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Using Low-Shelf/High-Shelf EQ in Home Recording Mixing
Low-shelf/high-shelf EQ (equalization) is good for enhancing or reducing high or low frequencies in your recording's mix, such as adding a sense of presence to cymbals [more…]
Using Low-Pass/High-Pass EQ in Your Home Recording Mixing
Here’s where you tell your plug-in which frequencies to avoid in the course of adjusting the EQ (equalization). So when you apply low- or high-pass EQ, you’re telling the mixer to pass on certain frequencies [more…]
Home Recording Mixing Frequency Decisions
When you start the process of mixing your home recording tracks you need to make decisions regarding which frequencies to boost and which ones to cut. Here’s a good trick to use when initially trying to [more…]
Mixing Vocals in Home Recording
For most popular music, the vocals are the most important instrument in the song. You need to hear them clearly, and they should contain the character of the singer’s voice and style. One of the most common [more…]
Mixing the Guitar and Bass in Your Home Recordings
How you mix your song has as much impact on the way it sounds as each of the individual parts, like the guitar and bass instruments, that you’ve recorded. Even minor adjustments in the relationship among [more…]
Mixing Drums in Your Home Recordings
The guidelines for mixing (EQing) the drums depend on whether you use live acoustic drums or a drum machine. (The drum machine probably requires less EQ because the sounds were already EQ’d when they were [more…]
Using the Stereo Field in Home Recording
When you’re at a live concert and you close your eyes, you can hear where each instrument is coming from onstage. You can hear that certain instruments are on the left side of the stage, others are on [more…]
Using Panning in Your Home Recording Mix
You adjust each instrument’s position from left to right in a mix with the panning knob. The panning knob is generally located just above each channel’s fader. This can either be a knob that you turn left [more…]
Sound Placement in Home Recording Mixing
As you probably discovered when you were placing your mics to record an instrument, the quality of sound changes when you place a mic closer to or farther away from the instrument. The closer you place [more…]
Adjusting Levels: Enhancing the Emotion of the Song
After you have a rough mix and have your EQ and panning settings where you want them, your next step is to determine which parts of which tracks are used when — and sometimes, whether a part or track is [more…]
Role of Dynamics in Home Recording Mixing
Dynamics are simply how loud or soft something is. Listen to a classic blues tune (or even some classical music), and you can hear sections where the song is almost deafeningly silent and other sections [more…]
Use of Faders in Home Recording Mixing
Rarely do you set the levels of each instrument at the beginning of the song and fade the various instrument levels up and down throughout the song. For example, you may find that you want the rhythm guitar [more…]
Improving Your Home Recording by Listening Critically
One of the best ways to find out how to mix music is to listen to the way music that you like is mixed. Put on a CD of something similar to your music [more…]
Import/Export and Paste Functions in Digital Music Editing
Using digital hard-drive recording edit functions you can import, export and paste your recorded music tracks. And the best part is that you can do any of these procedures and still change your mind when [more…]
Undo Function in Digital Music Editing
Undo is the most important key/function that you have in your digital system. It allows you to, well, undo what you just did. Without it, you may as well be trying to edit with analog tape, a razor blade [more…]
Aurally Finding the Music Section to Edit
The traditional way to perform a musical edit is to find it aurally, in the other words to play the song on the tape deck until you hear the general area of the music that you want to edit. You then stop [more…]
Editing Music Visually
Digital recording systems, especially those that use large video monitors, enable you to edit your music visually. This can be a great asset when you want to edit sounds down to the waveform level or if [more…]
Editing to Replace A Bad Note
Replacing a bad note is one editing procedure that is used frequently. Here’s an example: A few weeks ago, a musician played the drum part of a new song for the band he is currently recording with. When [more…]
Music Editing to Even Out a Performance
Evening out a performance means making editing adjustments to the levels of a note or phrase within the song. Sometimes it can also mean changing the emphasis of certain notes to change the meaning or [more…]
Home Recording EQ Frequency Guidelines
Although some instruments call for specific EQ (equalization) guidelines, you should consider some general issues when EQing, regardless of the instrument involved. When it comes to the audible frequency [more…]
Chorus Effects in Home Recording
Chorus takes the original sound and creates a copy that is slightly out of tune with the original. The chorus’s shifted pitch varies over time. This variance is called [more…]
Improving Your Home Recording by Using Reference CDs
A reference CD can be any music that you like or that helps you to hear your music more clearly. For the most part, choose reference CDs that have a good balance between high and low frequencies and that [more…]
Adding Effects to Your Home Recording
Unless you record your songs using a live band in a perfect acoustic environment, your music will sound a little flat without the addition of some type of effects. Effects allow you to make your music [more…]
Controlling Sound Levels in Recordings with Dynamics Processors
Dynamics processors allow you to control the dynamic range of a signal. The dynamic range is the difference between the softest and loudest signals that a sound source produces. This range is listed in [more…]
Dynamic Processors: Compressors/Limiters
The compressor’s job is to compress the dynamic range of the sound being affected. The compressor not only limits how loud a note can be, but also reduces the difference between the loudest and softest [more…]
