Visualize Your Mix To Elevate Your Productions

What's up guys,

If you're looking for a way of getting your head around the space that you can use and what's available to you for when you're producing and mixing, then this tutorial is for you today. I'm going to go over how to visualize the mix in your productions and then how to take advantage of that to elevate your productions.

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Hey, I'm Zion, and I am the founder and one of the co-owners of the Triple Threat Artists online production course, where we teach singer songwriters how to become a producer also, so that they're a triple threat when they're making music. If you haven't done so, check out our website where you can see a whole list of our courses and the offers.

We have things like setting up your vocal chain. If you're a singer and working with other producers, keeping track of all your metadata. Getting integrated into a community with like-minded music makers and of course, a full on production course.

Okay. Now let's get into today's Video.

I want you to start thinking of songs as this big three-dimensional box. Right now, this is two-dimensional, but if I'm visualizing it, you can have elements on this side. You can have elements on this side. You can have elements up here. This would be higher frequencies. And these would be lower frequencies. So your bass usually sits down here. It sort of finds its home. It's typically kind of in the middle and it's usually in its lower frequencies. Now base, if it was all low frequencies, that's usually called a sub. But base actually has other little frequencies that kind of come up in here that give it sort of the attack. Those higher frequencies give it sort of the punch.

In general, let's just think of bass as low. Your kick drum is going to be low. Also your voice is typically somewhere in here and it can spread all over it. You know, these are very general terms, but these are things that are typically in the center.

Your guitars often spread pretty wide and oftentimes spread over a large frequency spectrum, but you oftentimes want to get them out of the way of the voice. So you could split them and make them really quite wide. And so they're way over on the left and way over on the right. Or you can put them just to the left and right of the voice, but you give room for the voice.

What you want to focus on here is giving room for things - you want to have everything in the mix to have some separation. One of the things that I get a lot of compliments on is how clean my production is. And it's because I'm working harder and harder to give everything some space.

Now, some people, they will use an EQ on the voice and EQ the voice to be just in this spot and they don't let it bleed into any other area. And the kick is just in this spot. And I feel like there's a lot of people that overdo this concept. I would just do this in general terms. So if you don't know where to put something, just get it out of the way of the voice. The top line of the voice always needs to be in the middle. Harmonies can be a little out here if you want. They don't have to be right in the middle.

Improvs - background vocals, you definitely want out here. You want to get some space with those things, think of everything in a box, think of left and right as your panning. And think of the top of the box is higher frequencies. So really high frequencies, like 10,000 Hz and low frequencies, like 80 Hz. Don't let the Hz throw you off or push you away. Just start getting used to hearing things spoken in frequency ranges. So anyway, this is kind of how you visualize it.

Now we're going to talk about in a second, the 3D-ness of a mix. Let's say this is the front of the box. This panel right here is the front of the box. This is the front of the mix. This is how close it is to the listeners ears. Here's a listener.

This is the back. This means it's far off from them. This would be the right over on this side. This would be the left over on this side. And they're listening into this box. This box is the mix. Your bass might be like right here - this blob here.

And vocals, yada yada, and you've got all these other instruments. One of the things you're going to start realizing is using reverb and delay can make things sound way off in the distance. So you can put background vocals like way back there. So instead of just left and right, and high frequencies and low frequencies, you can throw things like a cool little effect. There's an effect that's way back there in the back. And one of the great things about learning to produce is learning to use a variation. You may have all your instruments in this area here, and you want your mix to be pretty close to the listener. And it's all right up close, all the different elements. But if you do something like suddenly throw a little element, that's way back here in the back, it doesn't have to be all the time, but just every once in a while, it's amazing what how that legitimizes the total production. It's kind of like saying, Hey, I'm a producer and I'm choosing to keep all these instruments right there.

But I know that I have all this other space to play with. I'm just choosing not to use It. And I can prove it by shooting something maybe way up in there, where it's real interesting, strange guitar solo way, kind of in the background. And it just comes in one little spot. And then the rest of the mix lives in this area upfront.

But you're basically proving to the listener that I know the space. I know that there's other areas in which my music can fall. So one of the things I love to do is regardless of where this big clump of most of my instruments lay, I like to throw an element somewhere in the mix every once in a while, somewhere to show the listener that there is space.

It's a really interesting concept. I've never actually heard anybody talk about this, but I think it is very effective. And I hear it all the time on songs produced on the radio or whatever. A lot of hip hop now, they don't have a lot of bass in it. The bass is held for a long time, and most of the mix stays above the bass range. And then suddenly in one specific spot in the chorus, boom, you'll have a big bass note down here.

And it just sort of says to the listener, Hey, we knew that was there this whole time, but we've chosen to just keep it for now. We're saving that little spot for just this moment. And then we're going to take it away. And you're not going to hear it again for a long time, but you'll know the listener knows subconsciously that this producer and this song knows about these other areas. They're just choosing not to go to them. It's kind of a bad-ass way of producing.

So I recorded this illustration a couple of years ago and I found this the other day and I thought I'd bring it back up because it really still applies. But I want to also make an emphasis that I didn't make then, which is the opposite is true. If you take all the elements in your mix and everything is very, let's say sounding very close, like it's in a very small room, or maybe it's all distorted or put through like high pass, low pass filter. So it sounds very kind of 'megaphony' - the whole mix does, and nothing ever comes out of that. And even though that may be very intentional subconsciously, what that can do is tell the listener that you actually don't know how to mix, because you don't know how to get out of that. Maybe that's the only way, you know how to mix is in this tight, little bubble, but by doing something, even if most of the song is in this one area, by doing something that's outside of that every once in a while, by getting outside of that every once in a while, just showing the listener that you know, that there's other areas of the production mix, whether it's a panning thing, a distant thing, a frequency thing that, you know, there's other space in your mix that you're just choosing not to use it really validates and elevates your mix to the listener.

It's a very subconscious thing, but it's really important. So even if you decide to make your mix, maybe it's super wet, very washy, eighties, song sound, maybe take one element and make it really dry and show that you know how to do that.

Maybe it's just an effect. Maybe it's a snare drum. Maybe it's a shaker. Maybe it's a tambourine. Maybe it's a vocal thing. It could be something like that. Or maybe your mix is extremely like indie rock and has a lot of dirt and distortion in it. If one part of your mix actually has something very clean or simple and clean, it shows the listener that you know how to actually take advantage of the entire spectrum of the box, the mix box. I hope that's helpful to you today. If you have any questions about that, or if you have something to add to that, please either email me back or send it in the comments.

I'll see you next week.

Zion

This episode was produced and marketed by the Get Known Service