Music Production Beats, Mixing, Mastering, Song-Writing for $100

Gear: Acer Laptop, M-Audio Monitors, Sure Headsets, Behringer Audio Card.

Audio Station: FL Studio 20 (Unlimited tracks).

Credits: Boutross, Nyashinski, Sayotheartist (beats, mixing & mastering)

Production Process:

Our music sessions normally have only one main objective per session since I batch a lot of my tasks.

We often sit to only develop ideas into songs and arrange them properly. At other times, to balance the songs we’ve developed a little premix for the projects. “Frequency wise”, for every two creating/arranging sessions, there’s one cleaning/premixing session.

In these premixing sessions, the only goal you’ll have is to make sure everything is sounding how it should and how you wanted. If it’s not, now it’s time to put it back on track.

Create space and focus your mix on certain elements. Let’s say you have a piano/pad and a bass, in this stage is where you would low-cut the piano/pad so the bass shines through, but also high-cutting the bass so the piano/pads get that space. The idea is to give focus to the main region where you want these elements to shine;

Balance the levels of the elements: Mess around with the volume of the elements. Compare what you’ve done to reference tracks, as mentioned here. The idea here is to do a quick balance of the levels of your highs, mids, and lows so it matches the vibe and intention you’re going for. This could either be done with EQs or the channel’s level.

Check if you need extra/fewer elements: Now it’s the time to question whether you need all the channels you have in there or if something is missing.

Check if your song sounds good in Mono: Does it lose too much energy when you put your song in Mono? If so, you have to do something to regain that mono field.

Mastering:

Reference Tracks: After importing the mixed track, import your reference track and make sure that the references are as loud as your track.

We use a frequency analyzer and Eq match to analyze and match the tracks eq to that of the reference track, getting it to sound like the reference track in its unique way.

We apply another eq to remove frequencies below 25hz, attenuate frequencies that need control, and boost those which are at a low level, we analyze these levels with a tonal balance control based on the genre of the track.

Feedback
After finishing the adjustments you wanted to make, it’s feedback time!