ReasonTalk.com

Me: mixing drums. I'm hopeless. Every now & then I get a reasonable-sounding result, or an OK snare sound, or a nice phat kick that hits you in the gut without muddying things up. But it's always an accident, and after 12 years of digital music production I still always feel like I'm starting from scratch whenever I put together a drum mix

And yes I know, choose your samples carefully if you're using samples, layering, parallel processing etc etc etc. I try it all and I still suck

Tell me what you suck at, so that I don't feel so inadequate

Compression. Never been able to get my head round it.
Getting my vocal levels right, man its always too soft or too loud, obviously! Not helpful that my voice isn't the greatest and I sound like a cross between a fog horn and a Southland farmer.

Mixing full stop, just can't do it :/

Get a lot of my entertainment out of making melodies but getting a professional finish? forget it

rorystorm wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

Compression. Never been able to get my head round it.
Getting my vocal levels right, man its always too soft or too loud, obviously! Not helpful that my voice isn't the greatest and I sound like a cross between a fog horn and a Southland farmer.

getting a decent LA2A emulation is a really helpful thing for vocal compression. it gets my vocal tracks 85% there. sometimes Selig’s Leveler will help a bit, after the LA2A, but the rest just takes some extra automation.

Staying on task. I’m writing a melody, then I hear that the patch is harsh, so I EQ, then I realize that the chord progression is boring, so I try some inversions, then the overall level is inconsistent, so I compress, then I watch a YouTube video about sound design, then I try some CV stuff etc… I have trouble locking myself into one phase and completing it before moving on.

guitfnky wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

rorystorm wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

Compression. Never been able to get my head round it.
Getting my vocal levels right, man its always too soft or too loud, obviously! Not helpful that my voice isn't the greatest and I sound like a cross between a fog horn and a Southland farmer.

getting a decent LA2A emulation is a really helpful thing for vocal compression. it gets my vocal tracks 85% there. sometimes Selig’s Leveler will help a bit, after the LA2A, but the rest just takes some extra automation.

For sure, I use seligs curve, gain and de esser and its certainly made things a lot better

Timmy Crowne wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

Staying on task. I’m writing a melody, then I hear that the patch is harsh, so I EQ, then I realize that the chord progression is boring, so I try some inversions, then the overall level is inconsistent, so I compress, then I watch a YouTube video about sound design, then I try some CV stuff etc… I have trouble locking myself into one phase and completing it before moving on.

Yeah this is me too. The discipline necessary to compose something from beginning to end and then fuck around with the mix is something I just don't have

Mixing full stop, just can't do it :/

The book "Mixing Secrets for the small studio" by Mike Senior is really good to help develop your mixing skills.

Very quick suggestions from me:

* Your mix lives or dies on midrange. Try putting a temporary EQ on your mastering that cuts everything below 250 and everything above 4K. Just mix in that midrange band until everything sounds clear and balanced. Then re-add full range. If your midrange is muddy, your mix is muddy.
* Same idea but for mono. Use a Selig Gain to temporarily force to mono - this will reveal any weird phase issues in your mix. You can try using the "INV" at the top of the channel strips to invert phase and avoid phase cancellation "hollowness".
* Make sure each track has a "stable fader". I.e., you're not feeling like a track is too loud or soft over the course of a track. Don't be afraid to automate volume at the syllable level for vocals to get the volume stable.
* You can't polish a turd. Put a lot of focus on getting good sounds in the first place, as opposed to "fixing it in the mix".

This is not in the book, but works wonders for me:

* Do some offline planning. Don't just jump in and start mixing. Spend 15-30 minutes with a piece of paper figuring out what kind of sound you want. This is a good time to pick out reference tracks - is there a song you can use as a mix reference for yours? If so make sure it's available and compare your mix to it as you go along. Are you getting the clarity/separation/punch you want? Compare to a reference and keep yourself honest!

for me its mostly the arrangment part. i struggle at times to come up with interessting structures that don't get boring. so i end up with mostly the same arrangements for my tracks. sometimes i break out a bit with some special variations but thats it.

Laziness.

Not acknowledging current trends.

Mental masturbation.

Not Reason specific, but I still need to work on my discipline.

I suck at writing lyrics, singing and playing the keys. But that's not reasons fault. I suck at that in all daws.

avasopht wrote: ↑

02 May 2022

Not acknowledging current trends.

well thats what i try to avoid. sure that makes my music not as attractive but i work in a pretty niche corner anyway. and its a hobby so i don't have to worry that much. i also really don't get that much attention this way but i don't really care. anyone should make music that they really love, not just for the sake of hypes and trends. other wise i feel it would be hearable in the quality of the music.

Making things sound good. But it's not really a Reason thing. It's a me thing! It would be the same whatever I used. Not being good with this stuff and spending too much time trying to get it working kind of sucks the fun out of it for me. I just like making noise! All the more technical stuff, so far as production, feels like someone else should be doing it!

For me it's mostly mixing (need more time to build up more experience here) and finding good memorable and strong lead melody lines, that are original and not just a recreation of sb. else. But those two are not related to Reason but more of a general struggle.

generally postproduction:
- EQing ... when adjusting each channel it sounds good, but when i make an export of song it is too "crowded" with higs and mids. my music is generally done so that at some parts i use a lot of sounds at once playing.
- EQing ... have troubles with "moving"/evolving sounds
- FX send/return ... when applying on each channel it sounds good, but when making an export of song it sounds too ... again if i say so "crowded" with reverb and echo and so
- mastering: compressor ... almost every time i adjust it too much
- mastering: limiter ... same here
- mastering: genreally i am not educated or skilled about it ... this part of postproduction is not interesting to me. i would prefer that someone else would do it or a record label i would make a contract with

my songs that have status [FINISHED] are generally badly mixed and mastered therefore.

and since i prefer dark sounds they are all frequency low. so my music is full of low and low mid frequencies making it muddy.

dakta wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

Mixing full stop, just can't do it :/

Get a lot of my entertainment out of making melodies but getting a professional finish? forget it

Maybe your plugins aren't expensive enough?

*adds tobacco to pipe* possible so....

Accepting the bugs.

rorystorm wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

Compression. Never been able to get my head round it.
Getting my vocal levels right, man its always too soft or too loud, obviously! Not helpful that my voice isn't the greatest and I sound like a cross between a fog horn and a Southland farmer.

I remember having bad results with Reason's stock compressors regarding vocals. They never really sounded too good to me. Sounds good on instruments though, but I found it relatively difficult to get a smooth vocal sound from it. That said it could also be that I was learning how to mix vocals back then and I have gotten much better since then so maybe taking a different stab will sound different but I couldn't stand Mclass compressor on vocals, and didn't care too much on the SSL channel comp for vocals as well.


That said a good Opto compressor like the LA2A really helps with what I call "levelling" compression. Alternatively an RMS compression is also smooth sounding as well. That with a soft knee and relatively low compression ratio and driving the compressor to where it is compressing most of the time should really help with leveling. Layering with a "fast-aggressive" compressor helps with the best of both worlds. You can use the "fast compressor" to catch wild peaks so its only occasionally compressing, then put the slow/smooth compressor afterwards will give you the best of both worlds.

As far as I know, nothing.
Though I’m sure not everyone would agree with me on this one.

Making something with it. I don't really use it but I still like it. I collect DAWs.

For me it is cv routing. I can do simple stuff like sidechaining but more complex routing of things like envelope followers is always a guessing game about what I should plug in where.

Actually getting followers to work is often tricky. Dialling it in right where I want it.
I often give up and do it manually.
No ones perfect eh

Agree, envelopes can be frustrating. Especially trying to dial into the sweet spots on devices with tiny little cramped UIs

dvdrtldg wrote: ↑

01 May 2022

Me: mixing drums. I'm hopeless. Every now & then I get a reasonable-sounding result, or an OK snare sound, or a nice phat kick that hits you in the gut without muddying things up. But it's always an accident, and after 12 years of digital music production I still always feel like I'm starting from scratch whenever I put together a drum mix

And yes I know, choose your samples carefully if you're using samples, layering, parallel processing etc etc etc. I try it all and I still suck

Tell me what you suck at, so that I don't feel so inadequate

EQing is one of the hardest things to do in all of production imo, especially on busses or sums. i wouldnt say i struggle with it but its always quite a task, especially finding a proper center and width.