Thursday, November 18, 2010

Mixing and Mastering Audio: Tips to Mix Your Beats Like a Pro

When you mix your beats remember you are taking part in a great evolving art form. It began in the South Bronx of New York City in the 1970s; hip hop experienced transition, revolution and even decline; yet it finally secured its place within the mainstream in 2000s.
When producing hip hop albums, it is important to consider first the music beat as it requires a combination of music pattern by mixing derivative pieces of different songs. Final mixes are usually then submitted for mastering. Mastering is the final touch in polishing an audio production for an album as it enhances the clarity of mixes making the sound of songs to be more coherent and ensuring that the mixes sound well on any audio devices.
Mixing beats may sound simple, but there are important points that you should know before submitting your track for mastering.
First, you should be familiar with the terms in mixing domain:
• Level - is about relative level between instruments and their dynamics.
• Frequency - is referring to the spectral content of the various instruments and the overall mix.
• Space - is about with the spatial aspect of the various instruments that is often further subdivided into two sub-areas:
- Stereo - is concerned with the horizontal panoramic aspects of instruments.
- Depth - is all about the front-back aspects of instruments.
Whenever you are mixing and mastering audio; the source material will undergo noise reduction, compression, limiting, equalization, and other processes. Additional editing, pre-gapping, fading in and out, leveling, noise reduction and other enhancement processes and signal restoration can also be applied. This will ready your music for either analog or digital replication. The source material is then sequenced in the right order.
For when you mix your beats, here are some very helpful tips:
• The golden rule for mixing beats is that you should have a clean mix. For example, noise and hiss could be an aesthetic to your track, however, if it does not suit nor intended, get rid of it. There are hardware processors or some WAVES type-effects to do the trick for you.
• Too much filtering is not advisable because mastering engineers cannot fix over processed & over compressed tracks. Also, the quality of music will deteriorate as the sound produced may be too unclear. Therefore, just add effects that would complement your mixes.
• When you mix your beats, have these on a-3db output especially if these will undergo mastering after because this gives provision on headroom and preserves the dynamic range of your music. The final track will sound thin and weak without dynamic range; thus, make the track as loud as possible without over compressing. This way the mastering engineer can run the track through their expert compressors and gear.
• Lastly, you should have a backup of the master copies of your original track in your hard drive. The record company may own the sequence but the individual beats are still yours.
For hip hop lovers, mixing hip hop beats would surely be your passion. However, for your track or album to succeed, learn from those helpful tips.
Would you like to learn even more about how to mix your beats and how to make beats? Visit my website that's full of free valuable resources at http://www.beatmaker101.com for more helpful pro tips, and instructions on making beats.

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