Ataxia wrote: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.
