How to make your mix extra punchy and present while preserving definition and dynamic range.

[Rameses]

Good afternoon, in this post I will tell you what do you need to do in order to gain a better final product, to keep it simple. Don't look up my music though because at the time I was producing my last release I only knew half of the things and it was made on my wifes mac with free plugins, lol.

Since many producers are listening to more or less professional or better producers and are wondering what they do in order to achieve a certain sound, I will tell you how to achieve a sound that is way better than your referential works.

Starting with the composition and basic settings
Before we will do anything let's set the bit depth and the sample rate to at least 24 Bit and 48.000 Hz in order to make our project future-proof and having a high resolution. Now let's start with things before the actual end stage of mixing and mastering a song, let's start with components of your composition and optimizing the very root of it which has a big impact on the final product and the is the choice of the right sound generators. First off you'll need to start your composition within a lower BPM than the final product will be, for ergonomical purposes first as you will have to put in less reaction effort while composing when the track is slowed down and also because of the final stage of finalizing the track which will be explained in the third point of this tutorial. In order to achieve a good, natural and high fidelity sound you will need sound generators (instrument plugins, hardware synthesizers, etc.) which have got a broad and dense harmonic spectrum which simply means than a single tone takes up more space on the spectrometer. For that you can just chase a raw audio output signal of a synth through a spectrometer and compare the signals. Things that are less suitable for this are:

-Analog Synthesizers -Other Synthesizers with a narrow harmonic spectrum

Layer your synthesizers, use multiple chord tracks above each other harmonically and subsequently unify them in a mix bus where you apply multiband compression, low end, mid frequency and high end harmonizing, shaping transients and equalizing with a parametric and a graphic equalizer (+20 bands) as well in this particular order: Transient shaper->Harmonizing->FX of your choice->Graphic Equalizer->Parametric Equalizer->Multiband Compression. This should "bring the components under the same roof" and simply provide the section with an unifying accent of belonging together. The transient shaper has to decrease the attack of the instruments slightly. the harmonizing complements the harmonic range of the instrument group overall and adds more uniformity to them, the graphic equalizer is needed for the sharp definition of the audio signal (https://rmss12.wordpress.com/2018/03/20 ... technique/), the parametric equalizer is needed for complementing balancing of the mix and finally the compressor has to bring the components together, make the signal more present again and after all of the previous steps were made this can be done in a very efficient way with a lot of headroom for gain. The other part of this would be to follow the same rule while looking for drums; You either would have to use a physical modeling solution and/or samples with a broad harmonic spectrum and layer them above each other harmonically (A simple and comprehensive example would be to construct a snare of a beat through placing a high tom, a snare a clap a cymbal and a hi-hat on top of each other so they would make an unified and thick sound) and yet again unify the percussive and drum elements under a mix bus which has to be treated in the same way as the synthesizer mix bus(ses).

Master bus
The things you will need in this stage are, in this particular order: Transient shaper->Harmonizing->Reverb->Graphic Equalizer->Parametric Equalizer->Multiband Compression->Limiter. Decrease the attack of the whole mix slightly with the transient shaper, apply low end and high end harmonizing, bring the whole mix in the same acoustic context with the slight application of master bus reverb, define the mix sharply with a graphic equalizer as described above, balance it out CAREFULLY with the parametric EQ, compress the whole mix in order to add loudness and unify the whole mix more and finally apply a limiter as described by any user manual brought with a limiter, basically and keep the final output about -0.3 to -0.1 Db and the project has to be still slower than the desired final product while rendering this particular master as a lossless file.

Final stage
Simply import the rendered file and speed it up by about 3-5%, this provides the signal of the final product with extra density. Keep in my mind that components of your composition don't get lost when you speed it up, keep a healthy balance. Now that your track is completely finished you can render it in a quality and format you desire and do whatever you want with it.

I just wrote this here down from the top of my head, if you are using techniques which are inferior to this one the appliance of the thing described above should improve your results drastically, I only tested parts of it about a year ago and compared to my previous productions it was a huge improvement, never applied them altogether though. If there is something that makes it FACTUALLY and objectively sound worse, let me know, but first of all try it out on your own and keep in mind that this isn't a printed final version and things still can be added because speaking of myself some things I just do by intuition and they just go under when I explain something and I factually didn't touch a DAW in almost a year, lol.

PS.: Don't forget to use the best tools available to you! It's sometimes worth it to invest some money in paid plugins (especially C6, LoAir and GEQ30 by Waves are notable mentions here) a good VSTi or a polyphonic hardware synthesizer as a Roland JV-2080 or some other keyboard based synthesizer because better tools make you save your precious time and effort and of course it can give you computing headroom for more additional fx-plugins and last but not least, a better sound.

[Gamma-UT]

People will say recording at a slower tempo and then speeding up the audio won't work. But I say: "Tell that to Van Halen". Best version evah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx_GjyXCs4

[frizzbee]

people will say a rich harmonic spectrum doesn't matter if you have to eq the s**t out of it anyway to mix it together.
people will say you seem to like harmonizing fx and obviously been overusing them.
people will say decreasing the attack (transients) is THE antipattern in mixing & mastering.
people will ask you why you think a physical modeling solution for drums will give you extra harmonics.
people will ask you why you put reverb on the master channel and not on single ones.
people will say speeding up the final file will smear transients, alter pitch and introduce new peaks caused by the interpolation.
people will say you'll gain no harmonics nor analog sound with the jv-2080 since it's a rompler.

don't listen to them special snowflake

[Zexila]

[legendCNCD]

Some of these. Not all of these. Not everywhere. Choose the place to do so.

[ramseysounds]

Simply import the rendered file and speed it up by about 3-5%

Even for vocal tracks?

[Zexila]

[MogwaiBoy]

Ahh yes the "eyebrow EQ" technique - always check your mix in monobrow though

[Rameses]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a parametric and starting seeing devils and cats on the curve hahaha

[thecontrolcentre]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a paraametric

Why would you do that?

[Jace-BeOS]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a paraametric

Why would you do that?

Why do people do ^ THAT ^ to their eyebrows??

[Rameses]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a paraametric

Why would you do that?

Doing research on mixing.

[thecontrolcentre]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a paraametric

Why would you do that?

Doing research on mixing.

Really? Please explain ...

[vurt]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a paraametric

Why would you do that?

Why do people do ^ THAT ^ to their eyebrows??

research in to mixing.

[Rameses]

I remember sitting for 8 hours straight in front of a paraametric

Why would you do that?

Doing research on mixing.

Really? Please explain ...

I was mixing an instrumental track and really was thinking very extensively about the things I'm doing, I saved about 10 different versions of a single track regarding equalizing... I was researching a method where one manipulates the sound in a way where one has to compress it less afterwards, that means more presence while losing less dynamics. That was back in 2014, it was a track where I sampled probably my first chord progression made at all (from 2008) by slicing the single chord/bass stacks, putting them in a chromatic order each (for instance by taking a single chord/bass stack and making three out of it, one one up half or semitone away from the original and one down) and simply rearranging them in a more complex way.
Furthermore I introduced myself to a self-referential derivative of caribbean riddim culture by reusing a drum track I programmed previously as well which sounded authentic to me and that is basically the story, I was working on a certain kind of a specific sound, furthermore I wanted the E-Piano to sound like a woodwind Instrument.
I also simply was befuddled by the sheer amount of possibilities given by a parametric eq since before that I was almost exclusively doing that obvious type of "boost high low and high mid" type of stuff.

This is the track I took the chord samples from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evo37WFeQlw

This is the track I took the drums from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acyUWQZP5gk

This is the track I was working on with the parametric equalizer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCb2nosYyKc

It was kind of a cooking pot or experimentation ground but I still like this track very much.