Hey guys, we want to start a blog for discussion on releases, production techniques, nights, artists, alpacas, and mixes. For the first post we want to offer a few different easy tutorials on mixer tracks, sends, buses, why you would want to do it, and i'll offer a few basic mixing (the producing kind) tips. I'm writing this as if talking to a beginner. Someone who knows how to work their DAW but doesn't really know where to go from there.
Right, so first off, make sure you route everything to a mixer. If you don't it will just lead to clipping pretty quickly, and it can make things muddy, or too bright, or whatever. If you route everything to a mixer you can make sure your signal doesn't exceed 0db in a digital environment, that is, as long as your DAW has a way to measure db. Any element by itself shouldn't even come close to 0. Most things shouldn't really be too close to -6db either, as that's half of the headroom in your DAW. No one really advises mixing by numbers, but for producers just getting started with correct mix practices, it's pretty much the only way to learn as otherwise your just kinda shooting in the dark. Use your ears to learn what volume each element sits comfortably at. Most people shoot for about -6 db if they plan to get it mastered,
You should also EQ everything pretty immediately, take obvious low frequencies out of things that don't need them. Hats? They don't need to be in the 100 hz regions in most cases. Pads too. Just use your ears to see what sounds good. Use a parametric equalizer so you can boost a frequency and sweep and find something that sounds bad and cut it. Repeat until you're sure you can do no more too the sound. Then A/B every band to make sure what you did actually sounds better.
In fl studio there's an arrow that serves as a send function. You click the arrow on the channel you want to receive and then turn down the master (if you want it to be a bus).
If you're routing some drums to different mixer tracks, Kick drum on mixer track 1, snare on 2, closed hats on 3, and a drum bus on mixer track 4 with everything. The reason you do this is to apply separate EQs and effects on each different effect, and so you can mix them to different levels. Hats aren't as loud as you'd probably think. Reverb can also be used subtly as a mixing tool, as some drum samples don't have reverb naturally in them. Adding reverb makes a lot of things sound a lot more natural in a digital environment. Make sure nothings at a ridiculous level db wise by itself, because things will add up quickly. In this example once you have your drums all bussed to the same mixer track, you can apply reverb to that. After compression if needed, as a light compression can help in gelling a few things together, but remember it's not magic.
Here's a slight better visual explanation, i think. Kick is 1, Snare is 2, Hats are 3, and drum bus is 4.
1&2&3------4------Master
If you were bussing a bass for frequency splitting, it would be the same thing as you could filter or EQ the frequencies you didn't want out.
If i didn't explain it very clearly, or have any questions or things to add on, leave them in the comments.
I hope this helps,
Mike
