In or Out Of The Box?

A common term you’ll hear is “in the box” or “out of the box” when talking about mixing. This is pretty simple — “in the box” mixing is referring to doing the mix completely within a computer, using a program such as Pro Tools or Logic. “Out of the box” means you’re using a mixing board and outboard equipment to do your mix — the preferred method of top engineers. For our purposes, though, we’ll assume you’re mixing “in the box” in your favorite software package. Surprisingly, most of the concepts are exactly the same, whichever way you choose to go.

Elements of a Mix

You’ll be mixing in two-track stereo as a final product, so here’s some things to watch out for.

Mixing in stereo represents the two ears on your head. If you’ve ever heard a mono recording (common with many live soundboard recordings), you’ll notice that there’s very little depth to the recording; it sounds very one-dimensional. You’ll want to find ways to use the panning function on your individual tracks to bring depth, focus, and clarity to your recording.

Mixing Drums

The drums are the first element to bring into stereo. Usually, you’ll want to mix the drums in true stereo. Whether you mix so that the stereo “image” is from drummer’s perspective or from the audience perspective is a matter of your personal taste. I prefer to mix from listener perspective — with (for a right-handed drummer) the snare, kick, and center tom in the middle, the overheads panned hard right and left, and the high-hat in the center with a slight nod to the right.

Staying Centered

Several things need to stay in the center of your mix. Bass guitar, for example, usually provides the flowing low-end motion of the song, and needs to stay centered so that it’s sending program material into both channels equally. Lead vocals, usually, will want to stay in the center — and performing a stereo double on choruses and harmonies will give tons of depth.

Mixing Guitars

To give guitars extra depth, consider doubling them, as well; pan each hard right and left. Don’t be afraid to have the guitarist ad-lib on the doubles, to add some extra body to the mix.

Mono Compatibility

One thing to watch out for is mono compatibility. If your music might make it on the radio, watch out that it won’t collapse when summed to mono. Most interfaces have a “mono” button to allow you to check; just turn that function on and make sure that nothing disappears in your mix when listened in mono. If something disappears, move it around in the stereo field (with the mono function enabled) until it reappears. Simple as that!

Mixing in stereo isn’t that hard — but making sure you check all your bases before making that final bounce to disk is of very high importance!

Source: homerecording.about.com

Advanced Guitar Mic’ing and Mixing
Another long guide on the art of mic’ing a guitar cab with 2 different microphones to achieve a fuller sound. Also includes tips for use on mixdown to get that “pro” sound.

Electric Guitar Mic’ing.

Technical Skill Level: 3 / 5

Foreword:

There are two fields of thought on Mic usage when mic’ing guitar cabinets / amps. Using a Dynamic mic like a Shure SM-57 gives a very “gritty” sound, but often lacks top end sparkle that makes the sound cut through in a mix meaning you have to apply lots of EQ and / or reverb to get a usable sound. Using a Condenser mic will often give a more detailed sound with more “fizz”, but often lacks lower-frequency response and as a result can sound too “thin” and “transparent”.

In this tutorial I will outline the setup and procedures for combining these two mic’s to enjoy the benefits of both, allowing you to achieve a “richer” electric guitar sound from your home studio setup. I will also be covering some basics on treatment and practices to employ to push that sound even further upon mixdown.

Equipment used:

Guitar Amp – The amp you use is pretty much down to what you have – bear in mind that the bigger the amp, the “phatter” the end sound (in most cases). Also, bear in mind that it is best to drive the amp pretty hard when recordingthe sound , as the desirable distortion elements will not kick in at low volumes (especially when mic’ing Tube (Valve) Amps. As a result, it is sometimes more desirable to crank up a small amp and record that, rather than using a large amp, but having to run it at lower “power levels” due to neighbors, or the wife If you have a range of practice and “stage” amps, try them out, find the one which one sounds best at the volume levels you can operate at.

Dynamic Mic – In this tutorial I will be using a Shure SM-58 – ideally an SM-57 is more desirable (but I don’t have one! , however nearly any dynamic mic will do the role sufficiently. Dynamic mics can take very extreme SPL’s (Sound Pressure Levels) and as a result, you can shove them right next to the cone to really pick up the “roar” of the amp. Dynamic mics, due to their build design, also have a tendency to have a slower “transient response” – I won’t go into detail here, but this is again very desirable to close mic’ing a cab.

Condenser Mic – In this tutorial I will be using a Rode NT-1 (or NT1A), however any LARGE DIAPHRAGM condenser mic will be sufficient (note that you should use a large diaphragm mic, a small diaphragm mic will not capture the same tonality – feel free to experiment, by all means, but that’s not how I work Condenser mic’s are quite a bit more delicate than dynamic mic ’s, as a result you shouldn’t shove one of these right next to the cone, the high SPL’s could possibly damage the mic – keep it at least 4 inches away and you should be fine. Condenser mics will usually have a very good “transient response” leading to a very dynamic and “open” sound.

Pre Amps / Mixing Console – In this tutorial I will be using 2 mics, one of which (The NT-1) requires Phantom Powering. I personally use my Behringer MX3282a, however any desk should do the job nicely (Even the MX802 is capable for this task). If you have the option of using a high quality channel strip (like a Joe Meek VC3Q for example) then use it to feed theCondenser Mic in this setup and you can use the compression settings to you advantage when tracking.

Recording Medium – Most of you will be recording onto computer, I will leave how to hook everything up and getting your software running smoothly until another tutorial.

Method:

Wherever possible, set the guitar amp up in a separate room to your studio / control room. If you have a vocal booth, nearby spare bedroom or even a cupboard, use that. Set up the amp as usual, dial in your preferred settings and have a quick jam to check that everything is working ok and sounding the way you like it. Remember that if you are using a Tube Amp you need to let it “warm up” for at least an hour before you start recording or the tonality ofthe sound may change as the valves change in temperature.

Start off by positioning the condenser mic. Using a stand set it up about 12-15 inches away from the speaker and so that the capsule is facing towards one of the cones. If your cab has 2 or more cones then concentrate on just one cone, try not to place the mic’s in between the cones asthe sound will nearly always be weaker.

Now you need to plug the Condenser Mic into a channel on your Mixer / Preamp. Ensure that the Phantom power on your Mixing desk / preamp is turned Off, this is important, plugging an XLR lead into a Condenser mic when the Phantom Power is on can easily damage the Microphone. Once it is plugged in at both ends (Mic and Channel Strip), then turn on the Phantom Power, wait about 10 seconds for it to level out. Bring the channel fader up to Unity (0dB) and set all the EQ’s flat. Start off with the gain all the way down. Get a friend, your sessionist or anyone else to play the guitar while you adjust the gain trim – make sure that the signal does not peak and averages around 0dB on the mixer (Note, we are only dealing with the MIXER here, not the recording medium yet!).

Now we need to setup a “headphone mix”. Plug a pair of headphones into the “headphone” out of your mixer / preamp. You should now be able to hear the guitar in your headphones via theCondenser mic – so far so good

Turn up the headphone volume nice and loud and venture back into the room where the Guitar Amp is setup. You need the headphones nice and loud so that you hear the sound that the mic is picking up rather than the sound of the actual cab. Now position the Condenser mic so that it is in the sweet-spot. Spend a good few minutes moving the mic around slightly until you are confident it is picking up the best possible sound – it should sound “airy” and “open” – don’t worry that it does have much “grit” about it, we will address that in a minute .

Once you are happy with the positioning, go back into your control room. Make sure you shut all the doors between the two locations and use pillows / towels / duvets / quilts / family pets to block any gaps where sound is leaking through. Now listen tothe sound of the cab back through on your studio monitors – if you are happy with the sound , you are ready to move onto the next mic – if not, put the headphones back on and venture back into the “live room” to reposition the mic again.

When you have got the sound you are after with the one condenser mic, you are ready to place the dynamic mic (SM-58 in my case) to add more “depth” and “grit” to the sound. When placing the Dynamic mic ensure that you don’t knock the Condenser mic accidentally as you will then have to reposition it to get an optimal sound. Get the dynamic mic right up next to the grill, I place mine about 2inches away slightly off axis pointing towards the centre of the speaker – These close mic’ingtechniques are already covered in another tutorial

Now that the mic is in position it is time to head back into the control room. Turn the fader all the way down to -Inf on the Condensers’s channel and turn the Dynamic’s channel up to Unity – as before, make sure the EQ is set to flat and then slowly adjust the gain until you get a strong signal that fluctuates around 0dB. Thedynamic mic should sound pretty good by itself – we’re done! both mic’s are in place and we are ready to record?

Nah, that’s far too easy…

Here comes the real catch of using two or more mics on a single sound source – our good friend “phasing” – this bit is FUN!

From here on the Condenser Mic (Rode NT-1) will be running on Channel 1 and the Dynamic Mic (Sure SM-58) on channel 2; just for the sake of simplicity.

Set channel 2’s fader to -Inf dB so that you are now not hearing any sound from either of the mics. Bring up channel 1’s fader to Unity again and you will now only be gettingthe sound from the condenser Mic, now, bring up channel 2’s fader … whats happening … the sounds getting thinner?! Yep – that’ll be the phasing.

Phasing occurs because the Mics are receiving two different “waveforms” (like you see on the computer screen in your Sample editing program) – Because the mic’s are recording from the same source (the guitar amp) and are very close together, these waveforms will cancel each other out when they are mixed together resulting in a very thin sound as opposed to what the two mics would sound like if they were “in-phase” (which would be “phatter” than just the one mic).

Obviously this is not a good guitar sound, what the hell are you going on about jues, you made me read all this way and you have created a crap guitar sound. Hold on, this bit’s a touch fiddily, but you’ll be pleasantly supprised when we get it right

Have both channels set to unity and both panned centrally – pop on the headphones again and go back into the “live room”. Do not adjust the position of the Condenser Mic, that is find where it is, the easiest one to adjust is the dynamic mic (the SM-58), pick it up and move it about very slowly while someone else is playing the guitar – as you move the position of the mic, so the phasing will shift – it will sound a bit like a jet plane going overhead and sounds a bit wierd – eventually you will find the meeting point of the waveforms and as if by magic the signals will go “in phase” – go back into your control room and check it on the monitor speakers – you will know when you get it because the sound will no longer sound thin and lifeless, but all phat and creamy. If you have a very willing friend, it’s preferable to send them into the control room to move the Dynamic Mic around while you listen on the speakers. Shout at him to stop when he finally gets it in the right position and the two signals go “in-phase”.

Once you have got the two mics “in-phase” you must do your best not to move them – very slight movements shouldn’t be a major problem – but large knocks will almost certainly move them enough to put the signals out of phase again – in which case you will need to go back and readjust the positioning (and hit the person who just knocked the mic’s

Right, so we have a phat, in-phase guitar sound coming though into the mics – excellent, we are now ready to track this sound onto your recording medium (in my case, I use Cubase SX). Ideally we want to record both mics separately so that we can apply different EQ, compression, reverb, delay, and volume settings to each one if we need to. As we are only using two channels, you need not worry about using AUX sends or groups – just pan Channel 1 hard left and Channel 2 hard right – you will now have one mic coming out of each of the two speakers and with a it of luck into the respective Left and Right inputs on your computer.

And away you go, play along to the track, monitoring on your studio speakers – remember not to monitor too loud or it may bleed across from the control room into the live room – if you are getting a bit of “bleed” then you need to use more pillows, etc to block any gaps that the sound is travelling though, or just turn it down in the control room a bit. When you have finished your take you will have two separate recordings – one for each mic.

Hurrah – we’re done, you can now pan these signals central on the computer and adjust the level of them and apply a bit of EQ to get the sound you are after. As far as the levels go I will start with the condenser mic up at unity and then mix in the dynamic mic signal until it adds the required amount of “grind” to the sound…

“Okay, this sounds pretty phat – but it’s not PHAT! C’mon, you promised PHAT guitar sound!”

Okay, here are my tips to using that mic setup to achieve a REALLY phat sound – but these are my tips – so be careful who you give them out to

First up is the good old time honoured classic of double tracking. I double track every single guitar part that I record. This very simply involves playing the part as per usual and then going back and recording it again (make sure that you solo the first performance, as it may put you off if you listen back to it when you record the second). Then just pan the first take hard left and the second take hard right. Obviously your playing needs to be pretty tight for this to work, but as long as you (or your sessionist) is fairly competent it will work great – this technique along will improve the phatness of the sound by a great amount. There is also a trick whereby you flip the phase of one of the takes, thus putting it out of phase with the other – this creates a psycho-acoustic illusion whereby there seems to be a very large “hole” in the middle of the stereo field, you’ll find that vocals, bass and drums fit beautifully in this gap – tho it is entirely up to you as to whether you like this sound or not.

Next up is the use of compression. I’m not going to give a detailed explanation of compression here, there are plenty of articles available on that subject alone. The things to bear in mind is that you are after a really “crunchy” feel when compressing electric guitar (especially the distorted parts).

Set the ratio to about 4:1 and have the attack around 18-25ms and the release to about 20-30ms. Now lower the threshold slowly – get it to just the right spot and the sound will become a damn sight crunchier, push it too far and it will become too “flat” and “smooth” sounding – this maybe what you are after, but I’m personally not Clean guitar sounds can sometimes benefit from a slightly longer release to exaggerate the playing – experiment with the attack and release to get the sound you are after.

Because we used two mics we have the option of either compressing them individually or compressing the combined result – I personally go for the latter option (by placing the compressor on a bus and bussing the two signals to that), but you can easily experiment with different settings for the dynamic and condenser mics. Bear in mind that the dynamic mic is meant to add “grit” and so leans to the side of “over-compression” where as the condenser mic is used to capture the “air” and “fizz” and so probably wants a bit less – however, let your ears be the judge.

I personally wouldn’t even touch EQ until you are doing the final mix of the tune when all the instruments are in place – go easy on the EQ, don’t use too much and try to cut rather than boost – you may want to apply a Low Pass Cut under 120Hz to make a bit of room for the bass guitar if it’s betting a bit lost – also, cutting at around 800Hz can give a bit more “thrash” to the sound.

Go _very_ easy on reverb on the Distorted sound. If you really want to use a bit of ‘verb, then choose either a plate program or a small room program and send only a small amount – if you can hear the reverb then you have probably applied a bit too much – too much reverb will only muddy the mix, stealing frequencies away from the other instruments resulting in your mix sounding a mess. Clean guitar is a different story – clean guitar will sound much warmer with a bit of plate, room, or even chamber reverb on it – make sure the decay times are not set too high unless the piece is very laid back – stay under about 2 seconds, and again, don’t send too much or it will sound messy and amateur.

Tap delays can also sound really good on clean guitar (not distortion!), use small taps (start with one at around 40-75 depending on the tempo of the track) (remember BPM x 0.6 = Time in Milliseconds) – you can add up to two or three taps before things start getting a bit messy, if you plugin (or outboard) has filters built in, use them to good effect to “filter away” the later taps – if you also offset the taps in the stereo field it can sound VERY pleasing.

As a last pointer, I will recommend that it is a good idea to do a track in “sections” – if there are both clean and distorted parts in the song, then do a first take and get all the distortion parts down, then go back and do another take and get all the clean parts down on a separate track (as in Lane) – this way you will avoid any timing issues or noises created by pressing pedals / stomp boxes – it also makes it easier to apply effects only to certain sections of the song.

Source: Homerecordingconnection

This article is an old article I decided to re-write and fact check a bit. This article is an introduction to miking techniques for people new to the recording hobby.

In the home studio many artists are starting to lean toward direct recording with modelers such as the POD, V-Amp and other such direct recording solutions. They have become a very real possibility for many artists. However, there is still the purist among us that wants to do it the old fashioned way. For you among us, let’s look atmiking.

A very common mic for home use is the good ol’ trusty Shure SM 57, a work horse of a microphone that is reasonably priced and works one everything. As condensors come down in price they are becoming more and more common as well with many decent priced mics to choose from. The forum has many threads on that topic. Most of the comments below apply to both types of mics.

Commonly, a mic is placed dead-center on the cone of the speaker facing straight in, this gets you the truest sound, but, also puts the most pressure on the diaphragm of the mic which can be damaging over time. It is, however, not uncommon to see engineers put the mic straight in, aligned midway between the frame of thespeaker and the dust cap of the speaker. This puts less pressure on the mic, and gives a little different texture to the sound. But, as with anything, there are many different ways people like to put their microphones. The pictures below demonstrate some of the most common:

	The classic “Dead Center” miking position, this is the most obvious and most common positioning. Sometimes, with certain mics this may want to be avoided because it does put a huge amount of pressure on the mic due tothe sound coming from right in the center of the cone. It does give a clean, pure representation of the speaker, but is sometimes prone to overdrive the mic.
	Placing the mic on the center of the cone. Many engineers use this method, I don’t use it myself, but it is a nice sound, with less pressure put on the mic. Still, it is a nice, close-proximity option for you to try with your amplifier.
	Putting the mic at a 45 degree angle with the mic centered on the cap. I have seen this method used more for the second mic on a cabinet rather than the first, but none-the-less, it is an option. Used as the second mic, placed further back from the amp it can be good for grabbing extra bass. Theoretically, the highs will just shoot right past it and the booming bass will the picked up more with this position.
	Putting the mic perpendicular with the speaker. This is even a more radical approach to getting more bass in your sound. Same theory as above, just a greater angle to let more highs zip past can add a lot of thickness tothe sound by capturing more of the low end and putting minimal direct pressure onto the microphones diaphragm.

When looking at these miking positions, be aware that they are all also capable of enhancement via a second mic that could be placed further back from the speaker. The are many formulas to how to place the two mics in accordance with each other, some put the first mic half-a-foot to a foot back from thespeaker and the second three times as far back from the speaker. I commonly put one mic one the speaker, dead-center and put a second in the nearest corner of the room facing the corner. This method helps create some ambience in the recording by capturing more reverb, or sound of the room bouncing around in that corner. If you happen to be recording an open-back cabinet, another idea is to place a mic behind the cab capturingthe sound coming out of the back. Condensor mics are great for the ambience-catching mics.

Your best bet is trying all these positions, mixing and matching the different styles with more than one mic and then blending all the sounds and just seeing which method works best for you.

After recording the guitar, it then comes down to placing it in your mix. It’s not just about the guitar sound at this point; it is also about how it fits in the mix with all the other instruments. When I EQ a guitar I often rolloff at around 80Hz to leave room for bass instruments and boost a bit around 2k to 2.5k to add some sizzle if the guitar is a distorted rock guitar. if the guitar sounds like a “cheap” guitar, for lack of a better description, try cutting a bit around 800mhz to 1k make add some dynamics to the higher and lower end, cutting the mids a bit.

Source: homerecordingconnection

Demo recording treads a fine line: you want your recordings to sound as dope as possible, in hopes of catching the attention of the right A&R person; at the same time, your demos might be “disposable” if your ultimate goal is to get a deal and a budget to re-record your tunes in a high-end studio setting, possibly with the expert guidance of a producer. That said, there is always the possibility that an indie label will agree to release your demos as a finished product, sometimes with a little extra mixing and mastering, so you don’t want to skimp on the overall production quality.

Push it as far as you can! At the end of the day, your demos have to shine with potential, so that listeners don’t have to stretch their imaginations to know how wicked your sound would be once polished. Still, you shouldn’t feel obliged to break the bank to achieve that level of quality. Go for the gold and make your demos sound like tracks pulled from an album; just do your best to keep your feet on the ground and (thanks to some strategic recording and production techniques) your credit card in your wallet.

A few years ago, my good friend and coworker Matt Haick approached me about helping to record some demos for his band Merciana. They’re a New Jersey band that can best be described as melodic post-hardcore. You can check out their music at www.merciana.com, and on the iTunes Music Store. The lineup is classic: drums, bass, 2 electric guitars, and vocals. As the principal songwriter and lead singer, Matt was in a good position to take the reins and spearhead the whole demo production process. I took the train from New York down to New Brunswick to help them set up their home studio.

Rule #1: Keep your gear investment to a minimum.

It was a nice, minimal studio arrangement: Macintosh G4 running Logic Audio, a Behringer DDX3216 digital console, a MOTU 896, and a set of Audix Fusion 6 drum mics. They had their rehearsal/recording setup in the basement, where the wooden rafters, carpeted floor, and odd-angled brick walls made for decent acoustics.

Given the average quality of the mixing console and the simple monitoring situation, there was no real question of eq-ing or compressing the drums as is my habit. The mixer was useful primarily as an analog-to-digital converter, a source of phantom power, and decent preamps on each channel. We got everything plugged together and all the signals flowing to their proper channels. I also helped them with mic placement, dangling the hi-hat mic from the rafters for lack of a boom stand. And that was it: I left them to their own devices, promising to tidy up the drum recordings later on.

Once the drum tracks were on their hard drive, Merciana continued with guitars and bass. Matt did most of the guitar tracking at home with his Marshall JCM 2000 and Peavey 5150 (“for the CRUNCH”) amp heads. At the recommendation of our then boss and mentor, producer Mark Saunders, he plugged the heads straight into a Groove Tubes Speaker Emulator, circumventing the need for mics, a cabinet, and a microphone preamp altogether. For those of you not familiar with this little gadget, it is an amazing and highly affordable shortcut for the guitarist producing his/her own demo. Simply adjust the input level on the speaker emulator to get a decent level (without further distorting the signal coming from your amp head), and then run a line from your emulator straight to your mixer or digital audio interface. It’s as easy as that! Palmer also makes a speaker simulator that does the same job.

For bass, Merciana opted for a slightly more elaborate setup, miking up an Ampeg SVT with a 6 x 10 cabinet using an AKG D112 mic and a Demeter VTP-1 tube preamp. In my experience, if you have a good bass head like the SVT, you can even skip the cabinet and mic, running a line directly from the head’s preamp out to your mixer or digital audio interface for a sound that’s full, clear, and deep.

Rule #2: What you don’t have, add in using retriggering or ‘sound replacement’.

Once these raw files were in my hands, it was time to mix them into something impressive. I started with the drum sounds. Given the humble nature of the original drum session, I decided to combine the live drums with professional sounding kick and snare samples. This step alone gave perhaps the biggest boost to the overall production quality of the demos; a good kick and snare sound are tricky enough to achieve in a professional studio, let alone in a bare-bones basement setup!

I first had to generate perfectly synchronized MIDI notes for each drum hit. After selecting a destination MIDI track in Logic Audio, double-clicking on the snare-drum audio file in Logic Pro’s Arrange Window revealed its waveform. In this window’s menu the Factory, Audio to Score function allowed me to preview Logic’s MIDI-note-interpretation of the kick and snare audio, and to adjust parameters to eliminate false attacks and flams (closely spaced double-hits). I repeated this procedure to generate MIDI notes for the bass drum on a second MIDI track.

Audio to score

I then fixed the resulting MIDI data in the Matrix edit window by Selecting All and then using the Functions > Transform > Transposition function to Fix the bass-drum MIDI notes to a C1 and the snare MIDI notes to D2 (the typical bass-drum and snare notes for most drum samplers). I also maxed out the relative velocities of all the notes in the Matrix window by Selecting All and then using Logic’s Velocity Tool to increase the velocity of a single note all the way, thereby boosting all the selected notes’ velocities while preserving their relative velocity values.

MIDI before and after

This technique faithfully mirrored the relative strength of the various hits, and allowed me to take advantage of modern drum samplers’ multi-layered dynamics. We triggered snare sounds from Native Instruments’ plug-in drum sampler, Battery. The kick we used came from the internal sounds of an old-school Roland JV-1080 rackmount sound module. When layered with the original live recordings, these sounds really brought the drums to a level that hours of mixing and tweaking the recorded tracks could never have done.

Rule #3: If you’re not a trained engineer, use basic mixing techniques and time-saving strategies.

Merciana’s lineup made for some marvelous shortcuts in the mixing phase. We wanted to give them a consistent, driving, edgy tone that carried through from track to track. Once we had set up the mix for the first song with eq, compression and basic effects, we applied the same “mix template” to the rest of the songs, saving ourselves hours of work, and giving the demo a signature sound from start to finish.

There were always the same number of drum, guitar, and bass tracks in each tune, and since these had been recorded with the same mic placement and/or equipment (and often on the same day), it was easy to copy and paste the audio from the other songs into the sequence we used for the first mix. So instead of starting from scratch with each successive tune, we started with the settings for plug-in eq, compression, level and effects already in place, from an already good mix. Take heed: this strategy serves as a time-saving device only, and should not be used at the expense of attention to each individual track’s needs! Lead guitar and vocals in particular need different level settings from moment to moment, to keep them just in front of the other instruments.

There are no hard and fast rules governing the mixing process. If you’re not a trained engineer, and you don’t have a friend to whom you can appeal for some help with mixing, there are several techniques you can use to enhance your overall sound. The most chronic problem with homespun demos is muddiness. The vocals, guitars, and cymbals all have a lot of high-frequency content that gets ‘lost’ in the recording process. Try adding a bit of high end to each of these elements in the mix. A simple +2 or 3 dB shelf from around 4 kHz to 10 kHz will do wonders to brighten up these sounds. Again, this technique will yield different results for different recordings; experiment by varying the frequency of the shelf and find a setting that sounds good for each of your tracks.

Try adding some light compression after the eq for each sound as well. Solo each track and tweak its eq and compression settings to make it sound right on its own before adjusting it to sound perfect in the mix. In general, avoid eq-ing or compressing the re-triggered drum sounds, as most sampled drum sounds are already heavily processed, and it’s very easy to make them sound harsh or artificial, no matter how good your intentions.

If you’re working on a rock project like Merciana, add some reverb to the snare to make it bigger and to blend it into the mix at the same time. Watch out for ‘plosive’ ‘p’ and ‘b’ sounds on the vocal tracks. These can be easily and affordably eliminated in the recording process by placing a pop-stopper in front of the mic. If you have problems with plosive sounds, try a highpass filter on the vocal channels set around 100–200 Hz.

Rule #4: Use affordable mastering tools to give your mixes that extra oomph.

Once the mixes were in decent shape, Matt and I started monitoring through a TC Finalizer. The Finalizer served as a quick and easy all-in-one digital mastering tool, providing stereo eq, 3-band compression, and limiting. It’s a great device, featuring a number of customizable presets and some cool sound enhancers like the Digital Radiance Generator.

It’s amazing what a little mastering will do; just when you think your mixes are as good as they’re going to get, this extra step brings them to life even more. It also makes mixes louder and punchier overall, increasing the chance that they’ll sound good on a home system or headphones.

Another popular mastering tool is the T-RackS software by IK Multimedia. It’s certainly much more affordable than the TC Finalizer, and somewhat easier to use for the amateur engineer. Though I’ve never been a big user of T-RackS, I have plenty of friends who swear by it. Some of them even use the same preset over and over for a quick-and-dirty mastering of all their mixes; I wouldn’t advise this approach, but it’s a testament to the ease-of-use of this software that the mastering on my friends’ mixes sounds pretty good overall.

Rule #5: Mix and sequence your demo to grab an A&R person’s attention—don’t get too arty… yet.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember how A&R personnel are likely to listen to your demo: in an office, one after the other, often in quick succession, over extended periods of time. Make sure your mixes sound good on headphones, and don’t count on A&R’s willingness to skip through your tracks looking for interesting morsels. Instead, put your best foot forward and try to hook their interest from the start. If you don’t grab their attention up front, you could lose your chance to blow them away.

An album should, in my opinion, always be a carefully crafted listening experience from start to finish, with its builds, climaxes, mellow and hype moments. A demo, however, is bait—hook ’em and reel ’em in!