When mixing, your lower tones (or frequencies) can tend to blend together getting muddy and lost. This can result in your kick not piercing through your mix, or your bass instruments lacking weight and low end. One technique to help counter this problem is called sidechaining.

Sidechaining uses dynamics (or volume) to move different instruments up and down in volume depending on whatever else is going on in the mix. In this sidechaining example, every time our kick hits we tell our bass instruments to duck down a set amount.

To easily sidechain two tracks together, place a compressor on the track you want to duck. On the compressor, use what’s called the “key input” to dictate the instrument forcing the sidechain. In our example, we put our kick track on a bus, and set that bus to hit the key input of the compressor on the bass track. Everytime the kick hits, the bass will duck, helping the kick to be present and clear through the bass.

So to sum it up, SIDECHAIN THEM KICKS GURL

Step 1: Create a bus/send on the track you want to trigger the move (kick) ((Make sure there is signal in the bus…)).
Step 2: Create a compressor on the track you want to duck down in volume (bass)
Step 3: Set the key input of the compressor to the bus/send we created for the kick
Step 4: Cook well and enjoy.

For this blog, I went a little faster assuming the reader knows some basic stuff (Busses, compressors). If not, feel free to read up on compressors in our earlier blogs!

Again questions and comments are GREATLY appreciated. Let me know what you want to read/see more of.

Till next time!

-Jake

Video blogs on the way! Enjoy and comment!

http://www.joeycutless.com/this-recording-studio-technique-could-save-you-time-money/

- Jake
Also check out his website for more industry insight!

http://www.joeycutless.com/

@JoeyCutless

My students ask me all the time about how to control the bottom half of the frequency spectrum **Student Voice** Mr. Jake, my kicks won’t thump hard enough, my sub isn’t loud enough. Welp, I decided to do a five part mini series on different low end techniques and how to make your records really pump. For part 1 we will go over tuning our kicks.

As the kick drum is the driving rhythm of the track, it is one of our most important mix elements. In my mixes, after I have made sure my kicks are on time and have basic eq and compression that I like, I will often tune my kicks.

To tune my kick track, I first find out what the key of the song is. You’ll start to pick out common keys in different genres of music. Once I know the key of the song I then find the root frequency of that key. Now hear me out.

Basic music theory says that if the root of my song is A, meaning I start on that note and probably resolve on that note, then an A will reinforce most other scale positions. So if I know that an A0 note on the keyboard (a low A note) has a root frequency at 55 Hz, I will then attempt to EQ the kick around that frequency. Having that repeating A will always reinforce the energy and the harmonics of the song. If Im adding a signal generator as a subkick, i’ll go to the main frequency of the key at first for my sub as well.

This theory relies on a few thing. But with a pitch to frequency app such as the MusicConv by Pierre Couprie in the iPhone store makes the math part easy. The EQing is up to you!

We are going to be starting video entries onto the site, and tuning kicks will definitely be one of the first videos we shoot. Stay tuned!

Till Next Time!

-Jake

http://istandardproducers.com/interviews/new-interview-joey-cutless-tv-film/

- Jake
Also check out his website for more industry insight!

http://www.joeycutless.com/

@JoeyCutless

Advanced File Sharing For Music Editing

With new Internet technologies and applications coming out with incredible consistency, it seems we can’t go a single week without hearing about new innovations for communicating and conducting business online. However, while many of these technological advancements are indeed geared towards large businesses and professional communications, most of them also have more practical uses that can be enjoyed by individuals, as well as independent or small businesses. For example, consider something like advanced secure file sharing – a concept and practice being implemented by all kinds of online companies that can also be used for something more independent, such as sound mixing and audio collaboration.

Advanced file sharing, offered by providers such as ShareFile, is designed to simplify and enhance the ways in which people share information and collaborate online. Naturally, this has many applications in the world of business. But if you are a band member, a DJ, or anyone with a connection to audio recording and sound editing, you may be able to find a great deal of handy utilities within the services provided by an advanced file sharing system. Here are a few specific benefits you might enjoy.

Handling Complex Files
A single song or music file can generally be sent relatively hassle free by ordinary email. But if you need to send and receive more complex audio files – that is to say, longer recordings or large batches of recordings at once – you may need the extra support for large and complex files offered by an advanced file sharing system. This is one of the chief benefits of advanced file sharing and can be very useful for someone working in music or audio editing.

Online Collaboration
Another significant benefit for anyone working professionally with audio files is that advanced file sharing can include access to a cloud network, where it becomes easy to collaborate with partners on a single project. Essentially, you can upload files to the cloud, and from there anyone with access to the cloud can access them. This allows a very simple and efficient means of collaborating on a project, which is particularly convenient for editors and band members.

File Transfer Security
Finally, there is also increased security for your file transfers when you take advantage of advanced file sharing systems. Typically this is more useful for large companies with confidentiality concerns, but it is always a good idea to be as secure as possible when dealing with any type of work online. To ensure your sound file transfers are secure and will end up in the right hands, you may well want to consider advanced file sharing.

Beat machines! AAAAHHHHH!

Title: MPC Renaissance to control Presonus Studio One Transport
A Special Thank you to MEC Productions for this tutorial – http://www.mecprosound.com/