Interesting Mixing Techniques in Live 11

Mixing down your track is an important part of the creative process. This is the stage where you blend all the tracks of your project by balancing levels, panning, frequencies, and dynamics, as well as applying creative processing to sounds to create the desired sound characteristics and a sense of depth in your song. In this process, you bring out the best of your sounds and create a cohesive balance between them. Mixing is usually done by a mixing engineer, but it is not unusual in the modern age for the producer to mix their own songs down, so it is definitely a good skill to master to be self-sufficient. Sometimes, with certain genres (specifically in electronic music), some parts of mixing start while the track is still being produced as part of the sound design process, or it is necessary to make elements of a track sound genre appropriate within the production process.

Mixing is a huge topic, and there are many books written about...

Technical requirements

To follow along with this chapter, you will need the following:

• A computer with at least 8 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i5 processor
• A pair of headphones
• A copy of Live 11 Suite
• The Chapter 16 Ableton Live project

Approaching a track mixdown

Let’s start by covering the basics and how you could approach mixing down your track. The order of these processes can be quite important to achieve a fast and fluid workflow.

Volume balance

The first thing that is super important and a significant part of mixing down a track is to balance the volume between each element of your track. At this stage, you can identify, for example, whether there is further need for volume automation for certain parts or elements of your track, as well as make sure that you have enough headroom at your Master track’s meter and ensure that each element of your track is audible at all times.

If you are working on a track that you started a fairly long time ago and are revisiting it weeks later to do the final mixdown, it can be a good idea to rebalance the volume mix from scratch. If you are hired to mix someone’s song, and you are being sent the stems of their track, you will need to balance the...

Split-band processing in Live

The idea here is to take a sound with a fairly wide frequency range and process the frequency bands separately and accordingly.

Let’s take as an example a fat Reese bass. Since it is a bass sound, it is obviously heavy in low frequencies, but these basses are also really rich in the mid-range.

You might also want this bass to sound super huge and spacey, but we know that we can’t really have a bass stereo, nor have reverb on it; otherwise, it will muddy up our entire mix.

Well, this is where splitting this bass into two by frequency ranges and processing them differently can get you that big fat spacey sound that you are looking for without mudding up your mix.

Let me show you how it is done in Live using Audio Effect Rack. You can use the Chapter 16 project file to follow along:

1. Create or pick the bass sound you desire in Live. (In the Chapter 16 project, we are working with the track called Reese Split Bass.)
2. Drop...

Sidechained reverb

Sidechaining reverbs is something I personally found super useful in certain situations for vocal processing. For example, sometimes you can find yourself in a situation where you have found a lush reverb, and you really want to use it on your vocals, but for some reason, you just don’t seem to be able to set it right. If you add a bit more, it makes your vocals sound too washed out; if you add a bit less, then it seems to sound too dry. In this case, of course, you can look for a different type of reverb and settings, but maybe you can also try to sidechain the reverb. The sidechain will duck down (reduce in volume) each time the vocals come on, and when there are no vocals in the playback, the reverb level comes back up. This can also be used very creatively in slower tracks with more spaced-out vocals (in terms of having long spaces between words or phrases), so the increased level of reverb can beautifully fill out these spaces.

Let’s see how...

Parallel Compression

The process of parallel compression (also called New York -style compression) blends a dry audio signal together with a copy of this signal heavily compressed. It can give a really nice excitement and flavor to sounds. It is a widely used technique and can give some real spice to, for example, drums and vocals.

Let’s see how it is done in Live:

1. Navigate in the Chapter 16 project to the DRUMS track.
2. Insert a new Return Track. (In this project, this will be Return C.)
3. Insert the Compressor device onto this new Return Track.
4. Send the drums via Sends C all the way to the Return Track with the Compressor device on it (Figure 16.14).

Figure 16.14 – The DRUMS track sent all the way to Return Track C

5. Now you can hit the Solo button on Return Track C and set up the Compressor device on this Return Track to compress the signal really-really heavily! Go really heavy-handed and over the top with the...

Mid-side EQing

Mid-side EQing enables us to equalize an audio signal’s mid and side components independently. This provides us with much greater control of the stereo image and can clear up mixes super quickly.

In this example, we will apply this technique to our Master track.

In Live, it is actually super simple to set up; let me show you how in the following steps:

1. In the Chapter 16 project, launch the Mid-side EQ scene.
2. Apply the EQ Eight device on the Master track.
3. Now, it’s time to turn our old EQ Eight device into a mid-side EQ.
4. Under Mode choose the M/S option instead of Stereo.
5. Under the Edit section, you can choose between M (mid) and S (side) (Figure 16.17).

Figure 16.17 – Switching between mid and side under the Edit section of the EQ Eight device

6. Now, we will take the opportunity to ensure that there is no low-frequency bleed into our side/stereo signal. Simply switch to S (side) under...

Preparing your mix for mastering

When you have finished the production of your song, you will notice that it is still quieter than all the other songs released out there. The reason behind it is that your song isn’t mastered yet. The mastering process will put the final touches and polish to your song in terms of sonic characteristics, and it will be mastered to a loudness standard. This is also a standardization process, so your song will be able to compete with other songs on streaming platforms, DJ sets, and radio, and you will have the appropriate formats for however you desire to release your song (vinyl and digital formats). The mastering stage is also where metadata is applied to your song.

However, an incorrectly prepared mix can limit what the mastering engineer can do. Mastering engineers work with the stereo bounce of your track, and they will not have access to your production project file, so you need to make sure the mix is exported correctly and there is enough...

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the process of a track mixdown, and how you can approach it.

We also discussed advanced mixing techniques and how they can be carried out in Ableton Live, such as split-band processing to process sounds that engage multiple frequency ranges to maintain clarity.

We also looked at sidechaining reverbs for corrective and creative applications, parallel compression to bring more flavor to our sounds, and mid-side EQing to take further control of the stereo field.

Furthermore, we talked about how you can prepare your mix for mastering to ensure that your mastering engineer can do the best possible job as you provide them with the appropriate export of your mixed song.

In the next chapter, we will look at how to manage your files and troubleshoot in Ableton Live.