Here are the notes to my “Mix Engineering 101″ video:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mix_engineer => A mix engineer, also referred to as “mixing engineer”, is a person who, once all instruments, voices, and sounds, etc., have been recorded, creates what is called the final version (also known as “final mix” or “mixdown”) of a song, hence the term “mix engineer”.

He or she ‘blends’ or ‘mixes’ the elements of the recorded piece together, to achieve a good balance of the instrumental and vocal volume, as well their frequency contents, while also deciding other properties such as pan positioning, effects, and so on.

YouTube Link => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxrL8qpTeXE

Drums

The drums come from Logic’s “Ultrabeat” drum machine that comes stock with Logic 9.. In fact, everything that I use in this video comes stock with Logic Express (I don’t need Logic Pro because I already own Final Cut Studio, which includes Soundtrack Pro).

Instead of outputting the drums to one stereo track, I sent each individual element (Kick, Snare, Hat) to its own mono track so I could put effects on each one separately. If you don’t do it that way, when you add bass (low frequency information) to the kick drum, you’re also adding bass to the low end of the snare, which is a waste of bandwidth, changes the sound of your snare, and makes it tougher for your kick to occupy its own individual space in the mix.

Guitars

Guitars are double-tracked, meaning that I played the same line twice and panned each instance to the left or right.

What this does is it gives each side a slightly distinct flavor instead of seeming like a mono track that was copied and split.

Another thing you can do to make each side distinct is to put different amounts of delay on each one, giving it more of a stereo effect.

Another thing you can do is EQ (equalize) them differently so that one is brighter than the other, and people can clearly tell them apart.

Another thing you can do to create distinction, which I didn’t do in this video, is use different Pedalboard settings for each track. I could have used different stomp boxes or I could have used the same boxes with different values for the parameters.

Some musicians like to quad-track their guitars, actually. This would involve playing the same line four times, panning two instances to the right and two to the left, potentially at 100% and 80% to either side, and probably using two different amp/cabinet setups, creating a “wall of sound”.

Vocals

I used two tracks of vocals in this video, although I had eight (8). They’re both very slightly panned off-center (+/- 3) so there’s some separation between them and also because if I choose to widen the stereo field, they’ll become more distinct while still supporting each other.

I also sent each track to “bus 4″, which feeds my harmony tracks, which are panned hard left (100%) and hard right. Each track is delayed separately and pitch shifted in different directions (+9 cents on one side, and -9 cents on the other side). When you blend these in at a volume slightly lower than your lead vocal track, it gives a wider effect which makes it tougher for the other elements in your song that go straight down the middle (bass, snare, kick drum) to mask/block your vocal from being heard.

My two vocal tracks and my two harmony tracks both feed my Sub Voc, or vocal submix stereo track. The Sub Voc feeds my stereo output channel. There are at least three reasons to use a vocal submix. 1) You can automate your volume for all of your vocals at the same time with one fader, instead of having to automate each track individually. 2) You can put an effect on this one track instead of putting the same effect on all of your vocal tracks, saving time and CPU usage. 3) If your vocals don’t seem to sit right in the mix, you can put a compressor on your “everything except vocals” track (in the video, “Sub Inst”) and set your sidechain to listen to your Voc Sub track and duck the entire rest of the program every time there’s information on your vocal channel.

Reverb & Output

Reverb is something you may or may not want to use. What it does is emulate an acoustic environment, like a room or a stadium. The goal is to make each element seem like they were playing in the same space. Depending on the effect you’re going for with your song, that might be a good idea and it might not.

The way I have it set up in this video is that both my Sub Inst and Sub Voc are sending information to my Reverb channel. The amount that I send from each submix determines how loud each element is in the reverb (basically, the echo you would hear if you were listening to a band, live, in a large room).

Your “Output” track indicates the volume level that’s finally being heard. You don’t want that track to be too loud, or else you’ll hear unpleasant and unplanned distortion, that will make your song sound horrible (or unplayable), so you want to put a limiter on that track.

What the limiter does for you is restrict all output to a defined level. In the video, we don’t want the volume going higher than 0 dB (decibels), so the limiter is set for -.7 dB or something. This is where you get your loudness from (5m 45s into the video). Once you restrict all audio from going over a limit, you can increase the input level so the song itself gets louder, but it never distorts… The thing you have to watch out for, though, is crushing your sound and destroying its dynamic range. You don’t want every part of the song to be just as loud as every other part. This is dealt with by watching something I didn’t include in the video, which is RMS level vs. Peak level. If your RMS and Peak are almost the same, you’re pretty much screwed. While you want your Peak levels to be barely below 0 dB, you want your RMS to ride around -10 dB.

Mixing

From there, it’s a pretty straightforward mix.

1. Compress the kick drum to make it “smash”.
2. Equalize the kick to take out frequencies you don’t wan to use.
3. Compress & EQ the snare, mix it to a level that you like with the kick.
4. Bring in the hi-hat, EQ it, match it to the kick & snare.
5. Bring in the DI (direct input) of the guitar tracks.
6. Use Pedalboard to make it sound grungy, mix in with the drums.
7. Bring in vocals, add pitch correction, add harmony send/return tracks.
8. Add compression & EQ to “Sub Inst”.
9. Add compression & EQ to “Sub Voc”.
10. Send Sub Voc & Sub Inst to Reverb.
11. EQ Reverb track to remove bass frequencies.
12. Add limiter to Output channel to increase loudness.
13. Adjust individual elements that have been exaggerated by adding loudness.
14. Check to see how each section works with other sections.
15. Listen to the entire mix.

If you have questions, comments or would like to see an individual tutorial video on any of the sections I outlined here, leave me a comment below or on my Facebook page.
–
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The way the dating game works, guys have to be the aggressors and girls choose from the suitors who present themselves. There are several reasons for this, including women attempting to avoid the stigma of being considered hoes for stepping up front and telling a guy what they really want to do with him. Another reason is that gals tend to be more relationship-based, while guys are more get-laid-based.

What this creates is an uneven playing field where guys are always playing offense and girls are always playing defense. I had a rare opportunity, recently, to watch a creep operate… Let me back up a bit…

What/Who is a Creep?

A creep isn’t defined by tactics. A creep is defined by whether a chick wants to kick it to him or not. If a girl likes you, you can say just about anything you want to her, and she’ll go for it. She wants you to want her. She’s excited that she excites you. You can literally walk up to a chick and say “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” and she’ll make out with you, because that’s what she’s been daydreaming about this whole time since she first saw you…. kissing you, not you saying some corny, meaningless line.

So, a creep is a guy that a chick DOESN’T want to talk to her, but insists on talking to her anyway. He could be the most polite, well read, gentlemanly blah blah blah but if she’s not interested, he’s a nuisance that she needs to get rid of ASAP. Not only is he annoying, but he’s taking up space where a guy that she REALLY wants to meet could be standing and she could be enjoying herself.

So I had been about to say “I recently got to see a creep operate”, but that’s not actually true. I’ve seen creeps operate lots of times, except they’ve been friends of mine, so I’ve been hoping that they get on. Sometimes, the creep was ME! :D What I should have said was that I had the rare opportunity to watch some creep I don’t know operate, and because of that, I can now write up my favorite tips on how to *NOT* be a creep:

Don’t interrupt people’s conversations

If you want to be seen as a creep off the bat, jump into someone’s conversation as if they invited you. I know you have your agenda and you want to kick it ASAP before someone else pulls her, but rolling up uninvited sets off the first alarm that you don’t know how to respect people’s wishes. If nobody was paying attention to you and then you appear like “TA-DAAAA!”, you’re immediately a nuisance and have just dug your rap into a hole that you’re going to have to waste your time digging yourself out of. Instead of starting at ZERO, you start at negative-whatever, because you couldn’t find a decent way to join the group.

If a chick is by herself, that’s a different story. You STILL need to enquire as far as whether she’d like for you to hang out with her or not. Don’t just roll up on a chick that’s standing there with nothing to do and assume that listening to your sap rap is BETTER for her to do than doing nothing at all.

If you ask her and she wants you to leave, sure, keep trying, but if you can’t turn her quickly, break north before she informs the rest of her girlfriends in the area that you’re a creep, jacking up other opportunities you might have had if you had played it cool.

Don’t invade people’s space

Different countries have different distances at which people stand when they engage each other. It’s in your best interest to be outside of any uncomfortable range that she might have. It’s better to appear socially standoffish than annoyingly aggressive or overbearing.

This is one of the reasons you want to avoid places where the music is too loud. You want to be able to hear and be heard without standing “on top” of the chick. Whatever advances you’re making with your verbal game are being negated by her feeling uncomfortable about the fact that you’re standing so close to her.

If you gain/build rapport with her, fine.. move in closer. Other than that, keep your distance so she’s not contemplating cracking you in your grill with that beer bottle in her hand if you make any sudden moves. Your goal is to make her feel comfortable with you, not WARY.

Don’t be a blithering idiot (don’t slur your speech)

This is a tough one, because who actually KNOWS when they’re drunk and slurring? Basically, do your best NOT to seem like an out-of-control drunk when you kick your game. Again, this adds to her paranoia and blocks her from feeling comfortable around you. As corny as you were from butting into her conversation in the first place and invading her space in the second, you REALLY don’t want her to feel that you might do some weirdo ish just because you’ve had too much to drink already tonight and you can’t be trusted.

Make up your mind what you’re going to do tonight. Either get drunk and whoop it up or just get ‘buzzed’ or ‘tipsy’ and keep your rap game intact. Your goal is either to Get Nice or Get On… Choose ONE!

Don’t touch people

I’ve seen this for years, but never really thought much about it. Unless you have a well thought-out plan, Do NOT Touch People that haven’t invited you to touch them or that you haven’t built a level of rapport with where you FEEL like they might be cool with you touching them.

It’s a basic club tactic for guys to see a girl going by that they want to screw and grab her arm as she walks through a crowd. On the one hand, this makes sense, because clubs are dark AND loud and there’s no other way to get her attention. This style also seems to make sense because there are a lot of girls that go for this. A lot of girls will actually stop and talk to the guy that just grabbed them because they enjoy the attention. They enjoy that he wanted them so much that he just “Couldn’t let her walk by” without saying something to them.

The fact of the matter is that it’s an invasion of privacy and an indicator that his behavior is going to be much more aggressive when he finally gets her alone somewhere. If that’s the image you want to project to chicks, go right ahead and keep grabbing them. You’re either amplifying or destroying your rap. They’re either going to love it or hate it, and in most cases, you’re making more work for yourself than you need to. Stop touching people. If you NEED to meet her, follow her to wherever she’s going, catch her eye and then introduce yourself.

If you insist on continuing with this behavior, at least make sure you grab the arm where she has the beer bottle in her hand so you’re less likely to need stitches later this evening.

Don’t ask questions that you don’t want to answer yourself

I know it’s a regular tactic to fake it as if you want to talk to chicks by talking to them. If you had it like that, you would have walked up to her, said “Let’s get out of here” and she would have left with you and you would have done what you wanted with her. Since you DON’T have it like that, don’t play yourself by asking personal questions.

Why in the hell would a chick that you just met by rolling up uninvited and invading her space feel like telling you where she lives? How old she is? What she ate for dinner? Whether she has a boyfriend? Does that make sense to you?

Leave that stuff out. Everybody knows you’re trying to make smalltalk. Everybody knows you’re biding your time until you can figure out how to get laid. Don’t bother trying to mask it with social banter. If you insist on doing this, keep it impersonal. “How do you like this place?”, “Have you checked out XYZ bar?”, “How do you like the music?”

If you ask personal questions, they’re going to backfire on you when she asks YOU what you just asked HER. How old are YOU? Where do YOU live? See that? All of a sudden, YOU’RE on the defensive and responding in vague and deceptive manners which unearth your true intentions anyway. So do yourself a favor and don’t ask any questions you wouldn’t want to answer yourself.

Do remember what people said

Also, if you INSIST on talking to chicks as a way to stay in the game until you can get laid, try to REMEMBER what they said. If you ask a chick where she’s from and she says she’s from Indiana and moved to NYC three years ago, don’t turn around 5 minutes later and go “So… How long have you lived here?” .. See, you look like a clown, or an idiot, or like you really are, which is that you don’t give a damn what she’s saying and you’re only running your mouth until you can get her alone and get to the nitty-gritty… Which leads us to our final tip:

Don’t be transparent

In the Social Media world, the term “transparency” has become synonymous with positive behavior. It’s basically being up-front with your company’s beliefs, policies, influences and motives. This doesn’t work in the dating world, because your entire plan is to be deceptive and work your way to your desired outcome.

Therefore, being transparent belies everything you’ve been trying to do. Don’t make conversation and then have it be obvious that you’re not interested in what she has to say. Don’t say you’re not trying to have sex with her and then do your best to see what you can get. Don’t cross the entire room to ask her if she has the time when you just walked past several people with watches. Stick to your plan and ride it out to the end.

If you don’t feel like you can do that, then don’t bother playing games at all. Step to her, let her know what you want and then either get it or don’t get it. Otherwise, she’s going to know that you’re going to say ANYTHING you have to to get her to do what you want and your credibility and rapport are going right down the drain.

You’re really better off just going for it, because at least you can get the respect of not having tried to cheat her into sex. You can also get the respect of not having wasted her time, trying for like 30 minutes to talk her into something she didn’t want to do for you in the first place. She’ll also appreciate your not blocking her ops with other guys that she might ACTUALLY want to talk to or mess with. Who knows? You might get lucky and she might approach YOU later in the evening, being that you were the only guy that didn’t try to run game, was up front with what he wanted and wasn’t overbearing or a JERK when she wasn’t interested.

You might also luck out and she might send you a girlfriend of hers that didn’t get any raps tonight and actually likes how you look. Regardless… It’s in YOUR best interest to NOT come off as a CREEP if you want to maximize your efficiency with chicks. Believe me… It gets around faster that you think. :)

~Bill

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