{"id":112,"date":"2014-10-13T02:38:43","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T02:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/?p=112"},"modified":"2014-12-17T03:02:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T03:02:09","slug":"audiomidi-mixing-procedure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Audio\/MIDI Mixing Procedure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is not a singular way to mix down a song. Nevertheless, there is a logical flow to getting a song where you want it. \u00a0Here&#8217;s mine:<\/p>\n<p>EDITING\/TIMING<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Flatten and merge comps (compilations of takes)<\/li>\n<li>Establish phase-locked groups (for any instruments recorded with multiple tracks)<\/li>\n<li>Bus groups (for applying effects across a range of tracks)<\/li>\n<li>Create universal sends for project reverb, delay, compression, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Process audio tracks in Flextime (non-Logic users employ your respective audio beat detection tool)\n<ul>\n<li>Use appropriate method for tracks (i.e. monophonic for vocals, polyphonic for guitars, slicing or rhythmic for drums)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Edit\/correct timing as needed across tracks (I generally avoid brute quantization)<\/li>\n<li>If using any drum resampling, apply now<\/li>\n<li>Finalize any MIDI instruments<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>TUNING<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Process vocals (and any other necessary tracks) with\u00a0your choice of pitch correction plug-in<\/li>\n<li>Tune vocals or any other tracks necessary<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>LEVELS and MIX<\/p>\n<p><em>From this point forward, you should be A\/Bing the mix (i.e. listening to mix decisions on at least two different pairs of speakers) in as acoustically flat (or, at least, as predictable) of a room as possible<\/em><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pan tracks<\/li>\n<li>Write\u00a0volume automation across tracks<\/li>\n<li>Bring in effects:\n<ol>\n<li>Start with vocals, then instrumentation<\/li>\n<li>EQ<\/li>\n<li>Compression<\/li>\n<li>Create reverb bus for project and send appropriate tracks\u00a0post-fader (generally)<\/li>\n<li>Anything else<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>For most purposes, you should add effects to your group bus for a given instrument and not the individual tracks.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t touch the master bus if the album is being mastered independently. \u00a0This leaves adequate dynamic headroom and minimal coloration of the sound. \u00a0If I am mastering an album, I still wait and do a true stereo master (with all songs\u00a0for a given project).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is not a singular way to mix down a song. Nevertheless, there is a logical flow to getting a song where you want it. \u00a0Here&#8217;s mine: EDITING\/TIMING Flatten and merge comps (compilations of takes) Establish phase-locked groups (for any instruments recorded with multiple tracks) Bus groups (for applying effects&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,42],"tags":[44,46,43,88,45],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guides","category-recording","tag-mastering","tag-mixdown","tag-mixing","tag-recording","tag-sound-foundry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p51adQ-1O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinwiegand.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}