When you think of a guitar solo, it’s rarely some anemic-sounding acoustic guitar poking through your mix. It’s a rambunctious, overtly in-your-face behemoth of a guitar, tearing through your headphones or speakers.
Amp sims are an integral part of our workflow, and very obviously a huge part of what JST offers as part of our plugin collection. Not all amp sims are made equal though, and there are some major issues with amp sims, especially when it comes to processing power.
Tape machines are fickle, hard-to-control, antiquated pieces of music history that would happily collect dust and dirt in an attic if we let them. They’re a pain to maintain and parts are fewer and far between.
Since we’re audio engineers, we’re trained to listen closer than most other people do, and this critical listening is imperative when cleaning up unwanted audio in videos. It’s nearly impossible to account for the sound in your surroundings when filming on-site, so a lot of the time some post-production will be necessary.
If your vocals sound good but they’re struggling for clarity in the mix, there are dozens of options at your disposal to give them more presence. The most common option is to turn them up, but that’s not ideal for every situation, especially on a more dynamic vocal track.
Part of the appeal of recording at a large studio is their expansive backline. Bigger studios will usually have dozen of options to choose from, which means lots of amps, microphones & preamps to mess around with!
It doesn’t have to be overly complicated to get good drums in your mix. There are plenty of small tweaks and automation that can happen to give you perfect drums, but what about a quick and easy drum mix that’s aggressive enough to blow most home studio & hobbyist mixes out of the water? Well that should only take about 5 minutes…
Going into a mix, it’s easy to get caught up in best practices and “clean-up” mode. When this happens, you forget that at its core, mixing music is a creative experience. So once you’ve got your tracks cleaned up and mix-ready, give some of these creative compression techniques a try.
DISCLAIMER: This post is not for the faint of heart. Don’t freak out. We’re going to intentionally clip our lead vocal. If you’re going to continue reading, I need you to promise me you’ll read through to the end (or at least watch the video all the way through). Deal?
While there are always new plugins coming out that you’ll need to learn as you go, there are fundamental mistakes that engineers make when it comes to multi-band processing. Here’s how you can avoid them: