2 Tricks to fix the midrange on your mixes
I want to share a couple tricks with you for getting the midrange right in your mixes. I wish I could give you THE trick, but getting the midrange right is a life-long journey and sorting out the mids is one thing that really separates mixes by the great mixers from everybody else.
The reason getting the midrange (which I usually think of as anywhere from about 250Hz to about 4k, but mostly centered around 1k) right is that so much important stuff lives there. In pop/rock/punk/country/funk recordings the midrange is where most of the energy of the voices, guitars, pianos, synths, snare drums and organs…… live. We have all these super important elements all fighting for the same space. It is beyond what I can get into in detail here, but I like to solve most of those conflicts between midrange elements with panning and subtractive EQ. If you get the midrange conflicts sorted out, your vocals will naturally sound more clear and forward without having to turn them up. But here are a couple of tips that can make this a little easier.
1) PUT IT “IN YOUR FACE”
One of the main reasons so many mixers, including myself, like to mix on the Yamaha NS-10s is not that they are balanced or accurate, but because they are mid-rangy. Some people even describe them as “honky.” They really push the mids to the front. This forces you to address these problemsto get a mix that sounds great. When you are working only on speakers that have great highs and lows, the excitement of the boom and the prettiness of the high-end sheen can be seductive and make us think we have gotten everything sounding great; but this often leads to mixes that do not translate well to other systems.
I enjoy monitors that have a fairly full range. I master on full range speakers and, in the past, I have done the bulk of my mixing on speakers with plenty of highs and lows, so I am not going to discourage you from using them, but it is a really good idea to have a more mid-
range forward set of speakers that you can switch to. The Yamaha NS-10s are out of production and pretty expensive now, but look for something with a small low end driver. Even small home stereo “bookshelf” speakers or a decent pair of computer speakers can work (I actually check my mixes and masters on the speakers built in to my computer monitor). If you do not have an easy way to add a second pair of speakers to your system, something like the Coleman LS3 can be a good solution that does not really hurt your audio.
2) KILL THE BASS
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking of bass as a low frequency instrument. Of course it has lots of low frequencies, but it also has a lot of energy all the way past 5k, especially with players that slap or use a pick. What this means is that the bass, which accounts for a huge amount of the overall energy in many mixes, has a lot of energy in the midrange right where all those other instruments have their most important frequencies. This is not a bad thing. That blend helps give a mix its overall body, but this can sometimes make mixing more difficult. If you are having trouble getting the midrange to feel right in your mix (that usually means less honky, nasal or piercing), one great trick is to mute the bass for a while. This often results in one of two things:
A) This will leave the instruments in the mix with a lot of midrange character more exposed and this can often make it easier to hunt down and find problems.
Remember that problems with the mids are usually because there is too much energy in a particular frequency range, so subtractive EQ is your friend.
B) Without the bass the midrange of the whole mix might sound good. If this is the case you should look at your bass sound and see if you can find any offending frequencies and reduce those in the bass. One way you can do this is to put the bass back in the mix and, using a parametric EQ, you can pull down (attenuate) one band in the mids and move that frequency up and down (in frequency), and wait until you hear the problem go away or at least get better. If you are still having trouble finding it, boost a mid frequency and sweep that around until the problem gets worse. Then turn that frequency down. This latter approach can sometimes be easier while you are still developing your ear for EQ.
If you are in Southern California and want to get into this more in depth, we have a couple spots left in next months 2-Day Mixing Boot Camp.
Also we just added another 6-Day Recording Boot Camp in November (the Recording Boot Camp includes all the material from the Mixing Boot Camp).
2-Day Mixing Boot Camp in Los Angeles*
September 26-27, 2015 (2 spots left!) Details>>
6-Day Recording Boot Camp in Los Angeles*
November 9-14, 2015 (3 spots left!) Details>>
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