My tracks don't sound "big", what am I doing wrong?

[happyhippy]

Dude if it doesn't sound big you've already fooked up.
Choose good samples, choose good synths and layer layer layer.
Reverb goes along way, I suggest you invest in a good sample/vst pack like komplete 7 which has very good samples and very good vsts.
Also it has reflector which kicks ass.

[Siderealdb]

i dont think people saying he needs to image, compress, do frequency ratios, transients etc is really helping this dude out...start basically and work along to fit your style.

i can tell you about 3 - 4 of the listed things by that mastering dude, joker doesnt do in his tracks...its ALL about the right eq'ing and layers within the track to get the required energy and sound. good clarity at the top end so its clear, nice mids not too strong just enough to bring it out a little bit and just learn your sub volume limit, dont go too nuts with making everything loud just concentrate on layers and eqing them to make them sit together.

hope that helps

dont run before you can walk



oh and if you use cubase AVOID AVOID AVOID mastering machines...they can actually ruin a track horrifically if unused properly...and its lazy

This
Big fan btw

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

I make mainly house music, but I'm trying to get into producing dubstep. I know it's really important to have a good mix and have your track have "presence" but I can't seem to do it. My tracks sound flat. I try equalizing them but I really have no idea what I'm doing. I just screw around til it sounds ok but it doesn't make the track sound any better. I just need to know if there's any rules Of thumb about having a good mix. I don't know much about fighting frequencies or headroom, but I assume they're pretty important. Also, how do you prevent your bass from sounding warbled when playing in the lower octaves?
I can probably post a WIP if it helps you guys understand what I'm talking about, I'd just prefer constructive criticism, as I'm by no means a professional, and I just produce for fun.

1st post on this board so bare with me. Peoples perception of a 'big' track can come from a series of mutually inclusive aspects of a well made tune. 1 aspect of it is how you control your audio to create that 'full' sound.

The best way to visualize that is to imagine the 'space' the song will inhabit in the period of time you will be listening to it as a sort of 'box'. The very bottom of the box is 20Hz and the top of the box is 20 KHz ~ [the scope of human hearing] the width of the box is the stereo field, left being panned left and right being panned right, and the length of the box is the volume, the very front being -100dB (or whatever) and the very back being 0dB, above which in digital audio processing clipping artifacts emerge. So this is your finite 'workspace' the metaphysical canvas within which you place the elements of your tune. This box exists as one beat in your standard 4/4 time sig all EDM seems to follow these days. Think of your song as a long line of these boxes stacked along a temporal axis. (well, this visualization isn't entirely accurate as pads and Bass lines e.t.c. will exist for more than a single beat, but the visualization works for the purpose its intended for.)

Now Imagine each sound you put in the tune is like placing a shape in a box, different sounds have different shapes and sizes, depending on their stereo width, frequency content, and decibel range. Mono sounds will be very thin and you can place them in the middle of the box, other sounds of the same decibel range or with similar frequencies can sit along side this sound in a different area of the stereo field. Deep Bass sounds will sit nicely at the bottom of the box with room above them for higher frequency sounds to sit above them, so on and so forth, basic lateral thinking will fill in the rest here for you.

The Idea here is to fill as much of the box as possible while making sure non of your shapes are competing for space, afterall you want to be able to close the lid to pass this lovely gift onto all your listeners!

The thing with this is even if you have all the elements of a good track laid down, if this metaphysical space is not filled, the tune will sound weak, regardless. Too much low end? sounds muddy, Too much high end? sounds tinny and weak. To much of everything and you loose the subtle ebb and sway a good tune should have. REMEMBER that less is more and silence is music! You don't want a 'wall of sound', remember its a tune and should flow and weave out its own sonic dance.

Which brings me to my other point: Flow, melody, structure and basic composition theory.

On the other hand, If you've spent weeks fine tuning your drums so their hitting phat and ur bass is wubin juicy, sitting perfect with your break; If you have no basic underlying musical theory in your sound scaping, your song will never ever instill within the listener that soul gripping rush we all feel when that epic drop craps a filthy bass riff down your throat after a screaming buildup. Yeh you can have a 'perfectly designed' build up, and a heart pumping drop, BUT, if the actual riff, the pads, the highs, the FX... the 'melodic content' of your tune isn't up to par, it will meerly teeter out into an epic anti climax... at best.

This is down to needing to intimately understand music theory. The Rythm needs to flow just so, the melody of the bass needs to sit in key with the pads and other elements containing predominant harmonic frequencies, hell you can even key your snares e.t.c. in key if you want. Further more, the melody (no matter how simple or minimal) should almost always follow a basic chordal/modal or scale based progression, sticking to a specific 'key' that the entire tune is based around, chosen to give the tune its basic underlying 'feel'. Dubstep is always gonna be your minor keys A minor, E minor e.t.c. so find a few Major > Minor triad progression with tonics on the Scale of the key your using. Arpegiate out each tone and make upa a phat bass line, find a few minor fifth/seventh chords an octave higher and figure out a sick pad lick to go over the top. e.t.c.

Make sure the first note of the melody/bass is the tonic of the scale/key, and the first note of the last measure of your 16th (32nd? e.t.c.) measure in 4/4 should ideally be a perfect fifth above or below the tonic, returning the melody 'home' to the tonic at the beginning of the next phrase. This is the kind of stuff that makes your melody 'feel right' to the listener, because its tried and tested melodic and harmonic interplay that triggers a hard wired response from the listener. The difference between a bum note and a hard hitting bass line is intelligent use of underlying theory.

Melody, harmony, use of keys/scales/modes, intelligent use of beat to give the whole tune its overall flow, topping it all off with carefull sound selection in the crafting process and audio management in the mixdown and mastering stage will give you that 'phatness' you crave.

I guarantee the lack thereof your experiencing with your tunes at the moment is down to one or a mixture of the points raised in this post. Keep hitting at the fundamentals man.

peace.

[raincoatdisaster]

@Turnipish Thoughts - Excellent post. Welcome to the boards. Id like to reinforce again, Less is more.

[traffek]

i dont think people saying he needs to image, compress, do frequency ratios, transients etc is really helping this dude out...start basically and work along to fit your style.

i can tell you about 3 - 4 of the listed things by that mastering dude, joker doesnt do in his tracks...its ALL about the right eq'ing and layers within the track to get the required energy and sound. good clarity at the top end so its clear, nice mids not too strong just enough to bring it out a little bit and just learn your sub volume limit, dont go too nuts with making everything loud just concentrate on layers and eqing them to make them sit together.

hope that helps

dont run before you can walk



oh and if you use cubase AVOID AVOID AVOID mastering machines...they can actually ruin a track horrifically if unused properly...and its lazy

i gotta agree. (BIG UPS on your vid too funtcase! good stuff) its about youre sample. and what you turn it into with eq. i am trying to use my mastering suite less and less when mixing my tracks and going more on ear and visual levels. let my suite be there to just give it that bit of punch, if i really want to limit it and spread my EQ over mid and sides.

i think all that it has to be said besides your samples is the mix. i mix almost everything in headphones for my first and second pass. i move to speakers just when working with reverbs. use analyzers and take a good break away from your tune. listen in lots of places.

limiting the sub is good, but it can EASILY go overboarding pending what you are monitoring on. i learned this the hard way. just also keep reading the internet. EQing cannot be stressed enough either. pending the daw you are using, make sure you learn what you are actually doing with eq. if you dont you will always have a muddy shitty mix (IMO)

i use ableton and recently had to abandon its EQ8 for my lows just because it wasnt cutting it (n_n). I am using equium eq for dealing with my lows and i like it. people on the net may say other wise, but i also use it to my knowledge and get out of it what i want. and dont go out and get things that you read about. just because 16people say its massive or bust! or skrillex bass is the future fuck whatever else, all that matters is what you think in the day mate.

i have learned so much in the past few months, and i always feel that way so know you can never learn to much. keep at it. practice practice practice. some of these cats have been doing it a minute(meaning 8ish years with these techniques).

for me i also find dealing with everything on its own is best for me; IE-drums routed to a bus, but all on sep channels. bass, synths, same thing. subtle these make a big difference if you have enough of them as well.

for the "warble" bass thing, thats EQ and workin with frequencys. kick and bass sitting well together is big too. and keep doing searches on this forum. it is one of THE BEST places for music knowledge in general for alot of electronic genres.

now enough of this corny shiz. and yea mate put a track up id love to hear!

[Ldizzy]

@traffek

.. dude, just.. welcome..

i mean, seriously

welcome.

[safeandsound]

Well those elements seemed to have worked for the entire history of musical creation so
I think on that basis my points are in good standing.

What 3-4 points specifically does the guy you mention not use ?

And I bet the guy you mentioned does employ all the above, he just does not consider it
because he just gets on with it and is skilled in his art, many of these things are gut instinctive
processes. Sometimes you need to break things out into words for consideration, especially when someone
is asking why their music sounds small.

And how does this benefit anyone more than the points I raised?

start basically and work along to fit your style

Is that not like saying, just build the track and it will be what it will be?
Is that not what every person who switches their sequencer on is doing irrelavant of whether the end result is
small or big?

Of the tracks that go through my studio those that are lacking "bigness"........
they will have squashed drum transients, been worked on with appalling monitors and room acoustics,
will have ill conceived stereo images, poor choice of instruments (synths/samples being instruments) and
as you and I mentioned spectral problems (i.e. EQ related issues, that go back to monitors and room).

Ignore the above at your production skills peril.

I respect the O.P. as he has made a big step forwards in realizing something important and being honest that something is not right.
He has released the chains to a degree as there are an almost endless no. of people who think they are gods gift to audio engineering
who are not even close to the mark.

[thefrim]

i dont think people saying he needs to image, compress, do frequency ratios, transients etc is really helping this dude out...start basically and work along to fit your style.

i can tell you about 3 - 4 of the listed things by that mastering dude, joker doesnt do in his tracks...its ALL about the right eq'ing and layers within the track to get the required energy and sound. good clarity at the top end so its clear, nice mids not too strong just enough to bring it out a little bit and just learn your sub volume limit, dont go too nuts with making everything loud just concentrate on layers and eqing them to make them sit together.

hope that helps

dont run before you can walk



oh and if you use cubase AVOID AVOID AVOID mastering machines...they can actually ruin a track horrifically if unused properly...and its lazy

speaking of this amazing producer if you use reason watch his masterclass, I'm just learning reason but it helped me immensly. Plus, I now put Funtcase's limiter on all my reason tracks.

Anyway try getting a spectrum analyzer plugin (i love RNDigital Inspector XL) and try to get each element as flat as you can (within reason) within its own frequency space. Especially making the snare really flatly eq'd usually sounds nice to me.

In the end of the day if you want a 'big' track you need 'big' sounds, so choose drum samples wisely and such