Do You Enjoy Mixing?

[lucy]

Hi Richard,

In your post you say you render all midi tracks to audio before mixing. I usually just mix in midi mode but am looking for ways to improve my mixes. Is that something you would recommend?

cheers
El

[remmet]

Hi Richard,

In your post you say you render all midi tracks to audio before mixing. I usually just mix in midi mode but am looking for ways to improve my mixes. Is that something you would recommend?

cheers
El

Hi Lucy,

I just want to make sure I understand what you mean when you say you mix in midi mode. Here's what I think you mean:

You have all of your midi tracks arranged in a balanced (i.e., properly "mixed") configuration. Any volume, panning, or other changes going on in your midi tracks have been programmed with midi controllers. You then record this group of midi tracks to a stereo audio track. And this stereo audio track (perhaps with some plugin enhancement on the master stereo out) either becomes your final mix or gets bounced down as your final mix. Anyway, I'm going with that premise for now. With that in mind, there are many reasons why this is not a good way to mix.

Ideally, you want every individual instrument or voice on its own separate mono or stereo audio track in your DAW. Doing so will give you the most flexibility regarding volume level, EQ, compression, panning, other processing, send levels to aux tracks, etc., etc. If all of your midi tracks were initially combined onto one stereo audio track, any such processing you do will affect everything at once, giving you no flexibility to shape or change individual sounds.

Okay, I'll stop for now in case I totally misunderstood your question. A good book, among several, is "Fett's Mixing Roadmap" by (of all people) Fett, a Nashville producer and engineer well respected in the Taxi community.

And if I misunderstood your question, let me know!

Richard

[lucy]

Hi Richard,

Thanks so much for the reply. Yes you are correct in that I mix the midi ( VST) tracks then export the final stereo mix rather than rendering each track to audio before mixing.

I'll give it a try rendering to audio first. I guess that would eliminate any weird midi effect changes going on. I think I am beginning to see the benefits of doing it that way regarding overall control of the track. I'll definitely check out Fett's book. Thanks for excellent the tips!

cheers
L

[MusicComposer]

Hi everybody.
I bought " Fett's Mixing Roadmap " and read it pretty much all the way through.
I used it to mix a track that I was having problems with. The track was all midi plugin instruments.
I followed his advice all the way thru pretending that each plugin instrument was an audio track.
I did reverb and channel inserts of EQ and Compression the way he suggested.
I ended up with a mix that was much, much better than what I started out with.

But WARNING! After you do all those channel insert mixing changes, then if you go back to do simple channel volume changes,
those volume changes will drastically affect the volume of the other tracks. But if you have followed his advice and set your track
volumes first before you start doing reverb, eq and compression then you should be ok.

Another way to approach it that I think someone mentioned in a previous post is don't use channel inserts on each plugin.
Instead, route any reverb, eq or compression to a buss. That way you can apply those effects at the end without affecting your ability
to change the volume on individual tracks and affecting other tracks.
Not sure, but I think that's the way it works.

I found Fett's book to be the best, most down to earth, understandable book on the subject of basic beginner mixing.
It is awesome for beginners. If you read this one first and try doing what he says on your tracks, then it will teach you enough to go on to more
sophisticated books on mixing.

JUST MAKE SURE TO MAKE A PERMANENT BACKUP OF YOUR TRACK BEFORE YOU START EXPIRAMENTING WITH ALL THE MIXING IDEAS.
THAT WAY IF YOU MESS UP YOUR MIX YOU CAN JUST GO BACK TO THE ORIGINAL, COPY IT BACK IN AND START OVER AGAIN.

Following Fett's suggestions gave me a mix that was incredibly better even though I was using all midi plugins.

My other alternative would be to render each individual instrument plugin track to it's own wave file.
Then load each of those wave files back into my DAW as wave/audio tracks and start mixing them as a bunch of audio tracks.
Not sure if that would really buy me anything since I want the end result of the track to just be an instrumental anyway.

Hope that helps.