I'll cut to the chase: Check your mix in mono often (or better still, mix in mono BEFORE panning and adding stereo effects)! I'll show you WHY and HOW...
[Backing track: Will Darling (AKA, me) - The EDMtips Theme feat. Emma Jane]
This video explains why and how to mix in mono in Ableton Live, Logic Pro and FL Studio.
Mixing in mono is a game-changer, and helps avoid phase cancellation issues, as well as making sure that your ears aren't being distracted by cool effects before frequency balance.
This is, of course, just one part of mixing, but in my opinion one of the most overlooked and simple to implement!
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An audio signal is made of sound waves. This includes music. If sounds waves can be visualised as the waves of the sea, a recorded stereo signal has one set of waves on the left channel, and one set on the right channel. If the left and right waves are different from each other, the audio sounds stereo. If they identical, the audio sounds mono. However, what happens when they are PERFECTLY OPPOSITE from each other?
This is phase cancellation. Using the sea analogy, imagine two waves hitting into each other. It happens when they roll into a harbour wall and bounce back into the oncoming waves. They stop eachother. They cancel each other out and both waves stop. This is exactly what happens with equal and opposite audio waves.
Widening effects (like choruses, phasers and flangers) can sound GREAT in stereo, but if you sum (combine) the left and right channels together into mono after applying the effect, sometimes these phase issues can arise, as the effect has duplicated the sound wave and spread it left and right.
Mixing your track in mono allows you to avoid these problems.
Also, the added (but very important) bonus of mixing in mono is that big wide effects sound great in stereo, but can distract you from the more important task of balancing the levels of the various track elements.
If you can get a track sounding amazing in mono, AND THEN start carefully adding stereo effects, and panning elements left and right, you’ll be laughing. Just make sure to frequently switch from stereo to mono to check your mix still sounds good.
Trust me…this is a game-changer.
How to do it?
In Ableton Live, use the Utility plugin (and assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle between 0% width and 100% width). I use “Alt M” on my Mac as it’s easy to reach and not used for anything else.
In Logic Pro X, use the Gain plugin on the output channel. Set it to mono and simply toggle on and off.
In FL Studio, below the effects rack in the master track there is a stereo separation knob. I don’t use FL Studio, but I imagine you can assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle it to fully stereo or mono.
Cheers, and happy producing,
Will
How to Mix - Do This 1 Thing First! | |
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| Education | Upload TimePublished on 13 Dec 2017 |
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