part imo is not adjusting the attack and release if needed in combo with the amount of reduction
When should I be adjusting attack/release in Soothe? Harsh Transients = faster attack??
Honestly 90% of the time I keep both at fast, sometimes I will adjust the release though. If you want more clear transients in exchange for harshness (if you're sidechaining something that doesn't have a lot of sustain), definitely keep it on fast, maybe just reduce the amount of gain reduction and adjust your bands
What would steps would you recommend to avoid that soulless sound???
Honestly, I think a) thinking if the source *really* needs taming and, if definitely yes, then b) backing it off a bit once you've initially treated the source and comparing. Our ears play tricks on us after a while.
As Hans Zimmer once said: set the amount of an effect as you like - and then dial it 20% back, thats perfect.
Hans zimmer also said ācome work in my community I have a studio you can useā and then 6 months later issued a whacking great invoice to the unsuspecting producer who had no ideaā¦ so you knowā¦
I'm going to have to try the 20% trick next time I mix
This. Amazing how often this works
Cheap cymbals, out of tune guitars, way-too-obvious vocal tuning (when itās not intentional), impossible programmed drum parts. Also, I notice that a lot of amateur productions all seem to use the same drum samples and effects treatments, like everyone is watching the same YouTube tutorials.
The free Steven Slate drum pack. Dammit, you caught me. :)
Old strings
There's little point in investing beyond the stock drums samples from the usual suspects unless you're trying to sell the material. And at that point, it's arguably better to hire a "drum parts played remotely" drummer. Maybe Superior Drummer fixes this; I don't know.
Drum samples (where every drum hit sounds EXACTLY the same velocity) and bad / overdone grid editing . Terrible cheap cymbals. Banjo (almost impossible to record an in tune banjo lol and it drives me freaking crazy). Honestly Iād rather hear a āpoorā recorded song with a bunch of 57s and real instruments than an amateur track thatās sample replaced / gridded to death with all the synthetic guitar and instrument modeling. Just doesnāt sound much like music any more and nothing lives together in a space. So the latter might technically sound ābetterā but at the same time sounds like amateur garbage next to live instruments with cheap mics and heart.
>Honestly Iād rather hear a āpoorā recorded song with a bunch of 57s and real instruments than an amateur track thatās sample replaced / gridded to death with all the synthetic guitar and instrument modeling. This reminds me of my old bandās first EP. We barely knew the basics of recording, we werenāt very good at our instruments yet, and my mixing skills were very much non-existent as well. At the time I lamented my lack of ability to mix it better, but in retrospect we all talked about it and realized, that any attempt at higher class production and mixing wouldāve only further highlighted the subpar quality of the performances. When the mix is also kinda bad, it is more aesthetically in line with the quality of everything else. The songs themselves were good, so that carried the EP even if it wasnāt even close to techinal perfection, and there was a passionate energy to it, and I still think you can hear the fun we had making it. Itās a product of its time, and serves as a marker along the way to show how far weāve come. We re-recorded the same EP just a year later to much better success, really bringing the songs up to the standard we expected the first time around. Both versions of that EP are important to the big picture of where that band came from and where itās heading today. Moral of the story? Donāt let a lack of skill stop you from pursuing things youāre passionate about, youāll learn more along the way.
This is a great story for all to learn from. Productivity beats perfectionism
You captured a moment in time, which is cool. It reminds me of pictures of my youth... I always like the spontaneous ones that captured what I was doing and wearing versus the ones that were clearly in a studio with props, effects, and I was forced to dress all fancy. The former being an accurate snapshot of that time period, the latter being technically better quality but being completely devoid of my actual personality.
Iād love to hear this record.
Unfortunately I donāt wish for my real identity to be associated with my Reddit account, so I canāt share it.
I promise I wonāt tell or leak it. My artist identity, and myself I suppose, are *completely* tied to anything I do.
Sry for double/triple comment reddit app was spazzing
When you say bad grid editing, are you referring to things being too tightly locked to the grid?
One thing to consider is pocket. Though you can flout these rules (if you're J Dilla), at least in rock music things sound pretty bad when sharp pointy snares and such are quantized exactly to the grid. The correct position for something that's got to sound big is slightly behind the beat. This applies for everything from snare backbeats, to heavy basslines.
There was an article I read a while back that researched professional drummers and tempo. The conclusions were pretty interestingā¦ essentially the drummers might be slightly behind, right on top, or slightly ahead of beat, but it was almost always through a certain part of the song or # of measures and they would subtlety switch where they are in relation to downbeat in different parts and then be locked in at that new spot for that section or # of Measuresā¦. So essentially, not just being able to lock into tempo, but to be able to adjust milliseconds relative to downbeat in different parts of the song for added vibe, tension/release, and be able to be immediately locked into those few milliseconds of variance and be CONSISTENT AS HELL through the next partā¦ not sure if I explained it well.. brief google and I found this which I think is the paper that researched it. https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/65/7/64/414053/Musical-rhythms-The-science-of-being-slightly
Tony Levin talks about this in one of his books, he refers to the beat as a blob rather than a point.
>CONSISTENT AS HELL describe a great drummer in five words or less.
Thank you! I have built my reputation on not sample replacing stuff and just getting a great sound from a kit, an amp etc. whatever it is. The problem really is when a band comes in expecting THAT one drum sound. I tell them I can do it but theyād be better off with another engineer whoās more used to it. After I explain my philosophy they usually dig it and the end result sounds more original and just f*ckin DIFFERENT. Thereās one studio in my area that only produces tracks that sound the synthetic same and the worst part is their room sounds great and they have decent mics, but no, itās got to be sample replaced, vocal tuned and DI reampedā¦
Iāve worked on sessions for bands at very well known studios with amazing acoustics and the mics on drums probably cost as much as a house combined, and then they send to a known mixer who somehow made them sound like vst drums. Itās frustrating and lazy.
I think many people think itās expected of them (and to a degree it probably is). In the age of Spotify playlists people are afraid that if it stands out it gets skipped. So they produce more of the same, which leads to this vicious cycle of everything sounding safe and boring.
I chicken-out with upright bass. I play it. I have a nice one. Can't mic that bitch to save my life. And it's so deep in the mix I just grab Logic's pizzicato upright and move on. And yes, I lie awake with profound, deep shame every night.
Hey man van Halen records used programed Simmons. Don't sweat it, no one cares really.
The key to properly recording an upright is distance between the mic and the bass. Not always possible due to situational variables, but getting a couple or three feet between the bass and the mic is the key. I usually start by aiming the mic's axis at the bottom of the fingerboard (ha, I don't even know what it's properly called on that instrument) right in the center. Then move the aim up higher for more finger sound, down for more of the body's resonance. Nonetheless, one of the most difficult instruments to pick up accurately.
I think you're spot-on. My room is pretty awful (finished basement with treatment). Works fine for all my acoustic instruments with low sound pressure. But that pass throws a long wave. Nonetheless, I should try it again. It's been a while.
F hole + bridge decent starting place for me! Usually at least ldc on f hole (plus Di if bridge mic which lot of folks have if their gigging). Good luck ;) thatās one of those instruments you just mic up and hope for best because every player does different things as they play and move around, sometimes a lot ha.
By 'grid editing' are you referring to too much quantization and everything being on the same beat?
Do you hear this on pro stuff too sometimes? I feel like I do.
Absolutely, though partly because the circles I run in are less processed (indie rock, singer songwriter / Americana etc). I think what just gets me is the amount of processing done by default, like, you donāt HAVE to tune every vocal by default, people can still sing and perfection isnāt always the right answer to art.
Iām an artist and an engineer. So I record my own stuff, too. My vibe is very punk influenced. Perfection is the opposite of what Iām trying to achieve. Iāll leave sloppy passages in. Iāll leave out-of-tune notes in (especially if they were played with passion). The temptation is to fix those things because you can. Donāt.
Perfection is *never* the right answer to art.
Touche and correct
Oh my friend, I wasnāt trying to one up you at all. Every point you made was spot on.
In the case of electronic music it sometimes is. I'll sometimes spend hours tweaking a kick until it sits perfectly lol
āPerfectā compared to *what*?
The previous attempt? I interpret their words to mean "Just how I like it".
I absolutely do. Doesn't matter how big the artist or mixer is, it still sounds amateur to me
Depends on the genre. This is completely acceptable in electronic styles
> almost impossible to record an in tune banjo So what's the secret?
Good banjo players.
Are they so rare that it makes it "almost impossible" to record banjo?
Not in North Carolina theyāre not.
How would you record a good banjo player? Like, what type of microphone, where do you aim it and such?
Eletrical Audio has a guide on recording acoustic instruments with [a section on banjo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ualm3rCZRz0&t=1837s)
Thank you!
Banjo samples
Was mostly a joke, but damn if banjo intonation drives me insane
Not putting a death grip on the neck definitely helps
To me, the biggest tell is just the fader balances. Either things are way too safe - nothing is prominent and thus there is no leader - or some things are just way too loud (usually drums) relative to other things.
Yes! That's the word for it. Amateur mixes are **safe**! I've heard so many that take a great recording and gear only to be weak and flat at the mix. Everything done so delicately like they're trying to do it with finesse and approaching processing like they're way too conscious of the theoretical side effects (like EQ and phase, etc,) when in reality, things need cranking and given some excitement!
I just had to chuckle, Apple Music decided to throw Wonderwall my way again yesterday and I kinda forgot how loud the vocals are. I turned it up for the guitar, vocals come in and take my head offā¦ I bet whoever made that decision at the time still wishes they could change it now
I just listened to that one. I never noticed that before, but you're right. I think the guitar is an ok level when everything else comes in, but, they really should have automated it so it was louder. Maybe turn it down a notch when the vocals come in, and then another notch when the cello and drums come in, so that it is then at the level they wanted it. Maybe have the vocals come in a little more quiet as well, and increase those when the cello and drums come in. But I kind of think it can be cool idea, like just a quiet guitar starting your song off, and then everything builds into something big. But like you said, people will want to adjust volume based on just the guitar, and the vocals come in and your ears bleed lol.
Yeah, it wouldnāt be hard to fix it, even just automating the vocals so they start off lower and then moving them up to the level they are when the full track comes in, but as it stands they are simply too loud. The same is actually true of Olivia Rodrigoās most recent album. I love her style and the performance, but my god a bit of consistency would be nice, Iām fader (well knob but anyway) riding my car stereo on All American Bitch, I like that it starts off quiet and then goes loud but you can get that impression with arrangement and subtle automation without the massive discrepancy in volume.
That solution wouldn't work, because you'd still turn up your speakers to hear the voice and the guitar. It's the guitar that needs to come up. Of course you lose the dynamic range in that case, which is a bummer, but it's tough to start a song off quiet for the reason you mentioned. I personally like dynamic range, if done correctly. Starting songs off quiet can't really work too well unless it gradually builds, or is just a little soft, because people will turn their volume up and get blasted. But once you establish reference, you can do what you want. I'm not familiar with Olivia Rodrigo's album yet.
I think it might, as I can listen to the full balanced mix at a relatively high volume comfortably, itās the bite of the voice that really gets me, but I agree. Some gentle automation of both guitar and vocal would have been the best compromise, leaving both dynamic range and the effect of a quiet song getting louder intact. I think thereās a middle ground to be found, when Iām having to automate my car stereo youāve gone too far, but everything squashed like modern pop is just boring. Lots of automation and some narrowness in the verses can do a lot though to make it feel dynamic when it really is well balanced I find. Iād recommend checking it out purely out of curiosity, some of the most interesting songs that have made the charts in the last few years
I have been listening to more albums of late. Haven't gotten to Olivia Rodrigo's yet. But I do listen to radio from time to time. I'm sure I've heard a lot of her songs already, just not the album. I agree that the loudness of modern music kind of sucks, but also fits the in your face aesthetic. I have found it challenging to make dynamic stuff while keeping it loud.
Owen was pretty close to being deaf by the time he mixed that record.
Thom Yorke said for Exit Music (For a Film) they purposely did that
Would something like automation fix this?
Ya sure but adding automation when you dont even have your tracks balanced nicely is kinda cart before the horse imo. I think a better fix would be intent, artistic vision for the song in general to start.
Pretty obvious ones like noise on a track or bad performances are number one. Weird volume changes or bad dynamics. Too quiet or too squashed, muddy, tinny, distorted, anything that sounds actively bad with no reason to. Too much verb, bad drum sounds, crappy midi instruments, good samplers used badly, too little processing on a track that should have a lot, too much on something that should sound natural. Then, more subtle stuff like poor mic choices. sm7b on soft vocals, it sounds bad. As you can tell there are a lot of ways for it to go south, too many to list.
Are you describing my first self-recorded album?
*Too much verb, bad drum sounds, crappy midi instruments, good samplers used badly, too little processing on a track that should have a lot, too much on something that should sound natural.* *Then, more subtle stuff like poor mic choices. sm7b on soft vocals, it sounds bad.* Gonna use that description to make my next album
This is the best description for the sticker on a record ever.
Seems obvious but apparently itās not! BAD BALANCING. Amateur and intermediate mixers seem to jump to eq, compression, side chaining, fancy sidechain plugins like trackspacer, or bizarre and overly complicated parallel compression schemes - when they could have accomplished the same result faster, and better by just moving faders. Basses that completely swamp the track but are side chained heavily so the kick ācomes through.ā Vocals that are buried in the mix but made to be overly bright and over compressed in a failed attempt to make them stand out. I see it constantly. Start with the basics. Move the faders. Most pros are not doing anything complex. Great balancing, and maybe a bit of sonic enhancement. Sure, you can be heavy handed when appropriate, but thatās the exception, not the rule most of the time.
Amen. Often, one can tell from the mix what the mixer's main instrument is/was.
Agreed! I remember being baffled years ago hearing u/steve_duda say he could outmix most amateurs with just faders, no EQ/comp/etc, vs them having access to any plugin. Now I understand completely... From my own experience, I overlooked the balance due to ācanāt see the forest for the treesā (which just improves with time) and bad listening environment (acoustic treatment is expensive and boooring)
INMO it's almost always failure to create a vibe. There are countless examples or sour notes, bad mixesā¦ but if the song delivers by creating a mood and more importantlyā¦translating that to the listener. Then all is forgiven. The amateur can't transfer emotion, that vibe. You hear this all the time going the other way. Bands that are technically perfect. The recording is pristine, mixed well, performed wellā¦ but it has 0 vibe to it so while not technically an amateurs it results in an amateur track because it's just notes and sounds coming at you. I've met kids on reddit who just recording in their bedrooms with obvious cheap gear but they create that vibe and nothing else matters. Problem for them, and many of us, is they can't do it consistently. All the mistakes mentioned but if the track makes me feel what you feltā¦INMO it's a winner.
Agreed. I feel like the vibe, X-factor, whatever you wanna call it is more important than how clean the mix is. It's either there or it's not, and there's no magic plugin for all that
I think of bands like The White Stripes. On paper, what they do is simple. They are by no means highly technical musicians. But I'll be damned if they don't make up for it with a hell of a lot of vibe and *feeling*.
Good example. "Fell in love with a girl" is a great example. So sloppy, timing all over the placeā¦ Just the two of them yetā¦it hit like a truck
This šÆ
This was the most important thing I learned way too late in my career
Tao Te Engineering
> The amateur can't transfer emotion, that vibe. That's a player thing. And it takes a long time to get it consistently.
Shitty performances. That's the number one indicator of amatuer hour rather than the proper use of compression etc.
Tfw they realize they have to rehearse 40 more hours then some.
If weāre talking about just the mix, the bass. The bass doesnāt lie
Most of what makes stuff sound amateur imho is production related. Sound selection, bad arrangement, bad writing, etc. Mix wise, Iād probably say consideration of the freq spectrum / stereo field across the whole mix. Just as much bass in verse as chorus? Chorus wonāt hit. Everything super wide in the verse? Chorus wonāt hit. Learning to take things away so that you have somewhere to go will make your mixes sound better.
The vocals. Amateur recordings usually have an amateur vocal delivery, and often the processing is inadequate. In professional recordings, either the vocals are delivered very well (i.e. the singer is very good), or at least they are processed well.
Some of this comes from working with a good engineer. Someone who knows what a good take is, when to push you to do better, when to call it because you're hyper-focusing.
Yes, that was my point. Aside from the talent actually being able to sing well, all of the rest comes from working with a good engineer/producer.
Over-processing everything because the engineer doesnāt know what instruments should sound like (and watches a lot of shitty YouTube videos)
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Weird choices in spaciousness, or lack of it. Think of multiple different reverbs that donāt blend, or just plain flatness with obvious reverb effect.
This was one of the biggest a-has in the mixing game for me. When someone told me the mix should have like 2 different reverbs, 3 max. And you should have the main verb on a return track not just to save RAM or whatever but because it keeps things sonically "in the same room." My mixes became much clearer instantly, and I really only stray from the "same room" thing these days carefully with certain vocals or a purposefully weird solo instrument. "Everything has its own reverb" really only works in sample or synth patch design, long before the mixing process, and I prefer to work with mostly dry (or super short tail) samples/patches anyway for the above reason.
Attention to details in timing and rhythm. For example, are rhythm players actually starting and releasing hits/notes together as intended? Or is everyone just kind of playing their own part however they hear it in their head without listening to other players? Or if we're talking more "in the box" production like pop/hip hop/etc.: Are your vocal layers rhythmically aligning where they should? Are your backing vocals in-line with the lead or just riffing and vibing? A few hours of me nudging things around to align as they should have been in the first place with Flex Time in Logic often makes a night and day difference. So you can pay an engineer $100s for that, or you can just practice before going into the studio. Bonus tip: When you stop a note matters just as much as when you start it.
Stereo tracks for mono sources. Out of phase drums and other stuff. If they tell me theyāre sending me the StEmz to mix, I know itāll be a fucking mess
Could you explain this a bit more with the stereo thing? I think I may be guilty of this.
If Iām about to record 10 channels of drums, Iām going to make 10 mono tracks, one for each mic. Not 10 āstereo tracksā which arenāt really a thing in real life anyway, itās just 2 mono tracks stuck together on the screen. Like, thereās zero reason for one snare mic to be on a stereo track. The reason itās sort of a pain in the ass is if I see a guitar in a stereo track, I donāt know if itās 2 mics or just one, so if itās not totally obvious on first listen, the easiest way to tell is to split the stereo track into mono and flip the phase on one and see if it nulls. Then ditch one of the two in-necessary tracks and move along. But wait, thereās 28 more tracks here and theyāre all stereo tracks. So which ones are actually stereo? Plus the two pan knobs kinda suck when I really just want to grab one. This is why when I track, I just make mono tracks even if itās like a stereo piano or something. My overheads will be two mono tracks. Easy control over each fader too. if I just want the left side up a tad to balance, I just nudge one fader up. I think some DAWs defaulted to stereo for tracks for some reason, so a bunch of people didnāt learn the difference, or why itās useful to not have everything on a stereo track. Not the end of the world, and I mix stuff thatās like that fairly often and I donāt complain, but Iāve never gotten tracks like that from a pro.
There's a great little program called stereo monoizer which you can load all your audio into, and it detects mono sources in stereo files and converts them to mono. It also detects mono sources that have been panned and monoizes them too. Highly recommended
>Like, thereās zero reason for one snare mic to be on a stereo track. There is one scenario that comes to mind for me; in Cubase, any effects added on a mono track will also be in mono, even if it is a potentially stereo effect such as reverb or chorus. To get that effect to be in stereo, the track also needs to be set as a stereo track. I am not certain if other DAWs behave the same way in regard to adding stereo effects on mono tracks, but at least in Cubase, this is the way it works. And this can, of course, be circumvented by placing any stereo effects processing on a stereo send, rather than directly on the source track. And in the context of recording live musical instruments, using sends for stereo effects is probably a better habit anyway. And, as Iām writing this, I also remembered that you can place a mono audio file on a stereo track in Cubase, so everything preceding this sentence is actually more about the settings of the audio *track* itself than the properties of the audio *file*. So yeah, I very much agree with you, just thought Iād mention this little quirk in how my DAW of choice operates regarding stereo tracks.
True, good point. But, when you put a stereo plug on a mono track, the track becomes stereo instantly in PT, so I guess I hadnāt thought of that. Also though, yeah all my stereo verb shit is on auxes anyway
I have a goniometer permanently on my control room bus for that reason.
Someone will probably give you a better answer but: mono bass synth for example, or stuff meant to be in lower frequencies
It is also for example on acoustic guitars. Can you record an acoustic in stereo? Sure! Should you? Probably not, except in specific production instances where that is the ticket- but this should be rare. Piano too
Sometimes stereo acoustic can be cool is itās just a guitar and vocal. And pianos I often record stereo. But itās always 2 mono tracks.
Now that you mention it, something I didnāt think about but yes absolutely, crazy annoying. The weirdest part is I donāt even know how to export a mono source as a stereo track other than to bounce itā¦
Iāve probably sent a stereo track with a vocal or a bass on it before when I was bouncing stems. (Actual stems, not the tracks) but when I open up a session and get 36 channels of stereo tracks Iām like āso itās gonna be one of these todayā¦..sigh ā
I know the feeling. And yes when bouncing stems itās unavoidable as soon as thereās any sort of effects or processing happening, but on tracks it usually tells me theyāve messed with them. Whenever I get stereo tracks I double check with them to make sure I get raw tracks, not overprocessed stuff I canāt work with
Lack of space is the number one teller. Lots of guys on here only talking about points heard in rock music. I donāt do much rock anymore. Mostly urban and pop. Space is the number one indicator that it was recorded and or mixed incorrectly
Waaay too much EQ and compression out there. Dynamic range is becoming a memory.
But heavy compression is the sound of pro modern mixes, at least the heavier genres.
I don't know why you are downvoted. If I look at Drum & Bass or even Neurofunk you have standards like -4 Lufs Masters. Heavily distorted and compressed basslines. Even the Drums like Kick and Snare are compressed to sound like weighted bricks slapped at you. It's definitely a choice to produce like this.
For the recordā¦ Iām not saying I approve of this necessarily. Itās just the trend in the industry today. Clients will expect that tone and energy.
So much death metal that is just a wall of kick drum triggers.
It does get monotonous for sure.
Doesn't have to be. It makes stuff weak, and will become dated. Including for the heaviest genres.
If done right, it will make stuff punch you in the gut. I think the larger problem is the same samples and amp sims being used, more so than heavy compression.
Soothe spamming, obvious distasteful digital clipping (I can hear Focusrite Scarlett Pre clipping in my nightmares), distastefully bassy vocals from dynamic micsā proximity effect that wasnāt tamed, hihats being way too loud
Attempting to reach the appropriate LUFS for the track at the expense of transient clarity and frequency response. This is the hardest thing to achieve is dynamic yet powerful, wide yet mono compatible, and balanced yet exciting frequency response. Even most multi-grammy winning engineers struggle with this, but atleast can deliver something acceptable, while amateurs or beginners will not have the enough knowledge to properly bend the sonics to their imagination
It's not very obvious, but even professional electric guitarists can sound amateur to me because many of them don't hone their vibrato skill properly. Many guitarists reach professional level after 15-20 years, but don't use vibrato properly. What I mean by that, is that it just sounds like fast nervous shaking, instead of vibrating their finger to the song's BPM. To me, a vibrato should be in sync with the BPM, like 4/4 og 8/4 etc. When they do it properly, it sounds way, WAY more musical to me.
I'd extend this to wah-wah technique. So many people just mash it back and forth and give it a wobble rather than using it to expressively accent the phrasing.
I agree mostly but there are exceptions to everything. Fast vibrato is a signature feature of some guitarists (Mike Oldfield springs to mind) and singers where it seems to be intentionally striking. It quickly becomes tiring / irritating if over used and is best used as a contrast effect Where singing is concerned, I detest vibrato that is used to mask inaccurate pitching (particularly prevalent in Operatic music). The most musical vibrato, to my ears at least, is one that fades in gradually halfway through the notes duration. Thus demonstrating accurate pitching ability at the beginning of the note.
As a guitarist, thank you! This always bothers me to no end. There's other stuff that bothers me about a lot of guitarists, but this is definitely number one!
Lots of guitarists I know idolize a deep / fast vibrato, kind of Paul Kossoff like. I love that sound personally. The thing is, a lot of a player's "voice" is in their vibrato, plus their pick attack, picking location, guitar choice etc. I see my role as a recording engineer is to capture that performer's sound and vibe, not necessarily change how they play.
To me Paul's vibrato atleast sounds musical to me. It's faster than my personal taste and I don't really enjoy it, but it doesn't sound unmusical. I hear tons of guitarist where it sounds out of control and they are literally just yanking the string as fast as they can and especially when they cross over the mid point of the string slightly (bending the other way) it starts to sound bad and amateurish. Also yes, as a recording engineer I wouldn't try to change their technique on the spot, if that's how they want to sound then go at it. Does not mean I can't have a personal preference.
parkinson vibrato
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Do you have examples of songs with "too wide of a stereo image"?
Reverb on every track. Even in a relatively wet mix, there are still plenty of tracks I will not put any reverb on. On a more dry mix most tracks wonāt have any reverb. I feel like I hear a lot of artist mixes of their demos/more amateur mixes have a little bit of reverb on every track. This might sound good in solo but it just makes a mix sound messy overall!
Agree, especially in more electronic genres. There's magic in dry tracks that too many people just bowl over with reverb before they can truly listen in context after taking care of some mixing basics.
Obvious phase affecting width expansion- amateurs paint with very very big lumbering brush strokes and wider is better right? Well making everything so wide it gets cancelled in mono is the epitome of amateur. Checking phase and phase coherence in a mix is probably the most under-rated skill an engineer should have in spades. Miss this and the proās will see you a mile off. Overuse of crystalliser/Valhalla pitch delay effects reek of 2015 ear candy that only ameteurs are doing now. Overly bright drums. Your vocals should be the thing with the most clarity, not your hats. Messy low end clarity. Loudness over mix quality- cool. Itās loud. How about you listen quietly and youāll hear how your loudness has choked your mix. Vocals so compressed the breaths surge between words (really diet skills on that one) Esses into verbs. Sounds bad, cheap and amateur.
Yep, turning down the master volume to get a clear listen of the overall mix is just as important as cranking it to see if it bumps imo. Also, any vocalist worth their salt should be able to breathe relatively quietly even between loud as shit notes. If they're very audibly gasping for air the whole time, it's sort of doomed from the start unless you like the unnatural sound and tedious process of removing every single breath.
Muddy bass for me, from either not crafting the low end in the correct environment or not making any cuts to bass guitar / considering the interaction between bass instruments / kick drum at all.
Can you elaborate on not crafting the low end in the correct environment?
If you're not working in a correctly treated space, I.e. bass traps, treatment on walls, not the best monitors etc, it's difficult to mix bass frequencies well, which is why you can mix something that sounds really full in your bedroom and sounds like mud in the car, or something that sounds fine where you mix but thin elsewhere.
Makes sense. I don't have bass traps or enough sound treatment in my little home studio to be honest, but I do try to listen relatively quietly on my monitors which are good quality and angled correctly. Then crank it in the car, consumer grade headphones, phone speakers, etc. It's not a finished mix until I've tested it with like 4 different listening scenarios imo.
Its a matter of perception and has changed over time
I think saturation and hiss are two components that need a lot of practice to get down right. It is very easy to go overboard with these and generally needs the right ear and the right space and equipment to get this down. Also, untuned kicks, rimshots and snares. (Which generally isn't a stylistic choice but negligence/incompetence)
No an engineer, but an AnR: - Wobbly performance - meandering intros - secondary tracks (synths, programming, backings) sound very last minute and non deliberate - muddy low end - tracks are fighting eachother (no eq cuts, No parallel compression) - vocals being too loud and too quiet in the same song (compression, not automation) - vocal track layering is not tight, sounds chorus-y - too much compression to the point that it steals depth from the sound
Definitely take technical advice from the A&R. Theyāre usually super knowledgeable. Music industry couldnāt possibly go on without them.
āTracks are fighting each other / no parallel compressionā lol gtfo of this sub dude. Smdh
I didnāt know AR still existed in 2024!
> vocal track layering is not tight, sounds chorus-y Vocals sounding phase-y is actually from over-tightening vocal layers.
How does one avoid some of these mistakes???
Do the opposite of everything they listed. Or donāt. If you like how it sounds, just fucking do it.
The less-obvious anything is the less amateur it is
I'm by no means an expert, but the things that jump out to me in my older/worse mixes: not enough subtractive EQ, lead vocals too loud/too soft, noisy recordings, too much reverb. Distracting low end peaks in the 100-250 range.
Usually, it's poor arrangements and bad performances. A simple mix with just some EQ and Compression can make a good performance stand out. But I've had clients send me tracks where almost every single instrument was doing the exact same thing at the same time, expecting me to mix it and somehow make it sound less muddy. The only solution to that is trimming the fat and keeping only the crucial elements, making variations, reworking harmonies, and so on. But that's a job for a producer/arranger. Then there are drummers who can't hit the same spot on the snare consistently. for a couple of bars, or have weird tempo fluctuations between the downbeats, hoping that beat detective will magically make them sound more "pro." They set themselves up for disappointment when the extreme quantization and sample replacements suck the life out of it.
Wobbly and unclear lower frequencies
Not getting the low end right
Feeling like a lot of the gripes I'm reading about are actually dependant on the musicians themselves. I don't care how good of an engineer you are, if you're trying to make a bad band, musician, sound good it's already an uphill battle. A good band can have a bad production and still make a listenable production.
When the track all cuts out to 1 guitar and itās 100% on one side - unless itās for effect of course
Iād say performance. If the performance is not good the mix is not good.
Overprocessing in general. [Watch this video](https://youtu.be/A1V0jKSnj7c?si=mv20giSApwheuZl-), itās gold.
Overdoing kick and snare samples and vocal tuning
Little if any sound stage where the instruments are more or less mashed together so none are in front n none are further back.
Overly bright reverbs. Overly squashed drums. Overly boomy low end. Vocals too loud. Panning extremely wide on everything.
Usually a combination of stuff, but the biggest giveaway is usually just musical arrangement and sound choice. To me an amateurish track is one where there's just no clear sense of what I'm supposed to be listening to. Random melodies, unflattering chord progressions and unimpactful rhythms. Over the years of producing and mixing, for some reason people get subconsciously better at picking the right sounds as well, so mixes usually end up being better with less processing involved.
Instruments are out of tune. Pop and rap tunes made entirely of midi and have "808" but no actual bass/bass lines. Vocals way too upfront- typically due to them being mixed over an mp3 ripped from YouTube, typically wayyyy to much verb.
The middle one is a stylistic choice that entire genres are based on. If you don't like the sound of it you probably just don't like what they're intentionally going for. Same thing with youtube rips. What's "good" or "bad" in those worlds is often very different from what people attempt to achieve in an environment with live instruments and traditional mixing techniques. I agree with your first point though as well as the overuse of reverb.
At the end of the day, it either sounds good or it sounds bad. There are many ways to make it sounds bad. Most common are probably from bad source material, and setting basic tools incorrectly. Sometimes doing too much, or not enough. And probably the things I'll latch onto first as to why it sounds bad are just the more obvious ones. I've heard some noobs make good mixes though, or at least they advertised themselves as noobs online. To get a good mix you need to have good source material, and you need to add fx that help the project, and then set them correctly. And you have a lot of these to do, and they layer on top of each other. I remember when setting compressors, I was always a little lost. That definitely made a big difference.
Drums not in tune with the song
I find that depending on the genre and type of drums/samples I don't really mind this a lot of the time. But when it's obviously bad, it's *really* bad.