Turtle Posted December 15, 2013 Share Posted December 15, 2013 Hello, OCR, making a semi-annual post on these forums before slinking back to obscurity. That post being about my upcoming independent study at school, self-explanatory in its title: "Audio Mixing and Mastering." Making a mix sound professional has long been my biggest failing as a primarily digital musician, and I haven't made any new music in quite a while (mostly due to an insane workload this past semester), so I'm hoping this course can get me on my feet again. Which brings me to this community. Logging in on a whim as I research some good studio headphones, I almost immediately came across Zircon's FL Studio 101 topic. I thought "hey, this might be good 'curriculum' to use in my study next term, I wonder if there's anything else OCR can point me to?" So that's my question. What would you folks say are good, preferably "curricular" digital music tutorials out there, especially related to production values? I'd say I could probably swallow something intermediate, but am also open to beginner stuff since I undoubtedly have holes in my experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted December 15, 2013 Share Posted December 15, 2013 Those tutorials from zircon are the most curricular I'd recommend for FL Studio specifically, since that's what you use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rozovian Posted December 15, 2013 Share Posted December 15, 2013 I have a remixing guide in my sig. It's intended for beginners, but you can look through it and see if there's some basic stuff you've missed, or read the more advanced stuff I've thrown in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ectogemia Posted December 15, 2013 Share Posted December 15, 2013 Youtube has a series called "5 Minutes to a Better Mix" which is really helpful for quick mixing tips with excellent explanations. There's another solid video which covers the basic techniques of mastering called "The Ultimate Mastering Formula" or something, by a guy named Rob Williams. "Dance Music Manual" by Rick Snoman is a really solid resource as well for production, acoustic, and synthesis theory. Those were all really, really helpful for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted December 15, 2013 Share Posted December 15, 2013 Watch FL Studio Guru videos and also any free Dubspot offerings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Jobson Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 Yeah basically just search "(insert your DAW here) Tutorials" on youtube. If you're interested, I also put out production tutorials about every week - two weeks. Good luck man and only hard work can really pay off! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted December 16, 2013 Author Share Posted December 16, 2013 Well, rather than learning any specific DAW, per se, I'm also looking at the principles involved in a good mix. Like, how to EQ most effectively, good uses of stereo field, etc. But concepts that aren't limited to just one piece of software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XPRTNovice Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 If you're willing to shell out a bit, try Multi-Platinum's mixing course. It's 5 hours of in-depth production with an award-winning mixing engineer, and well worth your time and the $50 you might pay for it. He USES pro-tools, but never once talks about the function of it. He focuses exclusively on using plugins to mix. While it focuses on contemporary rock/folk mix, the principles are universal. There are other courses there, but I can't vouch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Jobson Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 Do a bunch of research on EQ, compression, use of space (reverbs / delays). And play around with them in your DAW as well to get familiar with them and what they do / how they work. It's not something you can pick up after a couple of months either. Mixing is a labour of love... it's an art... and the more mixing you do the better you'll get. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 It's not something you can pick up after a couple of months either. Mixing is a labour of love... it's an art... and the more mixing you do the better you'll get. This. And like I said before, do check out Dubspot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted December 16, 2013 Share Posted December 16, 2013 It will actually be less love, more labour in practice though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timaeus222 Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 http://soundonsound.com is your friend too. Lots of cool production articles there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 It will actually be less love, more labour in practice though. There's no way to improve if you don't love doing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avaris Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 There's no way to improve if you don't love doing it. Yes there is, it's called work. People learn things at work all the time doing tasks they do not love. Now if you love it will be waaay easier and more satisfying to learn. Motivation can be derived from multiple sources. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted December 17, 2013 Author Share Posted December 17, 2013 Yeah, it's definitely more work for me at the moment, since I don't enjoy mixing and mastering the way I do composition and arranging. I'm less than great at both, mind, but at least I enjoy one. But I am willing to put in the work if I feel it's actually teaching me something, hence my putting together this independent study. http://soundonsound.com is your friend too. Lots of cool production articles there. Definitely going to be using this, if only because my professor also has recommended it before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 (edited) Yes there is, it's called work. People learn things at work all the time doing tasks they do not love. I don't think a recording engineer gets hired if he doesn't know how to do anything. Edited January 13, 2014 by Neblix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted January 13, 2014 Author Share Posted January 13, 2014 Hey again, just thought I oughta bump this topic rather than make an entirely new thread for very closely related subject matter. As it turns out, my first assignment of the term for my aforementioned study is to find 5-10 recommendations that my school's library should make available in the way of actual books on digital sound. Mixing, mastering, etc. Basically, what I was asking about for tutorials I'm now asking about for books: what's the shortlist (or long, if the "shortlist" is short relative to 5-10 items) of recommended books on digital audio? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted January 13, 2014 Share Posted January 13, 2014 (edited) I'm using these two in school. The second one is especially important because if you don't train students' ears they won't be able to mix well. It's a really good run through of training to hear dB differences, identify frequency bands (isolated and in a mix), etc. http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Recording-Techniques-David-Miles/dp/0240821572 http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Production-Critical-Listening-Technical-ebook/dp/B00AYIKKO4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389629475&sr=1-1&keywords=audio+listening Edited January 13, 2014 by Neblix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted January 13, 2014 Share Posted January 13, 2014 I don't think a recording engineer gets hired if he doesn't know how to do anything. What does this have to do with the general concept of "work"? Work is learning to do something you don't particularly love doing, and then doing it. This principle has applied to general humanity and has been the primary reason things actually got done for thousands of years up until the hippies started rewriting ALL the fundamentals for how society works instead of just the things that really needed to be rewritten. We have been sliding ever since. /digression. Anyways, work is important no matter the context, because even in jobs you love, there will be things about it that are unappealing to do, and if you don't learn to do them anyway, you miss out on important elements and skills you need to do your job well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabeel Ansari Posted January 13, 2014 Share Posted January 13, 2014 You missed the point completely. You don't learn to mix on the job because there are no jobs that would require you to mix that you can get without already knowing how to mix what about this do you not understand Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted January 13, 2014 Share Posted January 13, 2014 what about this do you not understand Why you're missing the point and responding with irritated arrogance. There is mixing on-the-job experience, yes, but I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about the development before that. It takes work (not the synonym for jobs, the synonym for hard effort) to graduate to any point of mixing where you can call yourself a professional. Even at the point where you need on-the-job experience, you have already graduated the prerequisite concept that you're not going to love every minute of what you do to get paid for what you do, or what you have to do to learn it. If this concept isn't learned at the very start of the journey, then it will be eventually as the only paid work that comes in is shit the professional really does not want to mix, and it will be much harder then, the potential for business breakdown is much greater, and all the time and money spent to learn it in the first place is wasted. I don't know how to expand the concept of work development any further. Much of this should be obvious and as fundamentally basic as humanly possible anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PROTO·DOME Posted January 13, 2014 Share Posted January 13, 2014 You missed the point completely.You definitely missed the point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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