A DAW or Digital Audio Workshop is a computer application that processes sound
for replication. DAWs often come with a host of included plugins, otherwise known
as effects or FX.
DAWs synchronize audio and synths to a clock to allow them to reproduce music
The order of effects can help or harm a producer or musician depending on their placement.
Some common rules are:
Compression will make sounds loud up to ±0db. After sounds reach the sound cieling, compression
will turn them down. If that does not highlight the value of placement, i don't know what will.
A loudness first approach says we will always compress first to crush the waveform and accentuate
the fragile highs in a non-destructive manner. It is still possible to achieve loudness with
distortion only, but doing so may cause ear fatigue in the listener. When music hurts to listen to,
you lose listeners and then you lose money and then fans and then oh no there goes my royalties lol.
That then begs the question of where filtering or phase sweeps go.
creates room for drums in our mixdown. It is accomplished using any of the methods below, but each use case is relative.
Compression sidechaining is not an accurate method as it computes incoming signal
in real time. No matter how effective your hardware is, there could be a 10ms
delay up to 100ms delay in the form of bloom. You may learn more about parameters
in compression.
The best use case of compression sidechaining is to duck one instrument using
signal from a second instrument. Some examples would be a broadband sidechain
with a pluck ducking a pad or sustain, ducking the top of your kick with signal
from your snare to increase headroom on a 4/4 pattern, or to make vocals pop in
a mix that is overwhelmed by midrange
Inline automation is the act of scripting your sidechain. Because the daw is reading code
instead of reacting to an input, you can get a snappy attack on your sidechain,
increasing the pop, or transient, of your drums.
Additionally, you may lead your sidechain in specific parts of your song. By easing your
sidechain in before the drum hits, you can get a louder bang with less volume. This is
best used on every other snare or before major transitions.
Because limiting is brickwall compression, it still has to process incoming signal. If your signal is snappy enough and loud enough, it will force your limiter to duck other sounds to clear headroom for your loudest source. This is best used with transient shaping and on drums.
Best recording volume is -10db and in mono. more tba
A rule of thumb when processing vocals is to focus, rather than cut. The human voice has a
built in bandpass filter called "lips". Lips are a device our ancestors have used since
the dawn of time to captivate and enthrall.
Now that we understand our instrument, first steps should be a
de-esser and a
gate.
If this is your first introduction to raw audio, the gate will kinda stick its hand on the
forehead of background noise and tell it to keep swinging. because the gate will not let
it into the mix. that simple. Your de-esser will read frequencies where human voices generally
produce the most unwanted noise. It is one of those things that you dont know its on until
you take it off. Invest in a good one.
In most modern music stylings, a quality multiband compressor will do so much work.
Your vocalist's microphone provides its own EQ. Multiband compression will bring out the
$40,005 audio quality at no added cost. Try to keep it under 24% and add no more than you need.
Even 9% can do it if the vox fit the mic.
After compression, you have the question of stereo processing.
don't.
problem solved.
Your lead vocals are now in mono and ready to receive some polish. You should add your first
EQ before or after the multiband compressor. Feel it out. When using compressors, our EQ
objective is to cut around the second octave to remove any background frequencies and use as
few bell curves to nudge any heady bass tones or flat highs in our favor.
You may now look into low mixed reverb or my personal preference; delay. Reverb can get cakey
like wet flour or drying paint. If you have lots of staccato notes, pick delay. It is much
easier to control and provides the same richness as reverb. Read my delay topic to learn why.
Once you have chosen your prefered room sound via delay or reverb, the last step is gainstaging.
I use saturators becuase they provide more volume with less clipping. If you're uncomfortable
with putting a distortion on your vocals, you may alternatively compress the vox behind your
time fx and throw a soft clipper at the end.
I sidechain my vocals into my mixdowns. Whether it is a guitar, a pluck, vocals, percs, kick, snare...
we use our vocals as an input signal to make room.
In addition to creating room for the vocals, you want your stereo mix to come from comping
and harmony. Take Billie Eilish for instance. Her harmonies will be hard panned like guitars
while her lead vocal track will be hard center. The lead vocals...[to be continued]