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A collection of mixing and mastering tips I’ve picked up along my long trip through the world of audio production. I find them to be useful so I wanted to share with this wonderful community.

By Dave Lopez
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in Audio Mastering, Blog, Engineer Notebook., Music Production

121 Mastering Tips By Scott Hawksworth

My good friend Scott Hawksworth over at AudioSkills.com just published an amazing post about Mastering Engineers and how they perform their artistic skills.

The Title of the article is, 121 Mastering Tips from the Experts.

It’s worth the few minutes it takes to read.

Heck, keep an open tab and skim it in between takes, breaks or sessions.

It in you’ll find topics like:

Mastering philosophies, theories and strategies.
How to prep your mix for mastering (geared toward techie artists and mix engineers).
Mastering chains from the Experts.
A few comments about the loudness wars.
And my favorite section, Sage Advice.

This is a handy reference for beginners and experienced alike.
- Michael Ramos, Renowned Broadcast Engineer for the Legendary Rick Dees.

It includes tips from industry experts like Bob Katz, Dave McNair and Ian Stewart (Top 3, of course).

As well as engineers I admire like Chris Blaney, Maor Appelbaum and Katie Tavini.

Yours truly is also represented; take a peek at #34. :)

Scott’s site includes a ton of other educational posts and tools.

In short, if you’re in the mood to upgrade your sonic abilities then head over to AudioSkills.com and check out his post.

It’s a great way to kickstart or continue your Mastering education.

Until next time!
Dave

By Dave Lopez
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in Audio Mixing, Blog, Engineer Notebook., Music Production

Use More Channel Strips When Mixing

This is just a quick note to myself because I always forget to do this. When mixing use more channel strips instead of multiple plugins to perform the same jobs. [caption id="attachment_34839"...Read More »

By Dave Lopez
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in Audio Mixing, Engineer Notebook., Music Production, Recording

EMT 140 Tip

When I use the EMT® 140 Classic Plate Reverberator plug-in, one thing I will do is place it on two channels and use combination of Plate A with a certain EQ and Plate B with a slightly differe...Read More »

By Dave Lopez
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in Engineer Notebook., Music Production, Recording

Ken Scott Mic-ing Technique

This is very basic concept, but one that is often overlooked. It comes from Bobby Owsinski by way of legendary recording engineer, Ken Scott. Ken always uses the exact same mics whenever he recor...Read More »

Creating a Dub Style Delay

Creating a Reggae dub style delay using the Waves H-Delay. I got this from an article titled 3 Essential Plug-Ins for Dub Style Delay at AskAudioMagazine.com. "Waves H-Delay is a hybrid delay pl...Read More »

By Dave Lopez
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in Audio Mixing, Engineer Notebook., Recording

A Look At Drum EQ Points from Bobby O’s blog

Bobby Owsinski recently posted an article on his site about drum EQ points. Here's a snippet of that article that includes frequencies for individual drums. Kick - Girth at 50Hz and below, bottom ...Read More »

By Dave Lopez
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in Audio Mastering, Audio Mixing, Blog, Engineer Notebook., Recording

The relationships between notes and frequencies.

An engineer told me many years ago that if you can recognize the note of a certain frequency then you'll be able to EQ your mixes much faster and with more ease. So if you are mixing a track and hear that there's a hump in the low end brought on by the bass playing a C and you know that this particular C is around 13oHZ (it's actually 131HZ) then you can reach for the low band EQ and cut that frequency. Most engineers will boost the low band at any frequency and start to sweep the band until they find the offending tone then they'll cut it. Don't you think it would be much more efficient to know the note and frequency through ear training so all you have to do is reach for the frequency and cut it? No more sweeping needed. Just know the note, relate that note to the frequency and make your adjustment. This was eye opening to me! Ear opening actually, but you get my point.

Below is a chart that shows the note to frequency relationships as well as the frequency range for the most popular wester musical instrument. [Click the chart to see a larger version]