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THE FIVE MOST COMMON MISTAKES WHEN PRODUCING & MIXING A SONG
Asking the man behind the music...Stefan Schnabel from Germany.
Stefan is a young, very talented and successful electronic Music, suspense, gameshow, heartbeat and pop, underscore- Composer, who writes music for several publishers, both in Germany and the USA. He had already countless TV-Plays in USA, Germany and some other countries all over the world. Many media people know his style to appreciate! He composes not only music for TV but also for advertising and many other needs in the media sector.
His music is played in shows like: „Keeping up with the Kardashians“, „Bad Girls Club“, „Total Divas“, „E! News“, „NBC Today“, „Big Brother“, „Hair goddess“ and much more others, worldwide!
1.
Less headroom basically, there should be enough room and air left from the level for each instrument or recording. If you pay attention from the beginning, you will see a decent result at the end. If you do not, it will not matter how overdriven, and thus "scratchy and unsightly" overall sound.
Tip: Using a limiter -12db per track and inputs are not too hot from the input when recording drive / adjust.
2.
Overdriving the recording of vocals and instruments, a very common mistake: "Instruments and vocals" are already picked up from the source at the microphone or input too loud! This gives you no chance, even with enough headroom in the DAW, to record that signal in a good quality.
Tip: Always adjust the signals so that they still have some db up to the 0 db limit air. Make louder always later!
3.
No panorama. Of course we all love a "big sound"! However, one should not confuse it with: "simply more and more on top of each other brings more. Completely wrong! Of course you can use some instruments and depending on the kind of music there are also some hundreds of tracks in a project. Nevertheless, it is important to note that you do not put everything in the middle. Thus distribute instruments in "space". For this we have 2 boxes, Reverb, Delay and also, for example. EQ and as a principle: left and right.
Tip: Imagine a band on a stage. What are the members of this band? Just as the individual members are, one should basically proceed with the distribution with right and left on the boxes. Exactly with rooms, who is further up and who is further behind? Drum kit for example: Kick in the middle, snare a bit further to the right, hihat still to the right, Ride on the far left. Pelvis right and left etc.
4.
Less is more! Too much in one place! Often less is more in the end! The more instruments or sounds there are, the harder it gets to get a clean sound. So try again and again how it sounds when one or the other instrument switches to "mute". Maybe it's often just much nicer sound. Here you should also pay attention to the structure of a song. Increases and e.g. volumes. Just by dynamics, a simple song can sound very noble and high quality.
5.
No breaks and less time. A very common mistake is often that artists just take bands for new songs too little time. Quickly composed a song here 1-2 lines written and finished the new song. Of course, this can work too. However, experience shows that a good song is just like good wine takes its time. The world was not created in one day.
Tip: Just switch off after a songwriting and production day. Load another song and continue working on it. Listen to other tunes for comparison and if it lasts longer do not despair. In case of problems ask other musicians and producers, composers, or read books how to do it!
And finally: Learning by doing! Just make it easy! Who does not try, does not win!