Tight Mix Blog | Music marketing tips, promotion strategies, industry news, reviews, and more

Simple Audio Mixing Tips [Part 1]

Mixing

Many people search tirelessly, trying to find simple answers to their problems. Unfortunately, when mixing audio, nothing is simple. Unless a mixing engineer is blessed with perfectly recorded tracks (which is becoming less and less the case due to the increasing volume of homemade recordings), he or she is going to have to do some fiddling around to get them sounding just right.

While mixing audio is not a simple skill to develop, there are tons of tips and tricks to make things a bit easier on yourself. These tips are not magic wands to wave at your recordings to make them sound crystal clear, or totally eliminate noise, or make your one guitar track sound like 48. Also, these techniques, for the most part, are not universal; they depend on your specific tastes, and the overall sound you are looking for in your mix. These are simple tips and some rules of thumb to help you create certain effects, enhance certain characteristics, or clean up some of the unwanted mess in your mixes.

For now I will give you the first five…I have been able to try most of these, but some I have yet to explore. Try some of these out and let me know how they work for you!

Mobile Marketing for Musicians Becoming Critical

Marketing/Promotion

While sifting through some articles over at Music Think Tank, I came across a particularly interesting one about how musicians should begin some sort of marketing campaign within the mobile device realm (ie. text messaging, mobile internet, etc):

Going Mobile – The Future of Marketing For Musicians By Ariel Hyatt

This is an excellent strategy for bands to look into, considering that more and more people are using mobile devices that have access to the Internet. Most of my friends have either Droids, Blackberries or iPhones that they use religiously, so why not direct tour dates, cd releases and promo offers to their mobile devices via SMS text? Or even create your own mobile app to display all of this information in one convenient place?

[Image credit: Click here]

Mastering Your Music: Why You Need It, Where to Get It, and How to Make the Most of It

Mastering

While searching for some good articles on how to master music, I stumbled upon an interesting write-up about WHY mastering is so important for your music, where you can get it, and how to make the most of it. Its an oldie, but still contains a lot of relevant concepts about mastering. The article has a lot of great quotes, and I’ve compiled a few great ones into this post.

101 Band Promotion Ideas [RE-BLOG]

Marketing/Promotion

(UPDATED 12/18/10)

I stumbled upon the holy grail for those of you interested in band promotion. It really offers some great advice on how to get your band heard and appreciated by the public.

101 Band Promotion Ideas via (@BandPromotion)

Here are 3 of my favorite tips from Ian’s list that can really help a band with their online promotion:

1. Get yourself a Website.

Suite7's official band website

You can have all the free social networking accounts in the world, but none of them can take the place of having an official website to represent your music. Your official website should act like a hub for EVERYTHING about your music and your online presence. At the very least, your official website should provide clear links to all of your social networking profiles, links to download and purchase your music, and sign-up forms so fans can easily join your e-mail list. If you still aren’t convinced, here are 20 more reasons for why you need an official website.

The Mighty Beard of Rick Rubin

Music Industry

Rick Rubin has recently been recruited as co-head of Columbia Records. Apparently Columbia does not enforce the dress code when it comes to musical geniuses, because Rubin looks pretty much like a homeless person. But don’t let his persona fool you – the man really is a genius. He has produced epic songs like “Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” by The Beastie Boys, and “Walk This Way” By Run-DMC/Aerosmith.

Columbia is hoping that Rick will solve all of their problems, and then some. He’s got some big ideas, just take a look at this great article: The Music Man

[Image credit: Click here]

Getting a Handle on Basic Compression and Limiting

Mixing Newbies

For some reason, compression was just one of those things for me that I could not grasp right away. Ratios, thresholds, limiters, maximizers, attack, release…..I didn’t want any part of it. I just figured that compression was something that HAD to be done on a track, and I would just select a preset I THOUGHT sounded nice, and that was that. Little did I know, I was being a total ignorant fool, and my music sounded like shit because of it.

Learn about Microphones at Blue University

Recording

While browsing the homerecording BBS the other day, I stumbled across a post that linked me to a place called Blue University. This is an absolutely incredible site if you want to learn about Blue Microphones and the process of recording. Sign-up is free, and the “curriculum” is seperated by degrees. It goes from B.A.S. Level to M.A.S. Level to PhD. Level, and you can take whichever ones you want (take ‘em all!).

Sure, since this is being offered by the Blue Microphone company there are going to be lots of references to their products. But there is a lot of valuable information about microphones in general that you can take away from this website.

UPDATE (12/18/10): Unfortunately, Blue University no longer exists. Instead check out their blog for some very useful tips related to microphones at: http://blueblog.bluemic.com/

[Image credit: Click here]

Dorm Room Recording

Recording

If you’re a college student living in the dorms or an off-campus apartment, and you are unable to rent some space, there actually are ways to turn your dorm room or apartment into a legitimate place to record music. Having a low budget also comes with the territory of being a college student, and this interesting read I found keeps all of these factors in mind.

The Quick Mix

Mixing

I thought this would be an excellent post to kick off the blog.

Creating a “quick mix” is a very helpful thing to do before even thinking about the final mix. A nice balance between the instruments and the vocals, some quick EQ, compression, and reverb if necessary. This is a great way to come up with something to show your client as a preview. Also, if you’ve already starting working on the final mix, but something just isn’t right, this method serves as an excellent start-over approach.

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