Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to teach you how to elevate your home recordings so that you too can make your music sound like professional musicians. Well at least get closer.
Let’s get into it
The most important aspect of mixing is the ears
So when you’re mixing music, you are constantly using your ears for compression, for eq, for dynamics, for reverb, delay, and every other effect that there is in the musical spectrum.
And honestly there are courses that you can take to develop your ears to hear the things that you need to hear.
And I’m not taking that away from anyone.
I’m not saying that, that’s something bad and is an inefficient way of learning to mix but I am saying that there are cheaper alternatives.
I remember a long time ago, my friend wanted to give me the class that he took in order to gain the ears that he had for mixing music.
The class was called Golden Ears.
It’s the industry standard for learning how to mix music.
And it’s super expensive.
So I said, you know what? I’m going to learn to mix on my own and I’m going to develop my own ears on my own without golden ears.
And I already know how to mix, I just needed to develop the ears to mix.
Much like working out, it’s a muscle that needs to be developed through ear training
Like someone can know how to lift weights but not lift 315.
It’s the same concept.
So i YouTubed something’s on how to develop the ears to mix.
And I found this like Grammy nominated mixing engineer who was sharing some mixing tips.
and said this key concept
Listen to a whole bunch of music
The Mixing engineer said, “You have to listen to a whole bunch of music but in different ways.”
So there are 2 approaches to listening to music and both are needed in order to make great music.
1 is active listening and 2 is passive listening.
Active listening is when you take a paper and pen and write down what you hear in the mix.
You might hear how voices are panned left and right, How an effect really shapes an aspect of a song, how he EQ’s the vocals or how the guitars are mixed. How much volume certain instruments have and what not.
And the second is passive listening, it’s quite frankly what I’m doing right now.
It’s when you just listen to music in the background and you develop the ears to hear what a really good mix sounds like through that way.
When you’re listening to music, you should listen to it through the manner that you’re going to mix your music
So right now, I’m learning how to mix on my Skull Candy headphones.
Which is definitely not the best type of headphones you should listen to to mix music.
In reality, you need super flat mixing monitors.
And Skull candy’s are bass boosted.
But you can work with it if you are constantly listening to reference tracks while mixing your song.
Which leads me to the next part of my blog post
How to mix music with suboptimal situations
Almost everyone who records at home is going to have suboptimal circumstances to mix.
Even down to the room is suboptimal.
In recording studios you will notice that most of the rooms have no windows.
Thats a sound treatment design.
Windows are terrible for mixing music.
And unless you live in a recording studio, I highly assume that you have windows in your room.
Having The Mixing monitors in the corner of the rooms is also bad for your mixes.
Having your computer setup in the corner of the room is bad.
You being in the room is bad for mixing music.
But anyways, I’m becoming silly now.
But it is true.
All of these things are bad for mixing music.
So everyone has to work with suboptimal circumstances.
Like me personally I have my mixing speakers in one corner of the room along with my computer setup and a window right next to it and you can do one of 2 things,
Either Learn how to make bangers with suboptimal situations. Or you can go to a studio and rent out for 90 dollars an hour to learn how to do something that could’ve been done at the house.
Remember to listen to a wide variety of music
So in reality, you are supposed to specialize in one genre of music.
Certain genres of music do certain things and it’s really hard to do a multitude of genres.
You really have to be a top pro in order to do multiple genres.
But regardless of if you’re going to do Rock, Pop, Hip-hop, R&B, Country, Bluegrass, you are supposed to listen to a wide variety of music.
Keep your head up and remember to listen to a whole bunch of music
Broadcast
I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.
If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)
Thank you all for listening in on this blog post.
German Gonzalez, signing out!
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