This guy definitely knows what hes talking about I'm a novice producer but I definitely know music and what I want out of music specifically rap and without even hearing a sample of the music he's talking about I can tell you he knows hip-hop and rap glad I found this channel
I would love to hear your opinion on modern trap hip hop mixing. They are able to create huge spacey worlds. Albums like Lil Uzi Vert- Luv Is Rage 2 and Travis Scott - Birds In The Trap. Those are the best mixed trap albums I’ve heard. Since the most the time the vocal has a lot of reverb and the kick and the 808 is one intrument. There is some differences in mixing
To reinforce your point about layering samples when it comes to kicks. On the Redbull Music academy lecture with Bob Power (AKA sometimes called the 5th member of A Tribe Called Quest, for those reading this who don't already know who that is, assuming Justin does since he has referenced Tribe at least twice if not more by the second point) Bob says that they often would take a sample from smacking the wind screen on a stage mic like a shure SM58 and layer that with the kick which adds to the attack of the transient to get the kick so it cuts through the mix better. Also Q Tip has went on record stating that when he heard Straight Outta Compton by NWA, that record had a huge impact on the sound of The Low End Theory, and actually in turn Dre has said that The Low End Theory had a huge impact on the way The Chronic's sound. Tip also said that what made him want to work with Bob Power is the fact that Bob had worked with Stetsasonic (which Prince Paul who worked on some of the earlier De La Soul records was a part of, and De La Soul, Tribe, The Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, The Beatnuts, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Chi-Ali, The Fu-Schnickens, and Lucien Revolucien are collectively known as The Native Tongues.
Thanks, Justin. I'd like to hear you talk about Dubstep records in the style of Ternion Sound's 'Ternion Selects' mix series if you feel that it's something your audience would appreciate.
When i'm producing a beat and the samples for kick/snare arent quite there yet, i clone the tracks, put on some crazy compression on one track, like ratio 20/1, and then blend the highly compressed track with the dry track. Ofc most times this isn't the final mix, but it gives you a good idea on what you should aim for with this specific drum
gotta hear what you think about proper old school dubstep production. stuff like Ternion Sound, Ganja White Night, the Widdler, Joker etc. it’s so dark and mysterious and so different.
Great tips. As for the kick drum, a good tip is to always parallel compress & always remember you can really clean up the kick or layer the kick w/ a super clean sample that hits hard then mutes less than a sample later. Thats the beauty of sampled drums(you can shape them so that theyre in hard then 100% out of the mix leaving plenty of room for the other elements in the song). Hip hop tends to rely on sampled loops or 100% digital drums & I learned that depending on the style, a way to make digital drums sound a bit more rich is to add just a drop of a short reverb on them(something you barely feel let alone hear). It helps to trick the ears in the long run especially after the beat gets mastered & all those drum sounds get brought a bit more(the ear expects to hear ambiance w/ percussion). This works even more w/ pop music or pop style hip hop(or hip hop style pop) & you can get away w/ adding way more verb(even a whole virtual drum room). That did that quite a bit in the new jack swing early 90s RnB era which often used hip hop drums louder than youd hear them in hip hop(w/ the 80s gated reverb snare & all lol). Oh & one more tip for the vocals to get them nice a warm & dry: just record further away from your mic w/ more treatment around the mic blocking room ambiance bouncing back. Sometimes the worst offender in the room is the ceiling(do a test by speaking loud w/ your voice pointing in each direction & youll figure out the worst offenders). Its seldom the floor, sometimes the walls, but usually the ceiling(hence booths or blankets are usually your best way to record super dry & you can flirt w/ removing lingering background noise using the many noise cancellation tools out today but beware over relying on them as they might take away important nuances from the performance). To make your vocal sound INSIDE the song, you should always remember the proximity effect(less highs tend to give the illusion of further back). A vocal thats drowning in the song is more fun for me to play w/ because parallel compression & exciters usually can save the day as they would in the early hip hop era recording over dense samples. When the vocal is too bright(recording to close to a cheap digital mic) w/ all that extra digital mid range clarity, it can be a hassle getting it to sound right whether you are doing warm 90s boom bap style or modern 808 heavy styles. Clip gain editing(to remove siblance & level the performance), multiband compression(to perfect your de-essing), & dynamic EQ(to further perfect the harsh brightness in the mid range) are your friend here as much as in any genre/mix. Also dont forget you can use small drops of digital saturation & distortion plugins(barely hitting the threshold then use alot of make-up gain to bring it back to level) to color & compress those high mid transients of the vocal musically(making it slightly more analog sounding but never forget digital saturation can never truly give you that sexy analog saturation sound you hear in better studio mixed records...it can only help you compete but it cant take you there the same way tangerines cant make orange juice).
Very nice Video. I always struggle with my vocals. They kinda sound too wide and muddy. But it get's better with every song. Would love to see more hip hop mixes.
I think he was bang on with the too wet comment on main vocals. That’s usually one of the very first things I notice when I hear a persons mix just starting out. For most typical rap main vocals you will seldom see me put my reverb more than 3-6% wet depending on the song. I rarely use delay at all on my main vocals but usually more on adlibs and backing layers.
When you talk about kick drums do you also include an 808? I consider 808 more of a bass sound but it’s realistically the most important element of most modern rap beats
I knew this one was going to come up in the comments as soon as I posted it! Wish I had said something about this in the video. 808s can play either role: They can act like kick drums (often part of the layers that go into a kick drum). OR they can act more like a bass line. On a small number or records they will kind of play both roles at once, acting as a kick-like bassline. So this is the question to ask yourself: "What is the 808 doing in this song? Is it just part of the kick sound? Or is it being used as the bassline? (Or is it being used as a kick-like bassline in a song without a dedicated kick?)" Once you've answered that, ask yourself "what should be more dominant in this song, kick or bass?" One additional note: There are rare occasions where both kick and bass are fairly dominant. (Think Tribe Called Quest.) But in such cases, the mix usually has to be fairly sparse otherwise for it to work. And, they will often be playing different rhythms that allow them to stay most out of one another's way. Hope that helps! -Justin
I have a question- in some songs , I listen to a percussion sound , or open hat which is panned to either the left or the right channel. But it not only feel at the right side, but also right side just below my ears , like the sound is coming from the direction of my shoulder. So the question is- we can easily pan a sound to the left or right but how can we give that sound a direction? Or tilt it?
People sometimes think about darker sounds feeling “lower” than brighter sounds, as well as being further back, rather than forward. Hope that helps, Justin
thank you as always justin, i was wondering what your thoughts were on the history of mixing?? i saw your mix on episode about loudness in the streaming era and it scratched the history loving part of my brain, so i’d love to hear where it’s been, where we are, and where you think its going!
Thankgod , finally somebody realised that hip hop and trap tutorials are the most needed. I don't know why why people give mixing lessons of the songs from 1940s rock music.
Indeed! Even when layering kicks with 808s that act like part of the kick, that can be a good idea. Helps the attack if the kick poke through and remain audible. Some people do a similar thing manually with copy/pasted volume automation too. -Justin
I'd like to piggyback on this and say that with Justin's response above, just shaving the front of the 808 slightly (gotta check phase with this too though) and letting the kick's attack take the lead saves 2 db of headroom when layering (quoted from Jaycen Joshua's Pensado's Place interview and I've also tested this and by god it's true)
@@SonicScoop thanks for your humble replies, but I think the main element should be in mono so that they are more listenable in mobile and laptop or cheap mono speakers. Adding percussive elements to mono can take up their space and stop sounding great in small devices. , am I right ?
The selling is needed because otherwise the podcast wouldn't be able to exist! :-) You can always fast forward through that part though. It usually lasts 90 seconds... MAYBE 120 seconds if I go long. -Justin
Thanks for the comment! Some of it yes, some of it no. There are a lot of genres where the kick shouldn’t be so prominent or so bottom heavy. And there are a lot of genres where the vocal shouldn’t be so forward and dry, and so on. Definitely a few things in here that are very specific to hip hop! Some of it is adaptable to other genres on a conceptual level with some tweaks though! Hope that makes sense! -Justin
1. Too many cues from hte wrong genre or subgenres of hip-hop. 2. Unimpressive kick drum. 3. Weak vocals. 4. Using meh snares. 5. Getting priorities wrong.
More hip-hop mixes please
Many of us younger viewers would appreciate more hip hop and edm content
Dang I wasn’t expecting THIS! 🎉
This guy definitely knows what hes talking about I'm a novice producer but I definitely know music and what I want out of music specifically rap and without even hearing a sample of the music he's talking about I can tell you he knows hip-hop and rap glad I found this channel
I would love to hear your opinion on modern trap hip hop mixing. They are able to create huge spacey worlds. Albums like Lil Uzi Vert- Luv Is Rage 2 and Travis Scott - Birds In The Trap. Those are the best mixed trap albums I’ve heard. Since the most the time the vocal has a lot of reverb and the kick and the 808 is one intrument. There is some differences in mixing
Bass is secondary! that is gold
To reinforce your point about layering samples when it comes to kicks. On the Redbull Music academy lecture with Bob Power (AKA sometimes called the 5th member of A Tribe Called Quest, for those reading this who don't already know who that is, assuming Justin does since he has referenced Tribe at least twice if not more by the second point) Bob says that they often would take a sample from smacking the wind screen on a stage mic like a shure SM58 and layer that with the kick which adds to the attack of the transient to get the kick so it cuts through the mix better.
Also Q Tip has went on record stating that when he heard Straight Outta Compton by NWA, that record had a huge impact on the sound of The Low End Theory, and actually in turn Dre has said that The Low End Theory had a huge impact on the way The Chronic's sound.
Tip also said that what made him want to work with Bob Power is the fact that Bob had worked with Stetsasonic (which Prince Paul who worked on some of the earlier De La Soul records was a part of, and De La Soul, Tribe, The Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, The Beatnuts, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Chi-Ali, The Fu-Schnickens, and Lucien Revolucien are collectively known as The Native Tongues.
Hey Justin…. Love your content! I would love to hear your opinions on mixing Reggae and the mistake to avoid
House/Electronic music!
great video, thanks for these foundational insights!
Have you worked on Reggaeton? would be awesome to have some reggaeton insights.
Great video!
id love to hear about edm!!
Really great advice. Thank you 🌻
Thanks, Justin. I'd like to hear you talk about Dubstep records in the style of Ternion Sound's 'Ternion Selects' mix series if you feel that it's something your audience would appreciate.
i would very much appreciate this
Super cool! What about a second part on compression and eq for Hip Hop?…🤓
When i'm producing a beat and the samples for kick/snare arent quite there yet, i clone the tracks, put on some crazy compression on one track, like ratio 20/1, and then blend the highly compressed track with the dry track. Ofc most times this isn't the final mix, but it gives you a good idea on what you should aim for with this specific drum
Wow, I‘d love to sit in a Session with Jadakiss too 🥹
gotta hear what you think about proper old school dubstep production. stuff like Ternion Sound, Ganja White Night, the Widdler, Joker etc. it’s so dark and mysterious and so different.
Great tips. As for the kick drum, a good tip is to always parallel compress & always remember you can really clean up the kick or layer the kick w/ a super clean sample that hits hard then mutes less than a sample later.
Thats the beauty of sampled drums(you can shape them so that theyre in hard then 100% out of the mix leaving plenty of room for the other elements in the song). Hip hop tends to rely on sampled loops or 100% digital drums & I learned that depending on the style, a way to make digital drums sound a bit more rich is to add just a drop of a short reverb on them(something you barely feel let alone hear).
It helps to trick the ears in the long run especially after the beat gets mastered & all those drum sounds get brought a bit more(the ear expects to hear ambiance w/ percussion). This works even more w/ pop music or pop style hip hop(or hip hop style pop) & you can get away w/ adding way more verb(even a whole virtual drum room).
That did that quite a bit in the new jack swing early 90s RnB era which often used hip hop drums louder than youd hear them in hip hop(w/ the 80s gated reverb snare & all lol).
Oh & one more tip for the vocals to get them nice a warm & dry: just record further away from your mic w/ more treatment around the mic blocking room ambiance bouncing back. Sometimes the worst offender in the room is the ceiling(do a test by speaking loud w/ your voice pointing in each direction & youll figure out the worst offenders).
Its seldom the floor, sometimes the walls, but usually the ceiling(hence booths or blankets are usually your best way to record super dry & you can flirt w/ removing lingering background noise using the many noise cancellation tools out today but beware over relying on them as they might take away important nuances from the performance).
To make your vocal sound INSIDE the song, you should always remember the proximity effect(less highs tend to give the illusion of further back). A vocal thats drowning in the song is more fun for me to play w/ because parallel compression & exciters usually can save the day as they would in the early hip hop era recording over dense samples.
When the vocal is too bright(recording to close to a cheap digital mic) w/ all that extra digital mid range clarity, it can be a hassle getting it to sound right whether you are doing warm 90s boom bap style or modern 808 heavy styles. Clip gain editing(to remove siblance & level the performance), multiband compression(to perfect your de-essing), & dynamic EQ(to further perfect the harsh brightness in the mid range) are your friend here as much as in any genre/mix.
Also dont forget you can use small drops of digital saturation & distortion plugins(barely hitting the threshold then use alot of make-up gain to bring it back to level) to color & compress those high mid transients of the vocal musically(making it slightly more analog sounding but never forget digital saturation can never truly give you that sexy analog saturation sound you hear in better studio mixed records...it can only help you compete but it cant take you there the same way tangerines cant make orange juice).
Very nice Video. I always struggle with my vocals. They kinda sound too wide and muddy. But it get's better with every song.
Would love to see more hip hop mixes.
I think he was bang on with the too wet comment on main vocals. That’s usually one of the very first things I notice when I hear a persons mix just starting out. For most typical rap main vocals you will seldom see me put my reverb more than 3-6% wet depending on the song. I rarely use delay at all on my main vocals but usually more on adlibs and backing layers.
@@krispybowgod9656 thanks ✌
Great series! Please consider making one with EDM as well 🤞
Great video
When you talk about kick drums do you also include an 808? I consider 808 more of a bass sound but it’s realistically the most important element of most modern rap beats
I knew this one was going to come up in the comments as soon as I posted it! Wish I had said something about this in the video.
808s can play either role: They can act like kick drums (often part of the layers that go into a kick drum). OR they can act more like a bass line. On a small number or records they will kind of play both roles at once, acting as a kick-like bassline.
So this is the question to ask yourself: "What is the 808 doing in this song? Is it just part of the kick sound? Or is it being used as the bassline? (Or is it being used as a kick-like bassline in a song without a dedicated kick?)"
Once you've answered that, ask yourself "what should be more dominant in this song, kick or bass?"
One additional note: There are rare occasions where both kick and bass are fairly dominant. (Think Tribe Called Quest.) But in such cases, the mix usually has to be fairly sparse otherwise for it to work. And, they will often be playing different rhythms that allow them to stay most out of one another's way.
Hope that helps!
-Justin
I like to hear more about mixing music with orchestral sounds/samples
Yesss that please
I have a question- in some songs , I listen to a percussion sound , or open hat which is panned to either the left or the right channel. But it not only feel at the right side, but also right side just below my ears , like the sound is coming from the direction of my shoulder. So the question is- we can easily pan a sound to the left or right but how can we give that sound a direction? Or tilt it?
People sometimes think about darker sounds feeling “lower” than brighter sounds, as well as being further back, rather than forward.
Hope that helps,
Justin
@@SonicScoop i will experiment
It is more like hip hop production tips, than mixing tips
thank you as always justin, i was wondering what your thoughts were on the history of mixing?? i saw your mix on episode about loudness in the streaming era and it scratched the history loving part of my brain, so i’d love to hear where it’s been, where we are, and where you think its going!
Thankgod , finally somebody realised that hip hop and trap tutorials are the most needed. I don't know why why people give mixing lessons of the songs from 1940s rock music.
you must be in some other planet lol
just because trap beats and rap music in general been trending for years, doesn't mean there are no other genres
@@dreamchaser7123 there might be a plenty of them but people don't like them anymore.
That would be because that’s real music where hip hop, rap etc is just rubbish.
Wrong rock is bigger than ever.
Sidechain the kick so the bass ducks down when the kick hits that's a good trick
Indeed!
Even when layering kicks with 808s that act like part of the kick, that can be a good idea. Helps the attack if the kick poke through and remain audible.
Some people do a similar thing manually with copy/pasted volume automation too.
-Justin
I'd like to piggyback on this and say that with Justin's response above, just shaving the front of the 808 slightly (gotta check phase with this too though) and letting the kick's attack take the lead saves 2 db of headroom when layering (quoted from Jaycen Joshua's Pensado's Place interview and I've also tested this and by god it's true)
Wow. Blown away by your context then mention my favorite rapper of all time.
NICE. Which rapper was it that I mentioned?
-Justin
@@SonicScoop Jadakiss. Since the 90s.
Hey you said that the supporting elements should not be hard panned left or right. So, making something stereo makes it bigger ???
Hard panning will often make a sound more apparent and more audible, as along with bringing it further “forward” in a mix.
Hope that helps!
-Justin
@@SonicScoop thanks for your humble replies, but I think the main element should be in mono so that they are more listenable in mobile and laptop or cheap mono speakers. Adding percussive elements to mono can take up their space and stop sounding great in small devices. , am I right ?
It's not copying, it's research 😉
As much as I enjoy these they really could be half the length. So much extra selling and spurious other information that isn't needed.
The selling is needed because otherwise the podcast wouldn't be able to exist! :-)
You can always fast forward through that part though. It usually lasts 90 seconds... MAYBE 120 seconds if I go long.
-Justin
Don't help them!!!
🤣
-Justin
Hello sir, do you not reply comments to answer questions? Please, clear my doubts. I have posted many comments.
bro you gave him like 20 minutes 💀
@@jordangressman5164 yeah, may be he will reply the next day.
I answered :-)
-Justin
@@SonicScoop thanks a lot respected sir for your humble replies.
you could exchange the word hiphop with nearly any other genre and it would still be right what you say.
Thanks for the comment! Some of it yes, some of it no.
There are a lot of genres where the kick shouldn’t be so prominent or so bottom heavy. And there are a lot of genres where the vocal shouldn’t be so forward and dry, and so on.
Definitely a few things in here that are very specific to hip hop!
Some of it is adaptable to other genres on a conceptual level with some tweaks though!
Hope that makes sense!
-Justin
1. Too many cues from hte wrong genre or subgenres of hip-hop.
2. Unimpressive kick drum.
3. Weak vocals.
4. Using meh snares.
5. Getting priorities wrong.